I recently attended the annual meeting of the Tedford Shelter Group, which provides for the homeless in the greater Brunswick area. The featured speaker told her poignant story, which was both inspiring and timely. I need to share the basic outline of her story. It is a story that is repeated countless times all across this country. It provides a powerful refutation of the Reagan-era-inspired stereotype of the “welfare mom” as black, self-indulgent and lazy.

This woman was born in California. Her mother and father were heroin addicts. She learned early in her life not only to fend for herself in basic ways, but also to take care of her parents – to see that they ate, slept and were clean. At age 9, her father was sent to jail and her mother, who suffered from mental illness, was hospitalized. She was put in multiple foster homes and was in and out of many schools. There was little stability in her life, and many of the foster home placements were terribly unpleasant, to put it mildly. She became a difficult child – alienated, independent, angry and profoundly unhappy. She had learned to survive in a trying world by not letting people “get to her.”

After a couple of years, she was returned to her mother, who had remarried. Her new husband was a retired military man, and he announced that his rules would dominate and this young girl would follow them. She rose to the challenge and was totally unaccepting of “his rules.” She was rebellious and impossible. The non-relationship quickly deteriorated until she was thrown out of the house at age 11, with her mother holding the door open for her.

She spent a number of years homeless, making do by working the street. She slept under bridges, stole for food and became involved with the law on a number of occasions. She was tough, mean. She was a survivor. She trusted no one and was determined not to allow anybody to get inside her head. She was jailed on occasion, and finally she found herself pregnant.

This was a turning point for her.

She did not want her child to have the kind of life she was living. She sought help, and in spite of her reflex to resist closeness, she was connected with social service agencies and became attached to mentors. She returned to school, took parenting courses, and she began slowly to get her life in order.

Fast forward to the present. She is a responsible and respected public servant. Her daughter is part of a loving family. She is a community leader and a fierce and passionate supporter of programs for the homeless. She is a success story.

The power of this story is somewhat lost in print. If you had seen the strength of character in her eyes and heard the quiet passion in her voice, and the humility of her presence, I am sure you would be as moved as I was. This woman overcame impossible odds.

Shift with me, if you will, to Washington, D.C.

The Republican controlled House is currently working on significant cuts to social programs to the tune of about more than $50 billion. The Senate is considering cuts in the $36 billion range. Both of these initiatives are tied to making large tax cuts in the realm of $70 billion, primarily for the wealthiest among us, permanent. These cuts are aimed at the most vulnerable in our society – the countless others who share lives on the margins, homeless, hungry, unemployed and the jailed – in short people like the woman described above who so courageously and supportively pulled her life together.

Congress would simply cast them aside, and they have full White House support in this dastardly, inhumane action. There would be cuts in Medicaid, school lunch programs, student loans and health care, and a host of other programs that are designed to even the playing field and allow the less fortunate to have a chance to make it in this country.

There will be a direct impact on Maine. Nursing homes, impoverished children, seniors and disabled people will suffer.

And there are alternatives. Rep. Tom Allen points out that a reduction in the tax cut for the wealthiest 1 percent ($384, 000 and up) would achieve the same results in savings that the House seeks at the expense of the poor in Maine.

Happily, Sens. Snowe and Collins have bucked their party and are working to soften the impact on the most vulnerable. I really wonder sometimes why they don’t follow Jim Jeffords of Vermont and jump ship to become independents. They are particularly upset by the House effort to attach drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to this outrageous bill, which has been derailed, at least temporarily by moderates in the House.

Reps. Hastert, DeLay, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove and Sen. Frist have a short memory. Can’t they recall the images from New Orleans and the Mississippi coast post Katrina? There, in bold relief, was the two Americas for all to see. One America could flee the damage; the other America was stuck in the Superdome in the squalor of poverty. The answer to all of that is not to further cut the social service safety net – to attack the most vulnerable and powerless in this country.

I am angry at our leadership that they can be so unconscionable. But I am angry at the citizens of this country who allow our commitment to social justice and equity to be so grossly compromised. The great spokesman for liberty and freedom apparently does not understand that the young child from California referenced above had no freedom or liberty until she was aided and supported in turning her life around. They apparently refuse to recognize the inconsistency between their rhetoric about freedom and democracy and the fact that 7 million more people joined those who live under the low poverty line in this country in the last five years – all the while extending tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.

The pundits worry about the indictment of “Scooter” Libby and the Rove involvement and investigation as a sign of a lack of integrity in this administration. They are but the symptoms. The cancer is at the core. This is an administration without soul and moral compass. It has lost the right to lead.

Jim Carignan is a retired educator who lives in Harpswell. His e-mail address is [email protected].