At this time of year, as we gather with the ones we love and give thanks for all that we have, our thoughts also turn to those most in need. They may be people we know or people we've never met: families who can't afford to heat their homes during the cold winter months or pay their health care bills; children struggling to learn in broken and overcrowded schools; or working men and women who will receive pink slips instead of pay checks in their holiday mail this year. They may also be among the hundreds of thousands of Americans who suffered extraordinary losses in the destruction wreaked by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

Yet, as families around the country turn their thoughts to the less fortunate and to creating a better future for all Americans, leaders in Washington are turning a deaf ear. The concerns and values of ordinary Americans are being ignored in favor of a partisan, ideological agenda that radically reduces needed investments in our people and in our nation's long-term strength.

Last month, the Republican-led House of Representatives and the Senate passed partisan legislation that will make it much harder for working Americans to find jobs, health care, child care and enough to eat. The bill passed by the House of Representatives would, over the next 10 years, force about 17 million of America's poorest people - half of whom would be children - to pay more for health care under Medicaid, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, with the burden falling particularly hard on low-income parents, the elderly and people with disabilities. It would cut food stamps for some 255,000 people per month by 2008, many of them in working families. And it would cut child support enforcement, child care assistance and federal foster care assistance.

Those who support these draconian measures claim they are required to reduce the federal budget deficit, which totaled $319 billion last year. Yet, less than a month after enacting these cuts, these same self-proclaimed champions of fiscal discipline voted for tax breaks that will actually increase the federal budget deficit by tens of billions of dollars. Moreover, while leaders in Congress and the White House lecture poor and working Americans about the need to get by with less, their budget-busting tax bills lavish huge gifts on a small number of affluent individuals who neither need nor seek such reckless largesse from their leaders in Washington.

It is deeply troubling that enacting these tax breaks appears to be a much higher priority for Washington's leaders than adequately addressing the job, education, health and housing needs of hard-working American families - not to mention the reconstruction needs of hurricane victims in the Gulf Coast states, which should have been taken care of weeks ago.

Rarely has Washington leadership been so out of touch with the concerns of families and businesses throughout our country. America needs priorities that reflect our values as a country and that prepare our people, especially our children, for a future of freedom, prosperity and security.

It's time to end tax giveaways for those who neither need nor seek them and to direct sensible tax relief to those who need it most: to businesses being dragged down by the weight of health care and energy costs and to working families struggling to build good lives for their children. It's time to put an end to the fiscal profligacy of the last five years and return to the fiscal responsibility that generated budget surpluses and record job growth in the 1990s. And it's time to invest our resources intelligently in the priorities that will make America strong and secure into the future, like education, health care and the fight against terrorism.

If Washington's leaders take these steps, our nation will once again be guided by the values of decency and vision, rather than the callous shortsightedness that is all too prevalent today in our Capitol's corridors of power. In doing so, we will honor the spirit and sacrifice of the American people - in this holiday season and far into the future.