FAYETTEVILLE — Catholics and Protestants uniting!?
In separate documents, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and a coalition of evangelical and mainline Protestants have united to remind Americans that a federal budget is a moral document, and that the budget passed recently by the U.S. House of Representatives follows a questionable moral trajectory.
In a carefully worded document on April 13, the Catholic Bishops told the House of Representatives that the “moral measure of this budget debate is not which party wins or which powerful interests prevail, but rather how those who are jobless, hungry, homeless or poor are treated. Their voices are too often missing in these debates, but they have the most compelling moral claim on our consciences and our common resources.”
The Catholic bishops offered some moral criteria a federal budget: Protect human life and dignity;
protect the needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty (“the least of these”); and promote “the common good of all, especially ordinary workers and families who struggle to live in dignity in difficult economic times.”
“A just framework for future budgets cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons. It requires shared sacrifice for all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and addressing the longterm costs of health insurance and retirement programs fairly.”
The evangelical Protestants used even stronger language: “Our budget should not be balanced on the backs of poor and vulnerable people.”
In a full page ad in Politico titled “What Would Jesus Cut?” 28 religious leaders, most from evangelical denominations, asked Congress to defend “International aid that directly and literally saves lives from pandemic diseases; Critical child health and family nutrition programs ... Proven work and income supports that lift families out of poverty, Support for education, especially in low-income communities.”
It was the budget proposed by Congressman Paul Ryan that raised the moral ire of these Christian leaders. Ryan is a devotee of philosopher Ayn Rand’s anti-Christian philosophy of aggressive self-interest.
Evangelical Jim Wallis noted that two-thirds of the long-term budget cuts that Ryan proposed are “directed at modest and low-income people, as well as the poorest of the poor at home and abroad. At the same time, he proposed tax cuts up to 30 percent for some of our country’s wealthiest corporations.”
U.S. taxes are at historically low rates right now. Federal tax rates at every level of income have fallen significantly over the past thirty years, especially for the ultra-wealthy. Over all, U.S. taxes are much lower as a percentage of national income than taxesin most other wealthy nations.
In the past 30 years, the share of America’s income held by the top 1 percent of the population has more than doubled, while the bottom 90 percent has coped with flat wages and mounting debt.
If tax rates returned somewhere close to their historic rates in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, we could turn the deficit around without threatening Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other successful programs that relieve suffering for the poor and elderly.
Part of what bothers me is that the attack on compassionate programs is from many of the same people who made the decisions that created the massive deficit. The Clinton White House left a budget surplus in 2000.
Today’s deficit was created by the Bush tax cuts, two unfunded wars, an unfunded prescription drug benefit program (not the consumer’s version, but the pharmaceutical lobbyists’ version), and a deregulated financial industry that created a huge recession by misusing their wealth.
People like me who opposed the Iraq war, who support progressive taxes, who prefer consumer oriented policies, and who want regulation on predatory business practices didn’t cause the deficit. If more of us had been making the decisions, we wouldn’t have this deficit.
With evangelical zeal, Wallis quotes Isaiah (10:1-3): “Doom to you who legislate evil, who make laws that make victims - laws that make misery for the poor, that rob my destitute people of dignity, exploiting defenseless widows, taking advantage of homeless children.
What will you have to say on Judgment Day, when Doomsday arrives out of the blue? Who will you get to help you? What good will your money do you?” (The Message)
Says Wallis, “Ryan’s budget seems to follow, almost line by line, the ‘oppressive statues’ Isaiah rails against …. Simply put, the Ryan budget is a bonanza for the rich and devastation for the poor, and it will never be accepted by the religious community.”
LOWELL GRISHAM IS AN EPISCOPAL PRIEST WHO LIVES IN FAYETTEVILLE.
Opinion, Pages 17 on 05/01/2011