What Is "the Religious Community," and Why Doesn't Its Proposals Get Support from America's Evangelicals?
In an e-mailing for Friday, the 13th of January, 2006, Sojourners sent the following editorial, It's Not Over!. This was a call by Jim Wallis to stop the proposed budget cuts that have passed the U.S. Senate (51-50) and will soon be voted on by the House of Representatives.
Mr. Wallis continued his theme: "Budgets are moral documents." Indeed, they are. The question is: "Is the proposed budget more moral, biblically speaking, than the one it will replace?" Unless the Bible teaches charity at the point of a gun -- and it doesn't -- the proposed budget moves closer, marginally, to biblical morality.
Mr. Wallis deeply believes that the Bible does teach charity at gunpoint. So, he is enraged by the proposed cuts.
While the religious community's involvement in the budget debate helped save food stamps for poor families, the bill still contains many provisions that harm low-income people. The Congressional Budget Office reports that the increases in Medicaid co-pays and premiums, and reductions in benefits, will total $42 billion over 10 years, affecting many families who live just above the poverty line.
The most recent Medicare prescription law (2005), which President Bush promoted and signed, added $700 billion of new Medicare spending over the next ten years. This, in addition to the budget-busting existing Medicare program. But Mr. Wallis is upset by a piddly reduction of $4.2 billion a year.
These cuts could affect all of the 28 million children who receive health care through Medicaid, and many working poor families.
Then again, they may not affect any of them. Mr. Wallis offers no evidence.
Federal student loan programs are cut by $12.7 billion over five years, making it more difficult for low-income students to afford higher education.
Since any competent student can earn a college degree for about $3,500 a year, which he or she could pay for by working part-time at McDonalds, this cry of outrage seems a bit strained.
The reauthorization of TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) remains in the report. It increases work requirements, but only provides $1 billion in additional child care funding -- far less than needed by single mothers trying to escape both welfare and poverty -- and $11 billion less than the CBO estimates is needed. Funding for child support enforcement is reduced by $1.5 billion over five years and $4.9 billion over 10 years, resulting in payments for low-income single mothers and their children going uncollected.
Notice that he keeps talking about cuts "over five years" or "over 10 years." This makes the cuts seem large. With a Federal budget of over $2.5 trillion a year, these cuts should be compared to total spending of "over $12.5 trillion" and "over $25 trillion." In short, these are barely perceptible spending cuts.
What we have said all year now needs repeating -- budgets are moral documents that reflect our priorities. The choice to cut supports that help people make it day to day in order to pay for tax cuts for those with plenty goes against everything our religious and moral principles teach us. It is a blatant reversal of biblical values. A time of war, rising poverty rates, record deficits, and natural disasters is no time to cut supports for the poor and taxes for the wealthy.
He never says when it will be time to cut government handouts of confiscated tax money. In a career spanning three decades, he has never set forth the criteria for knowing when to cut back on the welfare state. I don't think he ever will.
By the way, how is the following consistent with the Left's much-ballyhooed "separation of church and state"?
President Bush will deliver the annual State of the Union message on the evening before the House vote (Tuesday, Jan. 31). Early news reports indicate that he will ask for even more budget and tax cuts in next year's budget. Sojourners and Call to Renewal are planning "State of Our Values watches," encouraging people to gather in churches and homes to watch the speech. We will listen carefully to see if the president speaks to our values - values of economic justice and peacemaking - or to more war and more budget cuts for the poor. And then we will respond to the media, to our members of Congress, and to our communities. You'll hear more details on the "State of Our Values watches" very soon. The day after the president's speech will be the crucial budget vote in the House of Representatives.
He says we should consider budgets as moral documents. But he never mentions that government budgets are based on money extracted from people at the point of a gun. He never mentions this in relation to the old political criteria: "Who wins and who loses?" The taxpayers clearly lose. The upper-middle-class government bureaucrats who distribute the money win. Finally, the poor are made dependent on the state. They are the real losers, generation after generation.
We've come a long way this year. One year ago we began our campaign to tell our political leaders that "Budgets Are Moral Documents" that reflect the values and priorities of a family, church, organization, city, state, or nation. A budget demonstrates who and what are most valued by those making it. Who benefits and who suffers, who wins and who loses, what things are revealed as most or less important? We said that the question America's religious communities must ask of any budget is what happens to the poor and most vulnerable -- especially the nation's poorest children -- in these critical decisions.
Then he closes with applause for the tiny special-interest group he represents: welfare state evangelicals, a group so tiny that no political polling agency tracks it. It is a voting bloc without statiscally identifiable votes.
And we really made a difference. Many political leaders (from both parties) and reporters told me that they have never seen the religious community so deeply engaged in a budget battle. As we enter 2006, an old South African anthem can guide us: "We will not give up the fight, we have only started." It's not over.
Maybe not, but it's close.