Catholic Charities USA responds to President's budget proposal

Earlier this week, President Obama unveiled the proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2016. Catholic Charities USA reports that this blueprint document outlines priorities and areas for investment, but does not have the force of law and will not change current spending levels.

However, it is first step in the budget process, initiating the federal budget negotiations for this year.

Catholic Charities USA has prepared an analysis of the President's proposed budget in comparison to previous years, which is available here. The response read, in part:

"While Catholic Charities agencies, and many other faith-based non-profits, will continue to work with families and individuals on the brink, we know that in order for our nation to truly make a significant change in the numbers of those in poverty, we need support and commitment from the for-profit sector and from government. We cannot do this alone.”

Click here to read the full press release.

Bishops support tax credits

Today, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released a copy of letter to United States senators urging them to preserve the Earned Income Tax Credit and the refundable Child Tax Credit, noting:

A just framework for future budgets cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons; it requires shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs fairly.

Poverty in this country is historically high and growing. Currently over 46 million Americans live in poverty; over 16 million of them are children. In America today, the younger a person is, the more likely they are to live in poverty. Low-income tax credits are pro-work, pro-family, and some of the most effective antipoverty programs in our nation. Every year, the Earned Income Tax Credit and the refundable Child Tax Credit lift millions of American families out of poverty and help them live in dignity and with greater economic security. These investments should be supported and protected, not undermined or forgotten. In particular, it would be unjust and unwise to fail to renew improvements and extensions of low-income tax credits as the Congress addresses tax cuts for middle-income and wealthy Americans. Poor working families and their children may not have the most powerful lobbies, but they have the greatest needs and the most compelling claim.

The rest of the letter is here.

Facts worth considering

In his monthly column in The Evangelist, Bishop Howard J. Hubbard discusses important issues facing Congress and the New York State Legislature, and he does so with facts and statistics rather than the rhetoric that seems to cloud so much of what passes for political dialogue these days. Some of what he writes:

. . . from 1979 until the eve of the Great Recession, the top one percent of Americans received 36 percent of all gains, while the median income of non-elderly households actually fell. In fact, the top one-tenth of the one percent received more than 20 percent of all after-tax income between 1979 to 2005, compared to 13.5 percent enjoyed by the bottom 60 percent of households. In other words, the total of new income going to roughly 300,000 people was one-and-a-half times the size of the total going to roughly 180 million people.

. . .  

from 1979 to 2007, after-tax income grew by 275 percent for the one percent of the population with the highest income. More startling still, out of this small group of one percent - namely, the richest one-thousandth of the population, or 0.1 percent - it rose by 400 percent.  

. . .  

What is even worse is that the rise of poverty in our country has occurred as corporate CEO compensation ballooned from 24 times the average worker's wages to 300 times that amount. Just six members of the Walton family alone, whose patriarch founded Walmart, now have as much wealth as the bottom 30 percent of the entire U.S. population.

The rest of his column is here.

A "circle of protection"

The United State Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) today reported that, as Congress began working on the FY 2013 budget and spending bills this week, the USCCB wrote several letters that reiterated the bishops’ ongoing call to create a “circle of protection” around poor and vulnerable people and the programs that meet their basic needs and protect their lives and dignity. The bishops’ message calls on Congress and the Administration to protect essential help for poor families and vulnerable children and to oppose measures that reduce resources for essential safety net programs.

The bishops reaffirmed the “moral criteria to guide these difficult budget decisions” outlined in a previous letter:

1. Every budget decision should be assessed by whether it protects or threatens human life and dignity.

2. A central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it affects “the least of these” (Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first.

3. Government and other institutions have a shared responsibility to promote the common good of all, especially ordinary workers and families who struggle to live in dignity in difficult economic times…

Just solutions, however, must require shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and fairly addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs.

You can read more here.

Bishops address human needs in federal budget

Last week, the two U.S. bishops who lead the justice and peace efforts of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), wrote a letter to Congress affirming that the federal budget should affirm human life and dignity, put the needy first, and reflect shared responsibility to promote the common good:

“In the past year, Congress and the Administration have taken significant action to reduce the federal deficit, while attempting to protect programs that serve poor and vulnerable people,” wrote Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton, California, and Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines, Iowa, in a March 6 letter. “Congress will continue to face difficult choices about how to allocate burdens and sacrifices and balance resources and needs. We fear the pressure to cut vital programs that protect the lives and dignity of the poor and vulnerable will increase. As Catholic bishops, we have tried to remind Congress that these choices are economic, political, and moral.”

Bishop Blaire and Bishop Pates chair the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development and the Committee on International Justice and Peace, respectively.

The bishops voiced support for moves to strengthen programs that help the poor and vulnerable, such as Pell Grants and improved workforce training and development. They also opposed moves negatively impacting poor families such as increasing the minimum rent that can be charged to families receiving housing assistance and a proposal to eliminate funding for the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. The bishops also made the case for protecting programs that help the poor internationally.

You can read more here.

Is capitalism at odds with Christian values?

A survey conducted by Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with Religion News Service found that, overall, more Americans believe that Christian values are at odds with capitalism and the free market than believe they are compatible.

Among Christians in the U.S., only 38% believe capitalism and the free market are consistent with Christian values while 46% believe the two are at odds. Religiously unaffiliated Americans look similar to the general population and to Christian Americans, with a plurality (40%) saying capitalism is at odds with Christian values, compared to 32% who say they are compatible; 14% say they do not know.

Other findings:

More than 6-in-10 (62%) Americans believe that one of the biggest problems in this country is that more and more wealth is held by just a few people. About 1-in-4 (24%) say that this is not that big a problem.
. . .
Nearly two-thirds (66%) say that it’s fair for wealthier Americans to pay more taxes than the middle class or those less well off.
. . .
Overall most (61%) Americans disagree that most businesses would act ethically on their own without regulation from the government. Less than 4-in-10 (37%) believe that they would. This holds true across political and religious lines, with the lone exception of those who identify with the Tea Party movement (53% agree).

You can read more here.

Talking about the federal budget

NETWORK, a national Catholic social justice lobby, has an interesting blog here, including this entry titled How to Talk About the Federal Budget. Here is an excerpt:

With the 2010 election, a new wave of fiscally conservative members of Congress have entered Washington, bringing with them a desire to make drastic cuts to programs that help marginalized people. It is important that people of faith respond.

Talking about the budget can seem intimidating. The process of funding the government is complicated, and most people do not have the time or the energy to learn about the intricacies of the tax code or appropriations process. But the good news is: you don’t have to! As people of faith, we believe that our values should frame the debate, and our government should care for the common good.

A moral response to this budget crisis prioritizes programs that provide for those who are poor and vulnerable, because our country’s future is dependent on the posterity of our entire nation, not just the wealthy.

There are two ways to decrease the federal debt: reduce spending and increase revenue. In order to keep our communities strong, we need to do both responsibly.

Over the last ten years, our national debt has doubled due to reckless tax cuts for wealthy Americans and corporations, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As we deal with trillion dollar deficits today, we need solutions that address the problems, not solutions driven by ideology.

Bishop Hubbard on the federal budget

In his monthly column in The Evangelist, Bishop Howard J. Hubbard addresses current budget negotiations in Congress, and discusses them in terms of Catholic social teaching:

Congress is presently negotiating deep spending cuts in the federal government’s fiscal year 2011 budget.

Last week, as chairperson for the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, I and Bishop Stephen Blaire, who chairs the Episcopal Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, visited key members of Congress to express our concerns that the cries of the poor and vulnerable at home and abroad are not being heard.

We realize that times of fiscal restraint demand shared sacrifices. Strategies must be developed to raise adequate revenues, eliminate unnecessary spending, meet defense needs and address the long-term costs of health insurance programs in a fair and just way.

Burden on poor
But the principles of Catholic social teaching insist that cuts be shared so that those who are most vulnerable do not bear the primary burden for reducing the deficit. Indeed, in a time of austerity and fiscal restraint, “the least of these” have a special moral priority.

Unfortunately, in the current debate to date, the poor are being asked to bear a disproportionate share of the proposed cuts. The vast majority of the cuts come from the non-defense, discretionary portion of the budget — only about 12 percent of the total budget — which funds the majority of social welfare, education and other anti-poverty programs at home and abroad.

Fiscal responsibility is important and our current budget deficit must be addressed. However, shared sacrifice should guide budget cuts, not reliance on disproportionate cuts in programs that serve poor persons.

Cruelest cuts
Current proposals fail the moral criteria of Catholic teaching to protect the poor and advance the common good. Some of the largest proposed funding cuts include:

• $1.08 billion from Head Start,

• $800 million from International Food Aid,

• $100 million from Emergency Food and Shelter,

• $2.5 billion from affordable housing,

• $875 million from International Disaster Assistance,

• $1 billion from community health centers,

• $2.3 billion from job training programs and

• $904 million from migrants and refugees.

We are very apprehensive about the reductions contained in the present proposals. There is projected to be only about three percent in overall cuts, but 27 percent in poverty cuts for international assistance.

The rest of this article is here.