The U.S. Bishops had a busy day. In addition to the announcement regarding the CDF's plan for the reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and encouraging the United States to end the embargo and normalize relations with Cuba, the bishops endured a return scolding from House Speaker John Boehner. A series of letters the bishops released yesterday criticized plans for budget cutting that relied too heavily on reductions in social needs spending as Congress began working on the FY 2013 budget and spending bills this week.
Boehner responded quickly. “I want them to take a bigger look,” he said at a Wednesday press conference. “And the bigger look is, if we don't make decisions, these programs won't exist, and then they'll really have something to worry about.... There won't be these programs, and I don't know how often some of us have to talk about the fact that you can't spend $1.3 trillion more than what you bring in — that's what's going to happen this year, $5 trillion worth of debt over the last five years — and think that this can continue,” Boehner said. “When you look at the fact that we have to make hard decisions, it's about trying to make sure that we're able to preserve these programs that are critically important for the poorest in our society.”
The bishops have suggested that truly hard decisions include reassessing defense spending and seeking new federal tax revenue before cutting social spending like school lunches and food stamps. The bishops yesterday reiterated a call to "create a 'circle of protection' around poor and vulnerable people and programs that meet their basic needs and protect their lives and dignity." In a volley of letters to Congress, Bishops Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, California, and Richard E. Pates of Des Moines, Iowa, chairmen of the Committees on Domestic Justice and Human Development and International Justice and Peace, respectively, urged Congress to resist proposed cuts in hunger and nutrition programs at home and abroad saying that “a just spending bill cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor and vulnerable persons.”
On April 4, Bishop Blaire cautioned that “at a time when the need for assistance from [affordable housing] programs is growing, cutting funds for them could cause thousands of individuals and families to lose their housing and worsen the hardship of thousands more in need of affordable housing.”
The bishops called for "just solutions" that "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."
In April 16 and April 17 letters to the House Agriculture Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee addressing cuts required by the budget resolution, Bishop Blaire said “The House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria.” Bishop Blaire also wrote that cuts to nutrition programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP- food stamps) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC) will hurt hungry children, poor families, low-income workers and other vulnerable people. Additionally, he wrote that if cuts to the federal budget need to be made, savings should first be found in programs that target more affluent and powerful interests.
Bishops Blaire and Pates reaffirmed the “moral criteria to guide these difficult budget decisions” outlined in a previous letter on budget priorities on March 6 budget:
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.
The shared sacrifice approach recommended by the Bishops is not technically viable and fails to address the need to stop the accumualtion of debt and debt reduction. Without debt reduction the United States will fall into a debt trap like the six nations of western Europe who in the last two years are no longer able to finance themselve without large bailouts from other nations of the Euro-zone. In return these bailed out nations must drastically cut all governmednt payments across the board at a 30% to 50% level impacting salaries, pensions and all social assistance programs, an extremely painfail and difficult process that could politcally desatbilize these nations. These cutbacks will continue indefinately likely taking more than a decade until the size of their national debt is reduced relative to the size of their economy. This debt trap of too much national debt must be avoided by the United States by reducing government spending that makes a national debt larger than an entire national economy. At this scale it is not possible to tax your way out of indebtness since the debt is more massive than the entire economy and further interest on the massive debt must be paid to remain solvent.
The Bishops need to update their thinking to recognize the dire economic hazard and impact of the out-of-control national debt accumulation that is unsustainable.
The Child Tax Credit provides a maximum of $1000, children under 18 are about a quarter of a population of about 300 million. If every child under 18 was eligible for the CTC (They're not. Eligibility is phased out above a family income of $55K to zero above $130K.) canceling it would save about $75 billion, another 5-6% of the deficit.
These are laws which provide necessities of life for millions of American children. Even completely abolishing them would make a barely perceptible reduction in the deficit. This is not a "dire economic hazard" or a "difficult budget decision."