WASHINGTON — Catholic leaders are concerned that government programs that help the poor and vulnerable will be compromised if the White House and Congress cannot reach a deal to avert sweeping across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration.
“I think our concern is that any cuts that are made not be done on the backs of the poor,” said Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton, Calif., chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.
Bishop Blaire told the Register this week that while some anti-poverty programs will be spared — such as food stamps and Medicaid — others will probably not. He called upon President Barack Obama and congressional leaders to protect the poor.
“A budget always involves moral choices,” Bishop Blaire said. “We want to again lift up the importance of working to end poverty and hunger in our nation.”
Set to take effect today, unless the president and Congress reach an agreement, the sequestration is a round of automatic, across-the-board, indiscriminate spending cuts that total $85 billion this fiscal year and $1.2 trillion over the next decade.
The $1.2 trillion would be evenly split between the defense budget and non-defense discretionary spending, which includes federal block aid grants to states and local communities to help pay for teachers, long-term unemployment, drug enforcement, Head Start, Meals on Wheels and other domestic programs. Mandatory spending on Social Security and Medicare is not affected.
Low-income families could be losing valuable assistance in the form of rental housing vouchers and the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, said Kathy Saile, director of the USCCB’s Office of Domestic Social Development.
“A lot of these programs are an integral part of the safety net that is helping people in poverty or helping to keep families from falling into poverty,” Saile told the Register, adding that several Catholic charity and aid programs will be affected.
“As we try to do deficit reduction and strike federal-budget deals, we should do so in a way that protects poor and vulnerable people, that doesn’t hurt them and doesn’t cause more poverty,” Saile said.
Catholic Charities USA’s Feb. 25 "Washington Weekly" newsletter said its agencies and the people served by them would be affected by sequestration. Catholic Charities USA said its senior lobbyists have spent the last two months meeting with almost every newly elected member of Congress and that they will continue to meet with lawmakers to encourage them to prevent the vulnerable from being harmed by indiscriminate spending cuts.
The sequestration was not supposed to really happen. It was written into law during a round of failed deficit-reduction budget talks in 2011; the idea being that the cuts were so politically unpalatable that they would force politicians to compromise on deficit reduction.
New Deadline Ahead
As of this morning, that compromise has not materialized. Yesterday, Congress abandoned efforts to avert the sequestration and left Washington for the weekend. Obama was set to meet later in the day with congressional leaders at the White House, but political analysts did not hold out much hope for a last-minute deal.
Congressional leaders seemed to be shifting their attentions to the next fiscal deadline, March 27, which is when the current deal authorizing government spending expires. Saile said Congress may be looking to leverage sequestration and the March 27 deadline together in an effort to hammer out a long-term deal.
“So, in some sense, we still have another 30 days or so,” Saile said.
The political scene in the days leading up to the March 1 sequester deadline was marred by partisan gridlock. The Obama administration held campaign-style events warning of catastrophe unless congressional Republicans agreed to a deal that replaced spending cuts with new tax revenue, which Republican lawmakers — after already agreeing earlier this year to allow the Bush-era tax cuts to expire for wealthy Americans — were loathe to do.
Republicans accused Obama of peddling doomsday scenarios — including a questionable claim that 40,000 teachers would be laid off — and trying to scare Americans by overstating the effects of the spending cuts.
Catholic Republicans
Despite the apocalyptic descriptions, Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., a pro-life Catholic, said during a Senate Budget Committee hearing on Feb. 26 that sequestration is “really small” in the context of total government spending and the overall economy.
“The federal government has doubled its spending in the last 10 years, and we’re talking a 2 1/2% reduction in spending from the 100% growth; and, by the way, that’s budget authority. The actual outlays for this year are about 1 1/4%. That’s one-quarter of 1% of GDP. This is not some sort of severe austerity plan,” said Toomey, who also proposed a bill to give the president more flexibility in deciding where to cut spending, rather than the indiscriminate cuts set to take effect.
While saying that he never liked the sequester idea, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., also a pro-life Catholic, said Obama was presenting the American people with the false choice between big government and people having to wait longer in airports, losing medical assistance and being turned away from educational services.
“Government is too big and destined for bankruptcy because of our long-term obligations in our entitlement programs, particularly Medicare and Social Security,” Rubio said in prepared remarks. “While the sequester is the topic of the day, the reality is that if we do nothing to save Medicare and Social Security for younger people like me who are decades away from retirement, the sequester will seem like child’s play in comparison to what will happen when these two vital programs go broke.”
Re-establishing fiscal discipline and welfare reform are necessary components to securing the common good, a key principle in Catholic social teaching, said Samuel Gregg, author of the new book Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture and How America Can Avoid a European Future.
Gregg, director of research for the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, told the Register that there is room for prudential judgment among Catholics when it comes to budget cuts and that cutting welfare programs is not necessarily unthinkable from a Catholic perspective.
“There is no reason to maintain welfare programs that are, for example, inefficient or ineffective,” said Gregg, who added that government-assistance programs should not be permanent features of the economic landscape. Wealth generation, he said, is more effective at lifting people out of poverty and making them self-sufficient.
“Another thing to consider is that, when it comes to thinking about something like a budget, a government budget, the criteria we are looking at are not simply the interests of the poor,” Gregg said. “Those are, of course, accorded a certain priority, but the overall good is the promotion of the common good, and that includes and goes beyond the well-being of the poor.”
Gregg added that, while government has a role to assist those in need, it should not be supplanting the role of organizations in civil society in carrying out those responsibilities.
“Solidarity doesn’t necessarily equate to excessive government spending,” Gregg said.
‘Circle of Protection’
Other Catholics believe much more strongly in the role of government in protecting the needy.
Saile said government-assistance programs such as food stamps and the earned-income tax credit go to working families.
“Catholic teaching supports the role of government in securing the common good, which includes helping poor and vulnerable people,” Saile said.
Bishops Blaire, Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines, Iowa, and Bishop Dennis Madden, auxiliary bishop of Baltimore, signed a letter Feb. 25 from the Circle of Protection ecumenical coalition to urge Republicans and Democrats to shield anti-poverty programs from sequestration. The letter was also signed by Carolyn Woo, president of Catholic Relief Services; Father President Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA; Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association; and James Ennis, executive director of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference.
“The letter pretty well states that we all agree in terms of not balancing budgets on the backs of the poor,” Bishop Blaire said. “We would like to see Congress break away from the brinkmanship and have a more cooperative effort in addressing fiscal issues.”
Register correspondent Brian Fraga writes from Fall River, Massachusetts.
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I wish the bishops would stay out of this. The government will reduce the rate of increase of federal spending by 2 percent, that’s all. Even if these cuts are implemented, the federal government will spend more this year than it did last year. I wish people would stop listening to the media and their agenda. Something has to be done about this debt. The bishops should focus on the problems in the culture and encourage catholics to give more to charity out of their pocket.
I’m really tired of hearing bishops, cardinals, Catholic charity providers, and other prominent Catholics, who sound like outright Communists. I especially cannot stand how they use term Catholic “social teaching” as some nebulous catch-all to support government intervention, government welfare, government medicine, excessive spending, higher taxes, and monetary corruption.
Caterwauling about [incredibly MILD] spending cuts in the US federal government [which is fast becoming a completely evil institution], is not motivated by Catholic “social teaching” in the true sense of the term; it is motivated by Collectivist hogwash which the Church needs to purge.
Here is some Catholic “social teaching” on this point, from the Catechism:
1883: Socialization also presents dangers. EXCESSIVE INTERVENTION BY THE STATE CAN THREATEN PERSONAL FREEDOM AND INITIATIVE. The TEACHING OF THE CHURCH has elaborated the principle of SUBSIDIARITY, according to which “a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co- ordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.” [emphases added]
1885: The principle of SUBSIDIARITY is OPPOSED to ALL FORMS of COLLECTIVISM. It sets LIMITS FOR STATE INTERVENTION. It aims at harmonizing the relationships between individuals and societies. It tends toward the establishment of true international order. [emphases added]
I don’t read any warnings in there against government spending cuts, or how we need to be cautious about debt/deficit control on the “backs” of the poor. Nor are there suggestions that the Church defer to taxation, monetary corruption, and government welfarism to protect the poor and needy.
Then there are the express Biblical, and Gospel references to the virtue and necessity of work and initiative; how the poor will always be among us; how one does not live on bread alone; and about the virtue of love and charity [no reference that charity should be coerced by the IRS, and distributed by Caesar, according Caesar’s instruction].
Saint Paul did not form a political action group to lobby Rome for more bread.
When will the Catholic Church stop being dependent upon the government and be dependent upon God?
Thank you Rob C. I’m somewhat relieved that I’m not the only confused person regarding the Church and government.
Charity comes from our heart, it is a choice.
Taxation by the government is not a choice. I’ve seen many government programs up close and most have been wasteful of tax dollars, corrupted by administrators and other irrelevant peripheries.
Please study the virtues and subsidiarity.
Thanks be to God!
This prez does not care about what state the country is in. For him it’s either “my way or the highway”. He will not work w/congress for a compromise, so all pay for his inadequacy. So be it for good leadership. We should have elected Romney and this would have never happened.
They teach but they do not learn.
Why does Bishop Blaire want the State to continue piling up a massive debt on the backs of the poor children, grandchildren and great grandchildren?
Don’t “pile on”... like more debt for their children?
The sequester is a long needed 85 billion dollar haircut. Does this little office of the USCCB realize that we BORROW 125 BILLION per MONTH??
One office or committee or even a collection of them doesn’t speak for the entire Conference. Such letters and statements carry no binding authority, whatsoever.
Why isn’t the USCCB more vocal about the injustice of debt being piled on the next 3 generations of unborn? Where’s justice for them? If we really cared for the unborn, we’d see more from the USCCB on fiscal responsibility.
Here’s something to think about:
On State Culpability for Social Problems
by Anthony Esolen
In Philadelphia, about half of all students in ninth grade will graduate from high school. The dropout rate is especially high among black and Hispanic boys. President Obama’s answer to this problem is typical of the left: compulsion. Make dropping out illegal. In other words, force boys who are learning nothing to remain where they are learning nothing, to help make sure that nobody else learns anything, either. If they drop out anyway, turn them into criminals to be rounded up.
All this would cost a great deal of money, which Philadelphia does not have. And even if you could compel the boy, seething with resentment and contempt, to occupy a desk in a dreary schoolroom, you cannot compel him to learn. To try is a distant, “technological” response to a human problem. It is a way to pretend to generosity, while keeping those who suffer from your heedlessness far from your sight and smell.
Philadelphia has been engaging in a years-long lawsuit, at great expense, to force the Boy Scouts from their headquarters, which they occupy rent-free. Why no rent? Well, back in 1929, the year of the stock market collapse, the city fathers invited the Boy Scouts to occupy land on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Back then, the city fathers actually cared for the well-being of boys.
So the Scouts agreed. They built the building themselves. They then graciously turned ownership over to the city, with the understanding that they might use the building without paying rent. They, not the city, have assumed all the costs of maintenance ever since. It has not cost the city a penny. The Boy Scouts, in other words, did the city a tremendous favor, and are now rewarded for it with contempt.
Why the animus against the Boy Scouts? Because Copernicus was wrong. The world does not revolve around the sun. The world revolves around the predilections of upper- and middle-class feminists and their satellites.
The Boy Scouts retain the commonsense notion that it is not wise to bring boys into close quarters with men who are sexually attracted to boys, regardless of whether they act on those attractions. They retain the commonsense notion that if it were widely known that such men were scoutmasters, the boys would check out. They retain the commonsense notion that boys need fathers, who will teach them to be good men, ready to be fathers of their own families.
But the Philadelphia city council does not care about such things, because, when called upon to choose between their sexual antinomianism and the welfare of boys—many of whom only a group like the Boy Scouts can save from gangs—they will choose their preferred form of lawlessness every time, without regard for the common good.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone, because for the last fifty years, even before Lyndon Johnson’s disastrous War on Poverty, technocratic managers, mainly but not exclusively on the left, have been building a system of mutual parasitism, funded by taxes.
One group profits, in power, from the profligacy of the other, which it “rewards” with money confiscated from the general public. They thus gain millions of publicly funded jobs to manage the people whom their policies have corrupted, and they move far away from those people, assuaging their consciences by voting correctly and holding correct opinions. Their hands do not get dirty.
What, on the dreadful day of doom, will that boy in Philadelphia say to the rich who have ignored him, or worse, who have profited by his confusion?
“I needed a good school, and you trapped me in a bad one, while you sent your own children elsewhere. When some people suggested a way for me to go to a Catholic school where I’d have a chance of learning something, you cried up the separation of church and state. You didn’t actually believe that you would be setting up any church as a state institution. It is just that you hated the Church a lot more than you loved me.
“I once lived in a real city neighborhood. The houses needed repair, so you called it a slum, and you tore it down. Then you built housing projects with all the beauty and safety of a parking garage. When these became hotbeds of crime, you tore them down too.
“You declared a War on Poverty, aimed at me, when you should have declared a War on Vice, aimed first of all at yourselves.
“You loved your vice more than you loved me. You could afford your vices, but I could not. Your vices made your lives, as you thought, more exciting. I did not have your cushion of wealth, so the same vices destroyed me.
“I was lonely, and you bought me a !@#$%. My sisters were lonely, and you made them into !@#$%.
“I needed the Church, desperately, because when a man is poor, he must face his helplessness every day. But the Church would restrain you, so, at every chance you had, you derided religious faith, and thus you snatched from me my most loyal friend.
“I had no job, and you overtaxed the man who might have given me one. Then you gave the job to someone on the other side of the world, or you winked while men left their families thousands of miles away, crossing the border to work at low wages, and you yourselves hired them, and ducked the taxes that you yourselves established. In this way you managed to do mayhem to two families at once.
“I was in prison, and needed to learn a trade, but you teamed up with union bosses to make sure I would not. You gave me dull and useless classes in communication, and television.
“I was clothed with the remnants of modesty and decency, and you stripped them from me. You praised bad men who celebrated violence in their ‘music,’ and hugged yourselves for your tolerance.
“My forebears lived on a farm, but your collusion with big business made it impossible for them to continue, not to mention your taxes on our land and our inheritances. When we moved to the cities, you moved away.
“I needed to learn to calculate, and you handed me a machine that would do it for me, and prevent me from understanding what I was doing. I needed to learn to read, and would have liked adventure tales for boys, but you gave me feminist propaganda, or comic books.
“I needed a father, but you preferred your fun. You passed laws that would reward my mother for not marrying my father. You hated marriage, because marriage brings a man into a family, and marriage restrains. You winked and smiled while my mother brought a series of irresponsible men into my life, none of whom was my father. They were dangerous. When they grew violent, you herded them into your corral, which you called ‘Domestic Violence.’ You refused to distinguish between husbands and these others. Thus did you continue to tear marriage down, and subject me and mine to more of the violence you pretended to decry.
“I needed a father, and you gave me the gang leader selling crack cocaine.
“I needed a father, and you laughed and told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. Then you gave me a prison trusty.
“I needed a coach, to keep me in line during the difficult years, but you cut my teams and rosters. You called it ‘fairness’ to my sisters, and hugged yourselves for your enlightenment.
“I used to have a YMCA, but you turned it into a day-care center for people like you.
“I needed a father to show me how to love women, and you gave me porn.
“I once had virtue, the poor man’s heritage, but you trained me in vice.
“I needed a mother, and you, having taken my father away, did your best to take my mother away also. You had your work as doctors and lawyers, but my mother worked as a cleaning woman in one of your office buildings. When I grew overweight from the junk you made, because she wasn’t around to cook, you declared a War on Obesity, and profited by it.
“I needed a father, I always needed a father, and you turned your back on me, and told me what you knew was a lie, that a mother or two mothers or a mother and a boyfriend would do just as well. When it didn’t work out, you blamed everything but your own selfishness.
“I needed a father, and you were too busy with your sexual innovations to notice it.
“I needed a married mother and father, what every child needs, what every child has a right to, and you told me to go to hell.
“I went to hell, and have brought it back with me.”
Editor’s note: This article first appeared February 8, 2013 on Public Discourse, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute
I don’t believe our Bishops should be over involved on deciding charity budgets for the poor. We have 26% Catholic representation in both houes of Congress who should apply Christian beliefs by their votes for or against legislation in establishing such budgets. I do favor contributing to the needy in the most generous way possible. However I think our Bishops should get very involved in examining a comment made by the Finance Minister of Japan last week, and react accordingly. In paraphrase he said the elderly and tube people should hurry up and die to release valuable resources needed by the government. Euthenasia will be on the table when our government tries to divide up scarce funds for social welfare. Medicare elders who contributed for 35 years for their old age hospital expenses will face the decision of the board of 15 bureaucrats appointed by Washington to determine which medicines and care will be withheld when they approach death. 750 billion dollars has been already transferred from Medicare to finance new low income people joining Obama care. If we tolerate killing babies in the womb we are not far away from killing seniors for financial reasons. While social behavior is important, here is an opportunity for our Bishops to focus on reacting to intrinsically evil behavior that seems to becoming
mainstream in some areas but neglected by the Church.
Like Pilate washing his hands of the Precious Blood of our Saviour, the bishops supporting government programs “to end poverty and hunger in our nation” are simply attempting to transfer their (and our) responsibility to minister to the needs of the poor onto the government.
The result is obvious to any who have lived or worked in the slums and ghettos that government dependence have spawned. Such programs are not ending poverty or hunger, rather they are perpetuating it while destroying lives in myriad ways and across multiple generations.
Conveniently enough, these bishops have no children of their own who will one day be burdened by the debt this disastrous generation is accumulating.
It is also curious that these ‘socially conscious’ bishops are snuggling in bed (metaphorically speaking) with the selfsame government attacking Catholic values across the board.
How about sticking to faith, morals, and liturgy and staying out of fiscal matters?
It is our responsibility as indivduals to help the poor per Church teaching of “SUBSIDIARITY”- CCC: 1883, 1885, 1894, 2209. The Federal Government is the very last resort after individuals, neighborhhoods, communities, local government, then state government in that order. Those who want the Federal Government to do everything are Socialists or Communists.
People and Governments must pay their debts per Church teaching of “COMMUTATIVE JUSTICE” - CCC: 2411, “..without which no other form of justice is possible”.
QUOTE: CCC ” 2411 Contracts are subject to commutative justice which regulates exchanges between persons and between institutions in accordance with a strict respect for their rights.
Commutative justice obliges strictly; it requires safeguarding property rights, paying debts, and fulfilling obligations freely contracted.
Without commutative justice, no other form of justice is possible.
One distinguishes commutative justice from legal justice which concerns what the citizen owes in fairness to the community, and from distributive justice which regulates what the community owes its citizens in proportion to their contributions and needs. ” UNQUOTE
The US Federal Government is over $16.6 TRILLION dollars in debt. And the US is no longer a prosperous nation.
When politically liberal Bishops like Blaire put forth their own political views as teaching of the Church, rather than the teaching of the Church as stated in the CCC in entirety - they cause scandal and confusion.
Bishop Blaire needs to take care of his own responsibilites and unresolved problems within his own Diocese of Stockton and his own State of California.
Blaire should not deviate from the CCC even within his own Diocese.
Did you ever wonder why many US Bishops refuse to encourage all literate Catholics over age 16 to read the “Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition” ?
Read your CCC from the Magisterium so you will know the truth of what the really Church teaches.
Bishops Conferences (USCCB or State) are NOT the Magisterium of the Church.
When any conference deviates from Church teaching which must be taken in ENTIRETY- no Catholic is required to pay any attention to them. Conferences then become detrimental to the Church, by twisting Church teaching for uncatechised Catholics and non-Catholics as well. They also harm the entire Conference because people will ignore or defy them when they actually do teach in accordance with the Church.
QUOTE: ” We must not forget the episcopal conferences have no theological basis, they do not belong to the structure of the Church, as willed by Christ, that cannot be eliminated; they have only a practical, concrete function”. UNQUOTE - Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict) in the “Ratzinger Report” pg 59.
QUOTE: “No episcopal conference, as such, has a teaching mission; its documents have no weight of their own save that of the consent given to them by individual Bishops”, UNQUOTE - Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict) in the “Ratzinger Report” pg 60.
Also see Code of Canon Law 455 #4 & 1; Canon 753.
It is indeed unfortunate that parishes are assessed through their Diocese into forced payment for the political action of Conferences when that is not the role of Bishops but that of the Laity - CCC 898.
Bishops do your own job of teaching according to the CCC within your own Diocese. Enforce and adhere to the Code of Canon Law 915 to stop Sacrilege against the “Real Presence”; and enforce Canon 1399 & 1 Cor 5:11-13 to teach and stop relativism, secularism, heresy, schism, scandal and confusion within your own Diocese.
Jesus said, “Go and teach you all Nations.
The Catholic Church does NOT need federal monies for charity. The less, the better.
The people are called to the Corporal Works of Mercy.
Jesus also said, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”
Economic programs are not a part of the Bishop’s role: “To TEACH”.....
How about this, the Church and it’s members take care of the poor instead of relying on the corrupt and inept goverment. The moment we dump our responsibilities on the government is the moment we relinquish our freedom to serve God by serving others.
Does Catholic social teaching require that we place the needs of the poor at the top of budget priorities? Does this mean that we must fund remedial programs to help students falling behind at the expense of AP classes as Gov. Brown’s budget in California proposes? Then what happens to the top California students who are beat out in the high tech job market and college placement by foreigners? Does it mean we cut payments to doctors, firefighters and police if necessary to preserve the social safety net? Then what incentives will exist for the next generation to take out the loans necessary to go through medical school, or to risk putting their life on the line to protect others?
Do these bishops remember what it was like in the Soviet state, which professed it existed for the common good, did for the poor and the working class? Increased government involvement in caring for the people is never a good idea.
Let’s concentrate on what we as Catholics can do to directly help those in need.
Actually, I think it is immoral to pile massive debt onto the backs of the poor children, grandchildren and grate grandchildren for generations to come.
Bishop Blaire needs to read a book title “LIBERALISM IS A SIN” printed in 1886, written by Fr. Felix Sarda Y Salvany. Fr. Salvany displays more common sense and understanding of Catholicism in this delightful little book than Bishop Blaire has acquired in his whole life. Indeed, in light of this books prescience and relevance to todays events, the question one must ask is: How is it that Fr. Blaire became a “Bishop” of the Roman Catholic Church who actually doesn’t seem to understand this Country, in my opinion, is under communist control and no longer a free state? Why doesn’t he know his Country is led, in my opinion, by an illegal alien muslim dictator who was, in my opinion, installed by fiat in a communist coup? Where is his outrage at that, and why is he blind to it, or even, it seems, the suggestion of such a possibility?
One can only pray our next Pope purges these Progressive Social Justice leftovers of Vatican II from their positions of Influence and power! Benedict XVI is doing everything in his power to reclaim our beloved “Church”!
Pray for him!
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