SNYDER-255x277.jpg "Mary Ann Wyand/The Criterion")
WASHINGTON — Days after legislators hammered out a short-term deal to avert a fiscal crisis, Capitol Hill is already gearing up for the next round of negotiations to address a ballooning U.S public debt now comprising 73% of the nation’s gross domestic product.
Media coverage leading up to the Jan. 1 deal, which raised a modest $620 billion in fresh revenue and made permanent middle-class tax cuts, showcased the competing policy goals and tense relations between the White House and the House Republican leadership. But Catholic institutions also have quietly lobbied for their own budget priorities, defending programs that aid the most vulnerable and opposing proposals to reduce or end tax deductions for charitable donations.
For the most part, last week’s budget deal offered a reprieve to Church groups, but it will likely be short-lived. After the early March deadline for increasing the government’s borrowing limit, legislators will be under pressure to reduce social-entitlement programs and limit discretionary spending. Democrats have signaled that reducing or closing tax deductions and loopholes, including those for charitable donations, will be on the table.
“Right now, I am not concerned about funding issues,” said Father Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities, USA, the national office for 1,700 Catholic Charities agencies and other institutions.
“But we don’t have a good picture for where we will be two months from now. The deal set up five more crises or fights, and we’ll know more after future decisions are made.”
The ongoing battle to reduce the national debt, Father Snyder said, posed a range of challenges for Catholic charities, most of which receive the bulk of their funding from the federal government. While they hope to secure core programs for the needy, they still need backup from charitable donations. But if typical donors simultaneously pay more in taxes, and also lose tax deductions for charitable giving, Catholic social agencies could be hit hard.
“There is a great amount of fear and trepidation from people running programs that have people at their doorstep. They are afraid they will have to scale back, but how do you tell people, ‘We can’t help you anymore?’” said Father Synder.
“Many agencies will have to face these difficult decisions. But we can’t just raise more money — the American people, including Catholics, support organizations like Catholic Charities, but there isn’t a ton of money out there,” he said, a reference to the ongoing impact of the 2008 financial crisis on household income.
“We are entering into a different situation. We are hoping we can continue providing the services,” he said, adding that future hits to individual discretionary spending could also pose problems for Catholic education.
Catholic Hospitals
Daughter of Charity Sister Carol Keehan, the influential president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, a lobby representing 600 Catholic hospitals in the U.S., has already felt the sting of new budgetary realities: The Jan. 1 deal included a $15-billion reduction in federal funds for U.S. hospitals.
Sister Carol told the Register that the cuts in federal reimbursements weren’t entirely unexpected, but she registered concern that additional reductions could affect the standard of care.
Indeed, just as American hospitals prepare to provide care for 30 million more insured patients under the Affordable Care Act, plans must remain flexible, as the hospitals await the outcome of future budget standoffs.
“No one has given us a heads-up, and they can’t. There is intense disagreement in the House. You saw that Speaker [John] Boehner came up with Plan B, and his own members wouldn’t go for it. It’s hard to know what is going to happen,” said Sister Carol.
Tax Hikes
The Jan. 1 deal approved about $620 billion in new high-income revenues primarily by allowing Bush-era tax cuts to expire for individuals making more than $400,000 and couples making more than $450,000.
Further, a temporary two-year reduction in Social Security payroll taxes was allowed to expire, and thus an estimated 77% of Americans will pay more in taxes this year.
Less than a week after he helped broker the budget deal, the Senate's minority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., stressed that the GOP would block efforts to increase taxes without big reductions in spending.
“The tax issue is finished,” McConnell announced on the ABC news program This Week. “Over. Completed. That’s behind us.”
Democrats, meanwhile, are now calling for the reform of the tax code to raise new revenue. McConnell said he would consider such measures only if they were “revenue neutral” — meaning that any additional taxpayer revenues obtained by limiting deductions and closing loopholes must be matched by cuts in overall tax rates.
President Barack Obama, for his part, has said that he is open to increased revenues and spending cuts. However, he has not proposed any spending cuts, and Democrats have generally resisted efforts to reform social entitlements.
With the March deadline for raising the debt ceiling ahead, Democrats have said they will oppose GOP efforts to link negotiations to spending cuts.
“If Congress refuses to give the United States the ability to pay its bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy could be catastrophic,” President Obama said in a Jan. 6 statement.
“Spending cuts must be balanced with more reforms to our tax code,” the president stressed. “The wealthiest individuals and the biggest corporations shouldn’t be able to take advantage of loopholes and deductions that aren’t available to most Americans.”
Bishops’ Conference Perspective
With so much at stake and so much uncertainty, the leaders of Catholic social agencies, hospitals and schools must stay flexible and vigilant in the weeks or months ahead.
But Kathy Saile, director of the office of Domestic Social Development for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, warned that any future reductions in non-military discretionary spending in areas like foreign aid or housing subsidies will have a direct impact on the capacity of Catholic agencies to serve the needy.
“Catholic Relief Services and Catholic Charities help care for the poor, but they do it in partnership with the government,” Saile told the Register
She noted that the conference also opposes proposals that reduce or cap the charitable-giving deduction.
In fact, the Jan. 1 deal has already put a lid on tax deductions for charitable giving by big donors.
“High-income Americans with incomes of more than $1 million may lose up to 80% of their itemized deductions for home mortgage payments, health care, state and local taxes — and charities. Cue the local symphony's development office,” warned a Wall Street Journal editorial last week.
Patrick O’Meara, president of O’Meara Ferguson, Whelan and Conway, a consulting film that advises U.S. dioceses on financial matters and manages big capital campaigns for church organizations, told the Register that the Jan. 1 deal would likely prompt wealthy donors to limit their philanthropy. Going forward, he predicted that church institutions with strong community support could weather future limits on tax-deductable charitable giving by Catholics in other income groups.
For now, President Obama has the wind at his back, and many policy experts believe that GOP legislators will ultimate agree to his demand that they lift the debt ceiling without any preconditions.
James Capretta of the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Institute acknowledges that the budget deal was a short-term win for Obama. But Capretta stressed that the decision to make middle-class-income tax cuts permanent also constrains the president's ability to block future cuts in spending.
“The Democratic Party has come full circle. They vigorously opposed the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, and then they bought into the Bush-era tax policy for the vast majority of Americans,” said Capretta, who served as the associate director at the White House Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004.
“The agreement has permanently cemented the middle-class tax cuts, but the Democrats don’t have any plan to pay for ambitious social programs. Some Democrats wanted the tax cuts to expire, but the president campaigned as the champion of the middle class.”
A Silver Lining?
It will be many months before Catholic leaders who run social agencies and hospitals have enough information to finalize their institutions’ budgets. But there may be a silver lining amid the growing anxiety about future spending cuts.
Father Synder suggests, for example, that the budgetary challenges would continue to foster reforms and innovation in programs administered by Catholic social agencies.
“Since 2008-2009, when the fiscal crisis first hit, people have been very serious about finding ways to manage with less resources or access different resources — instead of donations, maybe more volunteer time, for example,” he said. “We encourage folks to look at the work they are doing and ask, ‘Can we do it smarter?’ You might have a program you really like, but how effective is it?”
Added the Catholic Charities USA president, “We are encouraging people who now get assistance to help use the skills they have to become more self-sufficient.”
Joan Frawley Desmond is the Register’s senior editor.
Matthew Warner: Ask Fr. Barron: What gives you hope for future of the Church?
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Fr. Larry Snyder and Sister Carol Keehan - two Obama supporters and our heroes!
Sr Carol and Father Larry, repeat after me: S-U-B-S-I-D-I-A-R-I-T-Y
If you say it enough times, it will begin to sink in.
We are not admitting that core Catholics were just championing Paul Ryan for months…who was intent on cutting Medicaid radically ( nearly $800 billion in ten years) while not touching military money. That was done by Catholics because he would oppose Obama’s concept of religious freedom of employers vis a vis insurance mandates. Freedom of religion was more important than questions of helping the poor which we said private charity could do although even the Vatican’s total savings of one billion dollars could not pay one full day of medicaid bills which are over $400 billion a year.
Let’s not go back to imaging ourselves as for the poor first. We are for religious freedom first and the poor second…hopefully. In the real world of only two candidates, we chose what we could and made up a fantasy of private charity to cover the poor even though no parish could support several of their elderly in a medical nursing home at $70K a year per person without Medicaid and Medicare. Catholic nursing homes get 60% of their income from Medicaid and Catholic neonatal hospital units get 37% of their income from Medicaid. Paul Ryan wants large cuts in Medicaid. Stay truthful. We have a preferential option not for the poor but for religious freedom….because we can’t find a politician who is really for both simultaneously. When he or she appears, they will be vicious against the misuse of Medicaid but they will be zealous that no really poor person will be hurt.
they are not averting a fiscal crisis, they are engineering one. Get ready for the it to hit the fan. there is nothing going on in this country, on any scale, that will counter the momentum of the secular occult state. the policies that lead to open, public genocide in europe, eastern europe, and asia in the last century are to same policies that we are witnessing today, here, now. Unless we all get real catholic, real quick, you can count on whole sale slaugther and starvation. Get ready.
Sister Carol Keehan has a salary of 962K per year. She sided with the incumbent as someone who ws better equipped to handle the needs of the poor. The problem is that he is an economic terrorist and monetary psychopath. The Republicans are the capitalists and linked with Protestantism. Those are the real targets of the socialist Catholic agenda which dovetails nicely in a lot of areas with the newly elected Washingtonian. Of just such belief did the Austrian people vote 98% for consolidation with Nazi Germany with the active support of the hierarchy.
Interesting article. It reads like a bunch of Obama voters running around like Keystone Cops yelling, “What’ll I do?” You Bishops were accomplices to the problems we are now experiencing. You supported the socialist spending which bankrupted our nation. Now that we are broke there is “No Money”. The number of the “Rich” is 1/2 of what it was 10 years ago. The Golden Goose is dead.
Lets get back to preaching about sin. Most of the “poor” I care for have brought about their own problems by having sex outside of marriage with a lot of different folk, by doing drugs, by smoking (costs a lot of money to smoke…where do they get it?) drinking, buying fast food instead of purchasing wisely and cooking themselves, wasting money on gambling…you get the idea. Lets see some down to earth education by the clergy on why the above should not be indulged in. Then I wouldn’t have to pay so many taxes, maybe could even hire someone to make new curtains for my home, and that someone would pay someone else for services and ultimately more rather than less money would be garnered by the government. And I will continue to work 60+ hours a week so I can help my large personal family, including helping to pay for the Catholic education of many grandchildren.And I could donate more to charity as well.
Catholic social agencies should not have their hands out for government money. That they do means that they are part of America’s financial problem.
And besides, such money is corruption—but hey, it provides JOBS for the professional do-gooding class.
Maybe if some of these Catholic organizations would stay true to Catholic teaching, some Catholics would be inspired to give more. I know I would. I’m always reading from Catholic watchdogs groups how some of these organizations fund programs that support abortion. I don’t give to CCHD or Catholic Relief Services. I prefer to directly give to my local maternity shelter and other organizations that I know feed the poor but use no government handouts. No wonder the government is into the Church’s business. And I hope these Catholic leaders don’t expect the debt ceiling to be raised. I don’t understand how anyone would want the debt ceiling to be raised. It’s like if I owed $10000 to my Visa and I decided to ask for another $10000 every year. That is not good stewardship.
In my senior years, now, I am dealing with economic and life care issues I never anticipated - housing, health care, and a job. All three of those areas have been seriously changed for the worse due to the bishops political support for programs they know nothing about. The bishops’ blind ignorance in those affairs is due to their only concern for how it will affect their social programs and the poor. They don’t give a hoot for the rest of us. (Where in the bible did Jesus teach that his followers should go get governments to take care of the poor?) The U.S. bishops lobbied for the Community Reinvestment Act which created the housing and mortgage collapse which caused the economy to collapse which created the worst unemployment in the country since the Great Depression. And making matters worse, and perhaps permanent, they failed in their primary responsibility of instilling in Catholics fundamental beliefs that would lead them to have properly formed consciences which would enable them to make morally sound decisions. How could any Catholic who professes to believe the tenets necessary to be called a Christian, and who prays the Lord’s Prayer, give their name identification and support to a worldly, political body that is diabolically opposed to what they profess to believe and pray for? At least 50 percent or more of Catholics, including the clergy, who are registered to vote, give their support to the pro-abortion, pro-gay “marriage,” pro-covet they neighbors’ property - party, that now is attacking the Catholic Church directly – the despicable Democrat Party.
The Democrat Party is responsible for the Community Reinvestment Act which under Democrat governmental pressure forced the mortgage industry to give loans for houses to people who could not afford to pay the mortgages. The result, my home value which was going to be my nest egg in retirement dropped 45%. The Democrat Party is responsible for Obamacare which makes my healthcare, which in the past has saved my life and improved the quality of it, questionable at best and none existent at worst. The Democrat Party is responsible for destroying the job growth in the country by outright denial of private sector jobs such as the Keystone Pipeline, and denying manufacturing companies from hiring employees to open new plants they built because of union opposition. The Democrat Party wants to raise the taxes on the largest employment sector, the small business person, who provide about 75% of all employment, taking money away from them and killing expansion. The USCCB is in support of all of what the Democrat Party does in these areas with their support for unions and taxes to pay for the welfare society the Democrat Party is building. But worst of all, the Catholic bishops concern for so called social justice has instilled in the faithful that the Democrat Party is the moral party. Yet, it is the Democrat Party that is responsible for the murder of 55,000,000 unborn babies who Catholics profess to believe are created by God; a God they pray to for his “will be done on earth.” Do Catholics think it is his will to create life for it to be aborted? The worst thing that has happened to the Catholic Church has been the formation of the USCCB and collegiality. Bring back the individuality of each bishop of not that long ago, who if a movie theater showed a film that was immoral, the manager would get a call from the bishop’s office, and the manager would promise not to show such films again.
“The ongoing battle to reduce the national debt, Father Snyder said, posed a range of challenges for Catholic charities, most of which receive the bulk of their funding from the federal government.”
The preceding sentence encapsulates the root cause of all the problems that the Church has with the government. Although well intentioned, the funding for the corporal works of mercy was outsourced to the government while the Church retained disbursement, staffing and management oversight plus provided political support/contributions/voters for said government policies and politicians (90%+Democrat). This really ramped up after Vatican2 and the hijacking of “social justice” and the catch all phrase/excuse to justify everything…aka…“in the spirit of Vatican 2”. This only works as long as the government is “benign”...which is an oxymoron. It is the classic mistake of not following your own teaching. So much for subsidiarity. It is the golden rule alright..with the secular twist…“He who has the gold makes the rules”. The chickens are literally coming home to roost….not only for the Church but for the Country as well. This is only the beginning of a downward spiral driven by simple MATH. All you have to know is that after 4 years of BHO, 50% of “Catholics” still voted for his re-election. If ya think the government funding for Catholic Charities et al does not impact/cause the overall timid response(s) by Catholic Bishops (in general)to the moral & political collapse in this country then please send me an email. I have some lovely bridges for sale with very favorable financing with your choice of location and color.
The Obama administration has proven to be the greatest anti Christian administration of our Republic. His spending and the resulting Obama debt is causing great danger to the financial future of America. The middle class is the most hard hit. He has created poverty instead of prosperity. One in four American children are now on food stamps. There is no kind of abortion he does not favor with expansion. Obama’s Marxist background does not bode well for the middle class he purports to be helping. The most amazing fact of his reelection is that 54% of catholic voters voted for Obama. If Catholic voters, alone, would have voted for their Church instead of Obama, he would not be president.
Marvin Fox
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