Subj : Catholics in Alliance To : ALL From : BOB KLAHN Date : Wed May 25 2011 22:15:04 This is from Catholicsinalliance.org a Catholic organization advocating for the Catholic viewpoint on social justice issues. Even those not Catholic might find value in reading up on the positions of the largest single Church in this country, and the church of the overwhelming majority of Christians in the world. ---------------------------------------------------------------- *The Question of the Ryan Budget and Christian Values* by Scott Lilly, Senior Fellow at the Center of American Progress, former staff director of the House Appropriations Committee, and past executive director of the Joint Economic Committee. A few weeks ago Congressman Paul Ryan wrote the Most Reverend Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, to argue that the budget he had crafted on behalf of House Republicans was consistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church on questions of social justice. "Nothing but hardship and pain can result from putting off the issue of the coming debt crisis. Those who represent the people, including myself, have a moral obligation, implicit in the Church's social teaching, to address difficult basic problems before they explode into social crisis." There is no question that America has a budget problem. We have made some major mistakes since we had four straight years of budget surpluses in 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. Unfortunately, Congressman Ryan was complicit in nearly all of them: the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Act of 2001; the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Act of 2003; the Iraq War; the passage of a major expansion of Medicare structured to make the major pharmaceutical companies the biggest winner and the American taxpayer the biggest loser. Both pieces of tax legislation were advertised to spur growth and create jobs. Instead we had one of the slowest periods of economic expansion and job creation since World War II. The Congressional Budget Office now estimates that the two pieces of tax legislation, and the subsequent legislation that extended them, cost the Treasury $2.8 trillion over the past decade. According to the Congressional Research Service, the decision to fight the Iraq War without paying for it cost more than $800 billion. CBO estimates the Medicare Part D benefit has thus far cost $300 billion. But now we are in a different mode. Ryan and his colleagues have decided that deficits do matter --or at least that is the point he seems to be making in his open letter to the Archbishop. But what is mysteriously absent from that letter to the Archbishop is any in-depth discussion of his tax proposals, which are by far the biggest, and from a budgetary standpoint, the most important part of the proposal. According to Ryan's own analysis of his program (Tables S2 and S4) he shaves nearly $800 billion off the cost of Medicaid over the next 10 years, $30 billion from Medicare, $1.6 trillion off non-security domestic programs such as education, health research, worker safety, and space exploration, but his proposed revenue changes slash taxes nearly $4.2 billion. He not only makes the temporary Bush tax cuts permanent but also drops the top tax rate that the most well-to-do pay from the current 35 percent to only 25 percent. Are these policies consistent with Christian moral values? Should someone dedicated to the teachings of Christ and moral principles contained in the social gospel of the Catholic Church be comfortable with the choices that are made in this budget? I think there is a fairly simple answer to that question. If you believe it is credible that making deep cuts in programs that serve the poor are necessary so that the wealthy in our society can pay less tax -- and that by paying less tax they will create jobs, ultimately helping the poor more than the spending cuts in the Ryan budget will hurt them -- then you should believe that Ryan's proposal is consistent with Christian values. But if you find little factual basis for the presumption that further increasing the share of our nation's wealth held by the top one percent of households will speed job creation then the Ryan proposal is simply not consistent with Christian values. And if you worry that many innocent and needy souls will be trampled by his proposed budget cutbacks in another failed experiment in trickle-down economics, then the Ryan proposal is not just inconsistent with the value inherent in Catholic social justice. It is the antithesis. I think so much attention has been directed at the Medicare proposals that Ryan has put forward that too little attention has been focused on other aspects that will not only change the role of government in this society but will profoundly change the society in which we now live. A good example is the proposal he has put forward for Medicaid. First of all, Ryan would repeal the health care reform legislation signed into last year. That would preclude about 18 million adults and 4 million children from households with too little income to pay insurance premiums from getting Medicaid coverage in 2014 as scheduled under the new health reform legislation. But in addition, Ryan would cap federal Medicaid payments to states to levels well below the expected growth of the program. Using CBO data, I estimate that in order to preserve current levels of service, states will need to come up with $300 billion more in state revenue than they are currently providing. They can slash the payments they make to nursing homes for the elderly and send them back to live with their sons or daughters. They can stop paying the hefty costs associated with the care of severely retarded children, Alzheimer victims and other disabled. Alternatively they can eliminate the coverage they provide to people who are not elderly or disabled -- namely pregnant women, poor children and their mothers. If the states were to choose to do that then they would eliminate about a 1/3 of the cost of the Medicaid program but they would also eliminate 75 percent of the program's beneficiaries. Yet the funding gap for the states created by the Ryan proposal is so huge that elimination of this set of beneficiaries would not entirely close it. The health care provided to pregnant women, poor children and their mothers covers the cost of 40 percent of the deliveries of all babies born in this country. Since the program was adopted in 1965 infant mortality has dropped from nearly 25 percent to slightly above 6 percent. The prenatal care has reduced the number of low-weight babies born and helped bring many tens of thousands of problem pregnancies to term. The jeopardy in which Ryan places such services should bring grave discomfort to anyone professing Christian values. http://www.catholicsinalliance.org/thecommongoodforum.php Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good is a lay Catholic organization that promotes public policies and effective programs that enhance the inherent dignity of all, especially the poor and most vulnerable. Our work is inspired by Gospel values and the rich history of Catholic social teaching as they inform pressing moral issues of our time. We accomplish these goals through public policy analysis and advocacy, strategic media outreach, and engaging citizens in the service of the common good. BOB KLAHN bob.klahn@sev.org http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn .... Don't tell me you are pro-life if you don't support health care for all. --- Via Silver Xpress V4.5/P [Reg] * Origin: Since 1991 And Were Still Here! DOCSPLACE.TZO.COM (1:123/140) .