In the recently published collection of excerpts from William Sloane Coffin's
speeches and sermons - Credo - appears this gem: "When the rich take
from the poor, it's called an economic plan. When the poor take from the rich,
it's called class warfare. It must be wonderful for President Bush to deplore
class warfare while making sure his class wins."
The administration's 2005 federal budget amply illustrates Bill Coffin's point.
As The Wall Street Journal put it, "The budget reflects the president's
top political priorities - taxes and security - at the expense of other domestic
programs."
Once again, the highest priority is more tax cuts for the wealthy, which have
become the centerpiece of the Bush domestic policy. The budget proposes to make
permanent the tax cuts from 2001 and 2003 that benefit high-income people, while
not extending tax breaks for middle-income families. The second priority is further
huge increases for the military and fighting terrorism. The budget proposes a
7 percent increase for military spending and a 10 percent increase for the Department
of Homeland Security. And all that's before returning in the fall for what the
administration admits will likely be as much as $50 billion in additional funding
for the continuing occupation of Iraq.
And what of domestic priorities - especially the vast array of programs that
benefit poor and working families? According to The New York Times, the
budget calls for the elimination of 65 programs and cuts in 63 more. Those to
be eliminated altogether include community development block grants, HOPE VI
public housing renovation, rural housing and economic development, and juvenile
crime prevention grants. Those cut include a 7 percent reduction for the Environmental
Protection Agency, along with programs to deal with dropout prevention, support
for local police and firefighters, and funds for guidance counselors in elementary
schools.
Many other programs are frozen - which means that when inflation and an increase
in those needing services are factored in, in reality they're cut as well. Freezing
the maximum Pell Grant level at a time when more students are trying to attend
college means smaller grants. Freezing funding for after-school programs means
that more than 1 million children won't have access any longer to those programs
(I wonder how they will occupy themselves in those critical post-school hours?).
Freezing Head Start funding means fewer low-income kids getting the school preparation
that poor children most need.
HEARD ENOUGH? It gets worse. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analyzed
thousands of pages of Office of Management and Budget computer runs and discovered
that starting in 2006 and continuing over the next five years, the administration
proposes to cut overall funding for domestic discretionary programs other than
homeland security by $50 billion - an 11.5 percent cut from today's level. To
take one example, cuts in the Child Care and Development Block Grant would mean
that the number of children from low- and moderate-income families who receive
childcare assistance would be cut by at least 200,000, up to as many as 365,000
children by 2009.
Of course, the budget also reveals a record deficit of $500 billion dollars,
deficits that will guarantee even more radical cuts for poor families in the
years ahead. A hard analysis of the federal budget reveals that the primary
reason for the astounding deficit and the resultant cuts for the poor is more
than just the huge increases for war and security. The biggest cause for greatly
reduced federal revenues is the Bush tax cuts, which they now want to make a
permanent fixture of U.S. tax policy.
That's why a little story from Alabama this year, only briefly covered by the
U.S. media, is so significant to us at Sojourners. Susan Pace Hamill is a law
professor who went to seminary and decided to apply Judeo-Christian ethics to
tax policy. Her conclusions caused a political conversion in her state's conservative
Republican governor, who proposed far-reaching tax reforms in the state that
would relieve tax burdens for the working poor while increasing the tax share
of its wealthiest citizens and business interests. One woman had stirred a revolutionary
tax debate in the Bible Belt. Against a well-financed campaign, the governor's
reforms went down to defeat. But Alabama may be only the beginning....
Is helping the rich the best way to benefit the poor? It's time for those who
believe so to just come out and say it. Then the rest of us, like Susan Pace
Hamill, can apply biblical ethics to the issue. As for a national debate about
tax policies and Christian principles in an election year, I say bring it on.
Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.
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