This translation is not completely accurate as it was automatically generated by a computer.
Powered by
A UMNS Report
By Linda Bloom*
7:00 A.M. EST March 7, 2011
Faith leaders are expressing concern over proposed U.S. federal budget changes
that could slash aid to the poor. Cuts passed by the U.S. House of Representatives
would reduce international food-aid programs by up to 50 percent.
A UMNS file photo by Mike DuBose.
View in Photo Gallery
The poor have no one staging mass protests on their behalf, but
religious leaders are speaking out about how proposed changes to the
U.S. budget for 2011 and 2012 could affect them.
“The message is consistent year in and year out: We want to make sure
we’re protecting those living in poverty or on the economic margins
both in the U.S and around the world,” explained John Hill, an executive
with the United Methodist Board of Church and Society.
In a March 1 letter to Congress,
16 religious leaders — including United Methodist Bishop Larry
Goodpaster, president of the Council of Bishops, and the Rev. John
McCullough, the United Methodist executive director of Church World
Service — expressed their full commitment to ministry with the poor.
“None of us can prosper and be secure while some of us live in misery
and desperation,” the letter said. “In an interdependent world, the
security and prosperity of any nation is inseparable from that of even
the most vulnerable both within and beyond their borders.”
Last month, President Barack Obama released his budget proposal for
2012, and the U.S. House of Representatives passed a $61 billion
budget-cut package for the rest of the 2011 fiscal year, which ends
Sept. 30. The U.S. Senate has yet to agree on the cuts, so Obama signed a
budget extension bill March 2 that will keep federal agencies open
through March 18 and enact $4 billion in new spending cuts.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle are proposing draconian cuts
that will greatly compromise “our capacity as a nation to respond to
situations of need,” McCullough said. “The budget reduction essentially
reduces what we would call the safety net for poor people and for
vulnerable communities here in the United States.”
Faith leaders understand the concerns over the nation’s financial
deficits. However, drastically reducing discretionary programs for the
poor that constitute an extremely small part of the budget is not a
solution to the economic crisis, they pointed out in the letter to
Congress.
“These cuts will devastate those living in poverty, at home and
around the world, cost jobs, and in the long run, will harm, not help,
our fiscal situation,” the letter said. “While ‘shared sacrifice’ can be
an appropriate banner, those who would be devastated by these cuts have
nothing left to sacrifice.”
The sacrifice is global, not just local, said Thomas Kemper, top executive of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries.
And while only a fraction — 0.5 percent — of the budget relates to
international aid, “for the people who are affected by these cuts, it
makes a lot of difference.”
Ethical implications
Budget decisions have ethical as well as financial implications, say
Christian leaders organized by Jim Wallis and Sojourners, a faith-based
social justice organization. Those leaders took out a full-page ad in
the Feb. 28 edition of Politico, a website devoted to politics.
Titled “What would Jesus Cut?”
the ad declared, “A budget is a moral document.” It called upon
legislators to defend international aid for pandemic diseases, critical
child-health and family-nutrition programs, “proven” work and income
supports for poverty-level families and educational support,
particularly in low-income communities.
Winsley Polo, 2, lies in her crib outdoors beneath a tarp at Grace
Children's Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, following the January 2010
earthquake. Church leaders have been advocating for ministries with the
poor amid calls to cut federal spending. A UMNS file photo by Mike
DuBose.
View in Photo Gallery
“Our faith tells us that the moral test of a society is how it treats
the poor,” the ad said. “As a country, we face difficult choices, but
whether or not we defend vulnerable people should not be one of them.”
Engaging in ministry with the poor is a mission priority for The
United Methodist Church, and its 13 agencies and commissions have
adopted “guiding principles and foundations” for that work.
“It’s fundamental to our faith that we care for the poor and vulnerable,” said the Rev. Larry Hollon, top executive of United Methodist Communications.
He noted that, in the Wesleyan tradition, holiness does not exist
without social holiness. “We are a faith community who believe faith
should not only promote our personal growth; it should also equip and
mobilize us for mission and service to the world.”
The understanding of that ministry goes beyond charity, Kemper said.
“It’s not only about giving money; it’s not only about doing a soup
kitchen; it’s about personally being involved and being with the poor,”
he explained.
Advocacy actions over federal budget matters since January have
included a call by church leaders to Obama to renew his campaign pledge
to “cut poverty in half” in the next 10 years and a Valentine’s Day
lobbying effort to “show love” and make the poor a priority. After the
House bill passed, National Council of Churches leaders drafted the
March 1 letter “that reflected our deep concern that these cuts are
particularly impacting the ministries that we do, both in the U.S. and
around the world, that are anti-poverty,” Hill said.
Alternative solutions exist, he argued. At times of fiscal crisis in
the 1990s, Hill noted, Congress was able to make reductions while still
protecting those in poverty. “As a result, even though there were very
large cuts, poverty rates were down,” he said. “We’re basically asking
them to do that again.”
International aid cuts
The House bill cuts in the 2011 budget also would greatly affect
international assistance, according to the Washington Post, slashing
international food-aid programs by up to 50 percent and State Department
funding for refugees by more than 40 percent.
The International Disaster Assistance Fund would be reduced by 67
percent, even though, McCullough pointed out, it is obvious from the
outpouring by Americans for victims of disaster like the Asian tsunami
and Haiti earthquake that “people expect the United States is going to
be in a position to respond to these types of disasters.”
Sojourners, a faith-based social justice organization, took out a
full-page ad in the Feb. 28 issue of Politico, a publication devoted to
politics. A web-only photo courtesy of Sojourners.
Humanitarian agencies like Church World Service
already are aware, he added, that when resources for aid and
development work are severely curtailed “the potential for (human)
survival diminishes dramatically.”
It also makes no sense to cut aid that helps avoid military conflicts
and fights terrorism, said Kemper, using as an example the new nation
of South Sudan that is emerging after years of civil war. “If you take
away funding and aid from these countries, they get more fragile,” he
explained.
Because of the denomination’s pledge to help eradicate malaria,
United Methodist leaders are particularly concerned about the House
bill’s decrease in the U.S. contribution to the Global Fund to Fight
AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis by 40 percent. Kemper called it “a blow”
to church members trying so hard to raise $75 million themselves through
the “Imagine No Malaria” initiative.
Some of the “unacceptable” consequences of that budget reduction,
said Hollon, whose agency promotes Imagine No Malaria, were pointed out
by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she spoke to the House
Foreign Affairs Committee. Those consequences include the denial of
treatment and prevention measures for malaria to 5 million children and
family members; denial of treatment for tropical diseases to some 16
million people and a loss of millions of available polio and measles
vaccines.
“It means children will die, more people will get sick, and preventable diseases will not be prevented,” Hollon said.
*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service multimedia reporter based in New York. Follow her at http://twitter.com/umcscribe.
News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
About UMC.org
RSS Feed
Press Center
Contact Us