Cruel and Unusual Budget
by digby
Oh my goodness. It looks like the Republicans may have awakened certain members of the Catholic Church to who they really are:
Dear Mr. Speaker, We congratulate you on the occasion of your commencement address to The Catholic University of America. It is good for Catholic universities to host and engage the thoughts of powerful public figures, even Catholics such as yourself who fail to recognize (whether out of a lack of awareness or dissent) important aspects of Catholic teaching. We write in the hope that this visit will reawaken your familiarity with the teachings of your Church on matters of faith and morals as they relate to governance.
Mr. Speaker, your voting record is at variance from one of the Church’s most ancient moral teachings. From the apostles to the present, the Magisterium of the Church has insisted that those in power are morally obliged to preference the needs of the poor. Your record in support of legislation to address the desperate needs of the poor is among the worst in Congress. This fundamental concern should have great urgency for Catholic policy makers. Yet, even now, you work in opposition to it. The 2012 budget you shepherded to passage in the House of Representatives guts long-established protections for the most vulnerable members of society. It is particularly cruel to pregnant women and children, gutting Maternal and Child Health grants and slashing $500 million from the highly successful Women Infants and Children nutrition program. When they graduate from WIC at age 5, these children will face a 20% cut in food stamps. The House budget radically cuts Medicaid and effectively ends Medicare. It invokes the deficit to justify visiting such hardship upon the vulnerable, while it carves out $3 trillion in new tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.
read on…
It calls GOP policies anti-life.
You know who else calls himself a Catholic? Paul Ryan. (Don’t tell him about what his idol Ayn rand would have to say about that.) And some Catholics seem to be under the misapprehension that he shares their religious values.
This should be interesting. The American Catholic bishops long ago decided to make abortion and contraception their only focus. And it resulted in an unholy alliance with a Political Party that would have called Jesus a communist. But Ryan’s plan is so cruel and heartless that it seems they couldn’t ignore it any longer. I have little hope that any of these so-called Christian politicians will change their minds. (Ryan’s real religion is Randism, Boehner’s is golf.) But it could present a bit of a quandry for some Catholics of conscience.
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