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)