You'll be hearing in coming days, if you haven't already, about the What Would Jesus Cut? campaign, launched by Jim Wallis and the good people of Sojourners. It assumes that massive budget cuts are coming, but raises the question of where we start. If budget cuts are a fiscal necessity (more on that in a minute), asking what we cut is a moral necessity, hence the campaign's title, intended to attract the attention - and stimulate the conscience - of American Christian voters. We all need to be reminded in the midst of what can become budget-frenzy that budgets are moral documents, and that the love of money can cause people to all sorts of evil things.
I agree that living within our means is a financial necessity, and long-term deficit spending is stupid and short-sighted. I think it's sad that Republicans have managed to paint Democrats as the bad guys on this, since it was a Republican administration that most recently turned a surplus into a deficit through tax cuts for the wealthy and two unfunded (and at least one unfounded) wars. I also think it's sad that our discussion of the deficit jumps too quickly to prescription, not taking adequate time for careful diagnosis.
Such diagnostic examination would explore a number of causative factors, including the possibility that our national debt is in large part a consequence of a broken political campaign system where votes can be bought with the currency of short-sighted, self-interested promises. In this system, Republicans can buy votes and loyalty from rich people and want-to-be-rich people through tax cuts and promises of more security through an ever-bigger military. And Democrats can buy votes and loyalty from poor people and want-to-help-poor people through entitlements and promises of a stronger economic safety net. The latter strikes me as a more honorable form of vote-buying, I suppose, since poor people need help more than rich folks do. But buying votes isn't a great way to run a democracy either way. One hopes more attention will be paid to these dimensions of our deficit in the process of reducing it.
The Republican House recently unveiled their plan for deficit reduction. Their proposal represents what Republican Michael Gerson rightly calls a squandering of an important Republican legacy. That's why it's important for more and more Republicans to speak up - not against getting our fiscal house in order: that's a necessity, but about what should be cut and why. And Democrats need to enter the fray not as anti-Republicans but as responsible partners, and probably in this case, balanced and thoughtful leaders, in telling the whole truth that needs to be told, inviting the American people to be grown ups and face the facts, not fearful fictions.
Cutting programs that save lives in Africa, Asia, and Latin America is morally unacceptable. Far better to ask questions like these:
How can we increase taxes on what we want less of (pollution, waste, pornography, tools of violence) and reduce taxes on what we want more of (work, earning, education, research and development, alternative energy, etc.)?
Why does a small segment of the super-rich control a larger and larger portion of national wealth, what are the consequences of this trend, and what should be done about it?
What percent of the national budget should be spent on the military? Are we heeding Eisenhower's well-known but too-little-heeded warning and advice about the "military-industrial complex?"
Eisenhower, we should remember, was a Republican. Like Gerson, he had a broader and more intelligent vision than the narrow, one-dimensional, reactionary one we see sweeping today's Republican party like a tsunami of tea. Perhaps this is a good time to remember his parting words as he left the presidency fifty years ago this year:
So -- in this my last good night to you as your President -- I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.You and I -- my fellow citizens -- need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
That is the kind of American moral ethos I hope will prevail in re-calibrating the American budget in the weeks and months ahead.
Jim Wallis: What Would Jesus Cut?
Jim Wallis: What Would Jesus Cut?
The Rev. Chuck Currie: "What Would Jesus Cut?"
What would Jesus cut? | National Catholic Reporter
Alturn: That a Christian could say "what would Jesus cut?" says
That said, I think McLaren is wrong on several issues. First, he is less than honest about Democratic vote buying and its honorableness. He failed to mention how Democrats buy votes from unions who negotiate public pensions and employee benefits. It's public knowledge how stimulus funds were diverted to unions of public employees nationwide. He fails to acknowledge that this is the Democratic version of "tax-cuts for the rich".
Continuing, who said it was government's role to redistribute tax revenue to help the poor? We may worship the same Jesus, but we are definitely reading different Bibles. Helping the poor was never an exhortation given to governments, rather to people. While I do think that there should be some (minimal) sort of social safety net to help those in need, to advocate the distribution of money increasingly collected on those whom our culture labels, "rich" ($250k-plus) to thus be given to the poor is theft and the eighth commandment warns against it.
Very few argue against helping the poor, but the increasing calls for government (in the name of religion) to be THE vehicle in which the poor are helped is misguided and irreligious. It places politics ahead of helping the poor.
However, a 47 billion dollar gift to Afghanistan plus a billion dollar tab a month to run that war which was started to capture and kill the terrorist that planned 9/11. I was all for it but, horrible mismanagement of that war by the prior administration is historical. Now you have a war started with lies in Iraq. A billion dollar tab a month for that war and the GOP wonder why we are broke?
Taxing the people that fit in the 35% tax bracket more to close budget gaps is silly. The bulk of the United States people are in the 25% tax bracket. What needs to be done is very simple. 10’s of billions of dollars of lost taxes a year are overlooked by tax breaks given to churches. You want to close a budget gap! That one change would close the gap faster then taxing the 35% tax bracket higher!
"No understanding of the spiritual crisis in the world is possible without clear consideration of causes. According to Maitreya, complacency is the root of all evil in the world. What can be summed up as the ‘I’m all right Jack’ mentality leads both individuals and institutions to become estranged from the realities of life, and therefore to ineffective solutions. Complacency is a form of corruption which is not ‘outside’ but inside. . .When people move in this mental atmosphere of complacency, they are essentially cut off from their real selves and fall into a monotonous routine — that is, ‘the same old thing’ day in and day out. Life is movement, but complacent people are, in effect, in an arrested condition. The mind, therefore, seeks new peaks of experience, which can and often does lead to a variety of forms of corruption and perversion. Thus complacency is ultimately self-destructive, and whole societies can be destroyed by it."
- World Teacher Maitreya through an associate as reported by Share International
What is most telling of the GOP cuts is who they impact and why.
What is missing in the GOP cuts is how they expect to increase jobs and have a positive effect on our economy.
"Cutting programs that save lives in Africa, Asia, and Latin America is morally unacceptable. Far better to ask questions like these:"
An utterly irrational presumption and agenda. By that logic, any dime I spend on myself above the cost of mere survival is guilty of killing people in "Africa....". They don't have to take responsibility for themselves, we are forced to, that's our job.
A hair cut kills people, when Samson is forced into bondage to hold up the world.
First they took our jobs by slowly exporting them; little by little, it was hardly noticable at the time. The grand commission, or, purpose of this exile, was to develop impoverished third world countries, or, so we were told. Bewildered by the loss we were commanded to get ourselves educated, technology was the future, and then they began to export those jobs too.
CEO's and dictators became billionairs of the sweat of the newly enslaved.
At the same time we began a mass import of immigrants, legal and illegal. They were plopped down in a class room and the teacher was told to educate them. She was struggling with what she had.
The taxpayer was burdened with their healthcare and welfare. 50 million and counting impoverished people now live in America