House Republicans passed a 2013 budget reconciliation package on May 10 that included cuts in social services despite an appeal on May 8 from the U.S. bishops. In a letter to Congress, Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, Calif., right, chair of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, wrote that “deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility efforts must protect and not undermine the needs of poor and vulnerable people.” He said the proposed cuts “fail this basic moral test.” Bishop Blaire singled out an “unfair” proposal to change the Child Tax Credit to exclude children of immigrant families, “the large majority of whom are American citizens”; cuts to the nutrition assistance, which would affect all poor families and be “a direct threat to their human dignity”; and the cutting of the Social Services Block Grant, “an important source of funding for programs throughout the country” that serve “the homeless, the elderly, people with disabilities, children living in poverty and abuse victims.”
Budget a Moral Bust?
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
This week on “The Spiritual Life,” Father James Martin speaks with former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg about faith, fatherhood and his “Jesuit background.”
In ‘Where is the Friend’s House?,’ we see the faces of the Iranian people captured with sensitivity and detail.
Among those recognized at two theology conferences in June was Stephen Bevans, S.V.D., to whom the Catholic Theological Society of America gave its highest honor, the John Courtney Murray Award.
“Keeping our gaze on Jesus, we must learn to give a name and voice even to sadness, fear, anguish, indignation, bringing everything into relationship with God,” Pope Leo said.