Copied from the Sojourners email list:
Just weeks after Hurricane Katrina exposed the crisis of poverty in America, Congress will debate as early as Wednesday how much money should be cut from the budgets of health care, nutrition assistance, and other vital services for poor and working families. That’s right, they will cut funds - and the question is by how much. Perhaps equally astonishing, they will decide how much - up to $70 billion - they will cut taxes for the richest people in America. In Washington, this may be business as usual, but as people of faith, we believe that budgets are moral documents, and so far this budget is morally bankrupt.
14 Comments
Why are you posting social awareness blogs while you are on vacation in New York? You should be posting pictures of your trip. AND WHAT ABOUT THE TARANTULA!!!
yeah! you crazy hippies have such one track minds!
Jared, Jared, Jared. You are soooo out of the loop here. Those you left behind (all of us here in Ventura) do not care about current events while you are away. We only care about how much fun you and Martha are havign and what you guys are doing. So please enlighten us with the one thing we care about in the world- how’s your trip?
Sorry, I didn’t have a lot of time for bloging, maybe after I get back. This was just a quick quote from an e-mail I got that I wanted to post before I forgot about it.
I guess no one has any comments about the post itself… I guess maybe everyone is already aware of how screwed up the people in our government are so it’s no surprise, but I just wonder why they keep voting for them.
I am just tired of Bush. I don’t like him, I don’t dislike him. As Randy says, “I nothing him”. I am just so exhausted with him doing stupid stuff, then having the media hound his arse, then him retracting. It’s a whole merri-go-round thing. Bush drains me now. I am sick of government in general as a matter of fact. Cheesy politicians like Tom Delay showing off cheesy smiles on their mug shots. Hilary Clinton thinking that she’s a Godsend and that everyone should care what she thinks. Everyone blaming everyone else for stuff that happened in the New Orleans, still pointing fingers, not getting much done as to how to actually solve the problems. Blah blah blah. I’m just tired of the entire political system here.
Hurricane Katrina is going to cost a couple hundred billion dollars. There are three ways to deal with the cost. Raise taxes, increase the deficit, or cut budget items. Cutting budget items will undoubtedly affect the poor and working families more than others, because they are the ones who rely more on various types of federal aid. As far as I know, Congress is also trying to make cuts in the highway bill, which is a middle class bill. Making cuts is one way to approach the cost, which Sojourners obviously disagrees with. Cutting taxes is another way that some hope can stimulate the economy and increase revenue. Sojourners clearly does not like that idea either.
I do not really care if they disagree with this approach. Actually, I think it’s great that they disagree. The only way to come to the truth, and the best solutions to problems is with debate. However, for them to refer to an approach to a problem that does not fit their political ideology as morally bankrupt, and without question implying that those that push for this approach as being morally wrong, is in itself wrong.
The left states so often that the right hates dissent. It’s not dissent that I hate, and without aligning myself too much with the right, I don’t think it is dissent that most rational people on the right hate either. The thing that I loathe is the hatred for the Bush administration, and the claims that certain conflicting ideas are morally wrong, that come out of this dissent. While I think the statement that Sojourners made is wrong, I don’t think that they hate anyone. I can’t say as much for many other progressive websites, people, and politicians.
What’s needed is the ultra simple negative income tax system and less spending. That would make the U.S. holy.
But that’s part of the problem; so much of the criticism of the administration is simply dismissed as “Bush-bashing hate” when in reality there are many valid points to be made, and many people on the right will refuse to even consider them because (in their minds) any “liberal” point of view is only saying them because they “hate Bush”.
I’m not one of them, and I’m not going to defend those people who do hate the Bush administration, and I certainly can’t deny that they exist, anymore than anyone could deny that there is an equally large constituency on the right that “hates” “liberals”, and bad mouths them daily. I think it’s important to remember that (for both sides) the outspoken “extremists”, (especially the hateful ones) do not paint a complete picture of their respective “sides”.
The people at Sojourners are just pointing out the irony in cutting funds to the programs mentioned above, while at the same time handing out even more tax cuts to the wealthy on top of what they already just got. Even if you believe that the tax cuts will “stimulate the economy” and eventually trickle back down (through the fine grained filter of greed) to the people who are feeling the impact of the cuts to the vital programs mentioned above, that process (IF successful, and - as you say - that’s definitely debatable) would undoubtedly take a lot of time that people in that situation don’t have.
To say that Sojourners (or the left in general) disagrees with cutting budget items is not entirely true; they just disagree with cutting these ones in particular. There are a lot more areas of glut in government spending that are in desperate need of cutting, which don’t involve social programs.
If the cost of Katrina really is a couple 100 billion (I haven’t looked at this - just going by the figure you mentioned), it could easily be paid for by rolling back (as opposed to increasing) the tax cuts to the wealthy, and by making cuts in other areas. It’s interesting how some people complain so much about “welfare” (or illegal immigration for that matter) eating up our tax dollars when the money we put into the military (and believe me, there is *a lot* of room for budget cutting in this area) is more than double what is spent on health care and education combined.
I think that their point is that (”morally” speaking) health care, education, and nutrition programs should be the last budget items on the list of cutting candidates, not the first.
I always thought the “trickle down” principle works because of “greed” not in spite of greed. Investors have more money so they invest more and start more businesses to try make even more money which creates jobs and more tax revenue and a healthy economy that can support responsible social programs for years to come.
But there are several problems with that theory.
One of them is the assumption that a significant percentage of people who receive such tax cuts start new businesses. I don’t know the numbers off hand, but I’d be willing to bet that the percentage is actually quite small.
For existing business owners, they will most likely just keep whatever extra money they may be earning, or (*only* if their business warrants it) hire another few workers at the same low-as-possible wages that they pay their other current employees, who (if they are minimum wage) will probably be much more negatively impacted by the cuts to social programs necessary to pay for the tax cuts that are going to those at the top of their “food chain”.
I think the Regan era was a pretty good example of how the trickle down theory fails, but I’m not going to say that that one example alone should disprove the theory.
The bottom line (I think) is that most people who receive these tax cuts will not let much of it slip through their fingers and find it’s way down to the people “below them” (which is kind of a screwed up metaphor anyway, but let’s not get into that).
The smart ones will mostly horde it for themselves in the form of tax sheltered accounts which will only benefit themselves (and possibly other wealthy business owners who would profit from their investments); the rest will probably just blow it on a “better” lifestyle, which could arguably build up the service type job market, but at the same time serve to widen the gap between the rich and the poor.
But back to the point of this specific article, targeting social programs for budget cutting is the wrong place to be looking. As I said before, there are plenty of better choices for cuts.
You would have to look carefully at each social program. See if it working and how much it is costing. I’m sure the senators don’t take that part of thier job lightly. Not saying their always good at it, or they always make the right choice but by in large I think their doing what they feel is best for all Americans.
I’m not necessarily questioning their motives; although I do think it’s common knowledge that there is corruption in the system, and lobbying plays far too big a role, I think that they may believe they are doing the right things, or at the very least they’ve allowed themselves to be convinced of it.
I’m just saying that IF they are honestly doing this kind of analysis, the social programs should still not be at the top of the list. Even if it was strictly based on whether the expense is economically valuable (which I don’t necessarily always has to be the only criteria for measuring for social programs), there other are programs I mentioned above that waste WAY more money. Sure, there are cutbacks happening in this sector as well, but it’s a relative drop in the bucket.
The tax code difinitely needs to be changed. Some sort of flat tax based system seems the best to me. That negative income tax system sounds interesting, but don’t know about eliminating minimum wage. Then again, I don’t know much about economics either.
I’m not an economics expert either but trust me, it’s the holiest option.