The Bishops Were Wrong On The Ryan Budget
In the wake of the selection of Paul Ryan as the VP nominee, you will be hearing a lot about how Ryan is a bad Catholic because the Bishops criticized the Ryan budget plan.
Let me cut to the chase, the Bishops were wrong.
The text of the letter issued by the Bishops gets the basics wrong and completely ignores the immorality of continued debt. They say…
On behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, I write to urge you to resist for moral and human reasons unacceptable cuts to hunger and nutrition programs. The committee has been instructed to reduce agricultural programs by an additional $33.2 billion. In allocating these reductions, the committee should protect essential programs that serve poor and hungry people over subsidies that assist large and relatively well-off agricultural enterprises. Cuts to nutrition programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will hurt hungry children, poor families, vulnerable seniors and workers who cannot find employment. These cuts are unjustified and wrong. If cuts are necessary, the committee should first look towards reducing and targeting commodity and subsidy programs that disproportionately go to large growers and agribusiness
Except those draconian cuts they fear are not cuts at all, but reductions in growth from the projected baseline budgeting planned growth. To suggest that these are real cuts is disingenuous.
Further, this letter does not address the real problems facing America, rather the Bishops sit on their high horses while simultaneously sticking their heads in the sand.
This massive accumulating debt has real consequences, and those consequence will be disastrous for the very poor the USCCB pretends to be concerned about.