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Giddings Ivory was accompanied by the Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC); Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism; and the Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners and editor of Sojourners magazine. Participating by telephone was the Rev. Thomas L. Hoyt Jr., the NCC president.
“We need a compassionate government, and not a punitive one,” said Hoyt, also a bishop in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Mississippi and Louisiana. “We need a ‘heart transplant’ in this government.”
The U.S. Senate was expected to vote on a budget reconciliation package before the end of the week. A vote in the U.S. House of Representatives is expected next week. The package includes cuts in entitlement spending and other programs for disadvantaged families.
“The House budget reconciliation package incorporates the reauthorization of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program … increasing the work requirements for TANF recipients, without adequate funding for child care to meet the needs of working parents,” Giddings Ivory said. “Some 270,000 children in low-income working families would likely lose child-care assistance by 2010 under this plan.
“Whatever happened to the congressional calls for greater support for families? Don’t poor families count?”
Wallis challenged Christian members of Congress to “dust off your Bibles … and do some Bible study,” calling the bill “a reversal of Biblical priorities.”
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