by Mary A. Cooper 

The Bush Administration sent the first budget of its second term to Congress on February 7. It relies heavily on cuts in social programs to meet the expansion demands of the Pentagon, while failing to mention at all some of the most expensive items being proposed.  

Of particular concern to the faith community are planned slashes in Medicaid, the Food Stamp Program, child care for low-income families, education, and community food and nutrition programs.  In a total budget of $2.57 trillion, the Administration proposes to make the tax cuts of the last few years permanent at a cost of $1.1 trillion over ten years, a plan that would primarily benefit affluent households, while eliminating about 150 federal programs and reducing discretionary spending in all areas except defense and homeland security by approximately one percent.  The Washington Post summarized the issue in words that express the concerns of the religious community, saying:  "*the risk is that the budget ax will fall most heavily on the poorest and most vulnerable Americans, those with the greatest need for government help but the smallest voice in the corridors of power." 

Not included in the budget at all are the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the President's plan to divert part of the funds for Social Security into private investment accounts for wage earners.  Continued funding for the two wars will be sought through special supplemental appropriations requests later in the year, while the costs for revising Social Security will not begin for a few years. 

Defense spending not related to Iraq would rise from $400 billion in the current fiscal year to nearly $500 billion by 2010, while all other discretionary spending would be cut from the current $391 billion to $389 billion and frozen at that level through 2010.  The result of capping non-defense spending would be an actual cut, considering anticipated inflation over the same period, of 14% by 2010 in areas such as education, housing, environmental protection, and transportation. 

A particularly contentious area is the Administration's proposal to revisit the Farm Bill passed by Congress in 2002 after a long and difficult debate.  This legislation reauthorized many of the programs run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that provide food to the nation's neediest people and help farmers to maintain production.  Congress has no wish to return to the debate over the Farm Bill and is likely to resist vigorously Administration proposals that would require it to do so, for example the plan to drop between 200,000 and 300,000 families from the Food Stamp Program.  Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS), a powerful member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, has charged the Administration with unfairly targeting cotton and rice growers in the Southeast, saying he will never agree to these proposals. 

Similar objections have come from Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), Chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. In a Washington Post column, Specter said that "the President's budget puts at risk critical funding for the National Institutes of Health and other important priorities of the subcommittee" including research at NIH that has led to "enormous progress" in advancing cures for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, cancer, heart disease and many other debilitating or deadly ailments.  Noting that the U.S. faces "enormous deficits", Specter concluded that discretionary spending "has taken hits year after year.  Congressional budgeters and appropriators have not sufficiently recognized that education and health care are capital investments." 

Temporary Assistance to Needy Families

The Administration's budget would continue to fund TANF at $16 billion per year, the figure established originally in the legislation that created the program in 1996.  While advocates for the poor had feared a possible budget cut, maintaining funding at the previous level will place a greater burden on the majority of states, where welfare rolls are once more rising. 

The House will begin hearings on February 10, leading to consideration of legislation to reauthorize the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program, the nation's primary vehicle for providing cash assistance to extremely low-income families. Rep. Wally Herger (R-CA), Chair of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources, has introduced a bill (H.R. 240) that is identical in most particulars to legislation that passed the House in 2003 but failed to reach a vote in the Senate.  Herger's bill would increase work hours and tighten up requirements with regard to education and training, while not providing significantly increased funding for child care.  Most studies of T ANF have shown that the absence of child care is the major barrier to employment for women seeking to leave T ANF for work.  The President's budget would actually decrease current funds available to subsidize child care for low-income families. 

Bills to reauthorize TANF have been introduced in the Senate by Sens. James Talent (R-MO) and Rick Santorum (R-PA).  While similar in many ways to the House measure, the Santorum bill would also make permanent the family-related aspects of the President's tax cuts from the first Bush Administration, expand government marriage-promotion efforts, and incorporate provisions of the CARE Act, encouraging, faith-based initiatives in providing social services. 

Social Security

The details of the President's proposal to reconfigure the Social Security program are as yet unknown.  The one thing that is certain is that Mr. Bush is determined to change the program for future generations so that workers will be able to divert at least four percentage points into private investment accounts out of the 12.4% of their wages set aside for retirement security.  Currently, workers and their employers each contribute 6.2% of salaries up to $90,000 annually to the trust fund that pays pensions to retired workers, widows and dependent children of eligible deceased workers, and some disabled people.  It is unclear how this proposal will affect recipients other than retired workers. 

The President's budget did not include any costs for this transition to a partially privatized system, but, should Congress agree to creating the personal accounts sought by the Administration, it is certain that the cost will be in the trillions of dollars.  The program will have to continue paying benefits to participants in the current plan, even though diverting funds into private accounts will decrease the trust fund from which benefits are paid.  Recent projections hold that - even under the current program - expenditures from the fund will begin to outpace income in 2012.  Redirecting one-third of the fund's anticipated income into private accounts will only exacerbate the problem. 

How to resolve the difficulties facing Social Security is likely to be the major domestic issue facing Congress this year.  Since this is one of the most important programs that exists to prevent poverty among the nation's disabled and elderly, it is crucial that all aspects of the program and all possible solutions be thoroughly examined. 

Interreligious Working Group on Domestic Human Needs

A Faith Reflection on the Federal Budget 

As communities of faith, we are grounded in a shared tradition of justice and compassion, and we are called upon to hold ourselves and our communities accountable to the moral standard of our Biblical tradition. We speak out now because we are concerned about our national priorities. The federal budget serves as a fundamental statement of who we are as a nation. The decisions we make about how we generate revenue and spend resources test our commitment to these values. Thus, we hold that the federal budget should be viewed and evaluated through a moral lens: does it  uphold values that will strengthen our life together as a nation  and as part of the global community? 

Community and the Common Good  

But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you* and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will have your welfare (Jeremiah 29:7, NRSV). 

Our nation's wellbeing is dependent on the wellbeing of all its members. In order to form a more perfect union, the preamble to the U.S. Constitution commits this nation to promoting the general welfare. In faith language we would call that the "common good ."  The budget should reflect a commitment to the common good by ensuring that the basic needs of all members of society are met. At this time, when more than 45 million Americans are uninsured, over 8 million are unemployed and over 12 percent live in poverty, additional cuts to critical human needs programs cannot be justified.    

Investments in education, job training, work supports, healthcare, housing, food assistance and environmental protection promote opportunity for all and strengthen families and communities. These should be budget priorities. 

Budget decisions must be evaluated not just in the short term, but with respect to their long-term effects on our children's children, the global community and on all of creation. 

Concern for Those Who Are Poor and Vulnerable 

Give the king your justice, O God* May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice* May he defend the cause of the poor of the people and give deliverance to the needy  (Psalm 72:1-4, NRSV). 

Government has special responsibility to care for the most vulnerable members of society. All budget decisions and administrative procedures must be judged by their impact on children, low-income families, the elderly, people with disabilities and other vulnerable populations. 

Whatever one's position on the war in Iraq or on the tax cuts, these policies are driving the deficit.  Attempting to pay off the deficit by cutting programs that affect needy populations, when these programs did not lead to the deficit, is unjust.   

Economic Justice 

Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people (Isaiah 10:1-2, NIV). 

God has created a world of sufficiency for all; the problem is not the lack of natural and economic resources, but how they are shared, distributed and made accessible within society. 

Our government should be a tool to correct inequalities, not a means of institutionalizing them. The federal budget should share the burdens of taxation, according to one's ability to pay, and distribute government resources fairly to create opportunity for all.   

Endorsing Organizations (as of 2/11/05) 

• American Baptist Churches USA
• American Friends Service Committee
• Bread for the World
• Call to Renewal
• Central Conference of American Rabbis
• Church of the Brethren Witness/Washington Office
• Church Women United
• Conference of Major Superiors of Men
• The Episcopal Church, USA
• Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
• Friends Committee on National Legislation
• Institute Justice Team - Sisters of Mercy of the Americas
• Jesuit Conference USA
• Jewish Council for Public Affairs
• Leadership Conference of Women Religious
• Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Washington Office
• National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd
• National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA
• NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby
• Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Washington Office
• Union for Reform Judaism
• Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations
• United Church of Christ Justice & Witness Ministries
• The United Methodist Church - General Board of Church and Society
• Women of Reform Judaism

General Assembly: The 1997 General Assembly adopted a resolution designed to offer "guidelines for the church and government to follow in promoting the general welfare of the poor" (Minutes, 1996, p. 553).  

The guidelines include:

1. Maintain at least the 1996 level of welfare funding for as long as needed in the transition to a work-based welfare system.
2. Oppose any tightening of eligibility requirements for public assistance that would make persons in need even more vulnerable.
3. Provide adequate funding for job training that leads to employment at a family-sustaining wage.
4. Where necessary, provide state-funded employment options, including sheltered workshops, for the least employable.
5. Provide additional state funds as necessary to prevent children and parents from being denied assistance when, despite their best efforts, adults reach a program time limit but cannot find work at adequate pay.
6. Exempt single parents with a child under age one from work requirements.
7. Provide adequate funding for child care and transportation assistance to recipients in the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF)... program, as well as to low-income working families, in order to make job training and employment viable.
8. Decline to implement a "family cap" that would exclude cash assistance for children born to a welfare recipient.
9. Provide exemption of teen-parents from the requirement that they live with a parent or guardian unless the home is known to be safe for both the teen-parent and the child.
10. Provide adequately for disabled persons and immigrants who may lose eligibility for means-tested programs.