PW Horizons: Law and Power

This article originally appeared in the September/October 2014 issue of Horizons, the magazine for Presbyterian Women. To subscribe or learn more, visit www.pcusa.org/horizons

To Change the Power Behind the Law

By Leslie G. Woods

Having served in the ecumenical advocacy community for nearly 10 years, I find that I need ways to keep my spirits up. The work of advocacy (as a good friend of mine says) is a marathon, not a sprint. At times, the long, grinding haul of justice-making seems hopeless. But as the prophet Nelson Mandela once said, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

One of my favorite biblical reminders of the power of tenacity is the story of the persistent widow and the unjust judge. In Luke 18:1–8, Jesus tells the story of a widow seeking justice against her adversary from a judge who does not “fear God or care for people.” The widow keeps coming back, demanding justice, until finally the judge grants her suit—not because she convinces him of the merits of her case, but because her continual advocacy wearies him. She eventually receives justice through her persistence—a potent reminder to all of us who engage in advocacy for justice.

But what if the unjust judge were being paid to deny justice? What if the unjust judge, in order to keep his position of power, needed to refuse the merits of the widow’s case? What if her adversary was not simply the lone judge, but the political or social engine that empowered the judge and benefitted from the judge’s rulings? What then would have happened to the widow and her quest for justice?

In all likelihood, she would have been denied justice. The judge would have continued to ignore her just case and appeased the special interest backing his power. Regardless of what the widow said or did, the judge would have denied her justice.

The Shifting Paradigm of Advocacy

Of course, rewriting Bible stories is not what we do in the PC(USA) Office of Public Witness, where I serve as the representative for domestic poverty and environmental issues. We advocate for justice. In the more than nine years that I have been doing faith-based advocacy, I have worked on antipoverty programs, the federal budget and tax code, justice for workers, economic inequality, health care reform, environmental justice, climate disruption, clean energy, food justice, violence against women and children, public education and immigration.

It is a broad portfolio and there have been some true victories for justice during my tenure. But more and more, I find that my workshops include an admonition that sounds something like “If we don’t work to get the special interest money out of politics, we will never achieve a ____ bill.” In the blank space, name your favorite justice issue: comprehensive immigration reform, a national climate justice plan, tax reform, gun violence prevention, prison reform or any other of the myriad fundamental reform concerns. These pressing justice issues have caught the attention of advocates, but have also caught the interest of special interest groups who are willing to spend to bring about particular outcomes. For true justice, we must first reduce the undue influence of special-interest spending in policymaking.

Law and Power

Which comes first: law or power? Certainly, laws need power to be enforced. But for this article, I am more interested in the power at play while a law is being made. When the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) speaks to the creation of laws, our positions are rooted in Christian values and the authority of Presbyterian General Assemblies. Many advocacy groups speak to the creation of laws out of conviction or concern for the welfare of others. Still others speak out of self-interest or special interest. Some special interests—though by no means all—speak to the creation of laws with a goal of furthering profit or currying favor. Even nefarious ends may propel a person or group to speak to the creation, continuation or repeal of a law.

It frequently comes down to what creates power. Is it, as suggested above, morality or conviction, concern or welfare, profit or favor? Each of these motivations may compel some special interest or another; each has the capacity to create power and, hence, law.

Sadly, our system of legislation, justice and executive power has tipped too far to one side. We have allowed our system to move away from a code of laws based on conviction and welfare—as outlined in our Constitution—to one that is unduly influenced by whomever has the deepest pockets.

We have a system in which the cost of running for office requires exorbitant spending, personal wealth and donations from those who can afford to pay. And that financial support usually comes with strings attached, whether expressly stated, implicitly felt or simply created out of a sense of obligation and gratitude.

As the 218^th General Assembly (2008) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) said,

Large sums of money, and the time needed to raise it, dominate our electoral and legislative processes. Money buys access to legislators as well as to the details in legislation. If they reject special interest money, candidates fear that their opponents will outspend them—and spending counts: incumbents almost always raise more money than challengers, and the candidate who spends the most money almost always wins. (For House seats, the number is more than 90 percent.) Because the Supreme Court has ruled [that] campaign contributions are a protected form of “speech,” the most important reform to enhance the voice of citizens and reduce the role of powerful special interests and big money in elections is public financing. Under such systems, candidates or parties receive public funds to replace or augment private money. Public funding can curb the appearance of the influence of big money over lawmakers, encourage candidates with limited resources to run for office, and allow politicians to spend less time raising money and more time serving their constituents [emphasis added].

The Money Behind the Power

According to an analysis in Lo$ing Faith in Our Democracy: A Theological Critique of the Role of Money in American Politics, published by Auburn Seminary, “more than $6 billion was spent on the 2012 elections. That’s a lot of money in American politics. And that figure only includes election campaigns expenses—it doesn’t include funds spent on lobbying or advocacy” (1). According to the footnote,

“[O]f that figure, $970 million was spent by outside groups, that is, groups supposedly unaffiliated with a political party. . . . The Alaska Dispatch analyzed the presidential election expenses into dollars spent per registered voter, and found that the combined spending of the Obama and Romney campaigns amounted to $11.75 per voter. That figure is more than double, in inflation adjusted dollars, the $5 per voter that the Reagan and Carter campaigns spent in 1980.”

The study notes that the influence of money in human politics is as old as the Bible, and likely as old as human civilization, but this doubling of U.S. presidential campaign spending in just 30 years is astronomical, not to mention unsustainable.

Decreased transparency in campaign and other political spending, as permitted by Supreme Court cases such as Citizens United and McCutcheon, makes it even more difficult for the voting citizen to sift through the propaganda and make an informed decision with his or her vote. And I’m learning that many people feel that their vote is less valuable than it used to be. “It doesn’t matter whom I vote for, it won’t make a difference in Washington anyway,” I hear regularly. Many voters (or those who don’t bother) feel that the voices, opinions and convictions of real people who are engaged in honest debate are drowned out by the volume of special interest money. This development in American politics is not serving people, only profit. This is a true problem in today’s political landscape and the failure of the current system.

In an op-ed published earlier this year, Diane Randall of the Friends Committee on National Legislation and Patrick Carolan of the Franciscan Action Network wrote,

More often than should be true in a democracy, money appears to speak more loudly than the voices of the electorate on these and other values-based issues. The wealthiest 0.01 percent of the voting age population now account for 40 percent of all campaign contributions. When money talks, it almost inevitably makes a difference in the decisions elected officials make. If money is doing the talking, it is unlikely to fairly represent needs for housing, health care and decent wages for people who cannot take those things for granted.¹

Indeed, people of faith are beginning to challenge such disproportion in the brokerage of power in our political system. Polls vary, of course, but a recent survey reported by Time magazine showed that

[A] majority of likely voters among Democrats (75%), Independents (64%) and Republicans (54%) see the wave of spending by Super PACs this election cycle as “wrong and leads to our elected officials representing the views of wealthy donors.” So far in the 2014 election cycle, Super PACs, which can raise unlimited sums from donors, have spent $87.5 million and counting to influence election outcomes.²

It will only be through addressing this deficit of the people’s voice in politics that we will affect the choices made by those who hold power and are in a position to create law.

Leslie G. Woods serves as the representative for domestic poverty and environmental issues in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Office of Public Witness in Washington, DC.

This article originally appeared in the September/October 2014 issue of Horizons, the magazine for Presbyterian Women. To subscribe or learn more, visit www.pcusa.org/horizons

Many thanks to Horizons for permission to reprint. 

Notes

1. “Faith groups push back on role of money in politics,” www.thehill.com, February 18, 2014. http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/198643-faith-groups-push-back-on-role-of-money-in-politics#ixzz3ADEzfQ89.

2. “Poll: Support for Campaign Finance Reform Strong in Key Senate Races,” Time, July 31, 2014. http://time.com/3063942/poll-support-for-campaign-finance-reform-strong-in-key-senate-races.

The Sequester is Urgent and Severe: a Faithful Response

Remarks as prepared for

Faithful Budget Alternatives to Sequestration: 2014 and Beyond

a briefing in the U.S. Capitol for Congressional Staffers

delivered by Leslie Woods, Representative for Domestic Poverty and Environmental Issues

Thank you, Sister Marge.  As you say, I am Leslie Woods and I serve the Presbyterian Church (USA)Office of Public Witness here in DC and also I’m the co-chair of the Inter-religious Working Group on Domestic Human Needs, which is an ecumenical and interfaith coalition of churches, religious denominations, and faith-based organizations, that comes together around the common concern of anti-poverty work and policies that promote economic justice, equality, and human needs.

I’d like to start by thanking NETWORK for inviting me to speak at this briefing, and to thank these sisters for being such great partners in this community’s ongoing  anti-poverty and justice-building coalition work.  We couldn’t do it without NETWORK.

Sr. Marge asked me to speak about why the faith community cares about these issues, so first, I’d like to refer to the document in your packet, “Faithful Alternatives to Sequestration,” which our inter-religious coalition has updated and offered to the Hill several times over the last two and a half years.  And you will find that I will quote or paraphrase several passages from this piece, because I believe it is no less true today that it was when I wrote it two years ago and I found myself referring to it often when I was preparing these remarks.

So, to begin, there are two quotations from holy texts at the head of the paper.  First, from the Gospel according to Luke, “to whom much is given, much will be required,” a powerful reminder from holy scripture about different levels of social responsibility, especially in the context of Mike’s comments on the many and varied ways that those who have much avoid contributing their fair share.

Next, from the Midrash, “the person who lends money to the poor person is greater than the person who gives charity, and the one who throws money into a common purse to form a partnership with a poor person is greater than either.”  Again, not only a great reminder about how the growing economic divide is contrary to God’s intention for human community, but also a commentary on the necessity for the common purse, the shared broker who brings in revenue and invests it in the needs of the larger community.  It sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it?  This used to be the role of ancient religious communities.  Today, while our communities still have important charitable and prophetic roles, the common purse strings are now in government hands.

As a religious coalition, we believe that our economic arrangements should serve God’s creation and should help the human community to flourish.  We further believe that the sequester must urgently be replaced with a balanced plan that protects people who are economically poor and vulnerable.  And as Sister Marge, Sister Simone, and Mike have articulated so well, we believe there are several ways to achieve these goals, while also addressing the nation’s long term fiscal challenges, without using indiscriminate cuts or policy that makes poor people disproportionately bear the burden.

We believe “that crushing poverty in a world of abundance is insufferable and that we have allowed too much injustice and greed to govern our current economic structures.”  Instead, our policies, both appropriations and tax policy, should increase equity and equality. 

Both in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and in our broader ecumenical and interfaith context, we seek to challenge the systemic injustice that traps families in poverty for generations while also creating a new class of economically poor people, as the gap between the rich and poor continues to widen.  We believe that this growing inequality, as well as persistent and systemic poverty, especially among children, but really among all people, is not only inconsistent with God’s intention, but it is contrary to it. 

I invite you to remember with me the creation of the current sequester.  It is a blunt tool.  It was designed in the Budget Control Act to be so awful –- so prohibitive -- to carry such serious and weighty consequences for the stereotypical interests of both Democrats and Republicans, that it would force diverging Members of Congress to come to a negotiating table in good faith.  Sequestration was literally designed to be unspeakable.

And despite news stories that it hasn’t really been all that bad, it actually has.  An upcoming report that will be released next week called “Faces of Austerity,” will offer perhaps the most comprehensive cross-sector review of the affects of sequester.  In this report, we hear from :

Cheri Taylor, who is the Executive Director of Pottersville Adult Day Services in California, which serves low-income clients with Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia. She says: “These… programs allow people with Alzheimer’s disease to remain in their homes longer and provide needed respite to their family caregivers. Any ‘savings’ from sequestration would pale in comparison to the added costs resulting from unnecessary hospitalizations, premature nursing home placements, and greater financial and emotional strains on family caregivers.”

So, the sequester is short-sighted, trading long-term security for short-term deficit reduction.

And from:

Sharilyn Cano, the Human Resources Director of the Southern Oregon Head Start program. She says, “We went from serving 1,378 kids in May to 1,141 kids in September. The loss of 237 kids is all because of sequester… I don’t understand the logic of these cuts – no one does… People need to understand that in order to ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ you first need to have bootstraps.”

And these stories are just examples of the true heartbreak and the beginning of the domino effect of sequester cuts.  If a child loses head start, what will her parents do to find child care?  If they have no child care, how will they both work, which is pretty essential for any family eligible for Head Start?  If they can’t work, how will they afford rent and utilities? If they can’t afford rent and utilities, how will they avoid becoming homeless?  How will they afford food to feed their family? And winter coats? A child losing head start is tragic – for the child, for her family, and for a nation that is systemically disinvesting in its children – in our very future.

This is true cost of sequestration. A systematic and thoughtless disinvestment in the structures and supports that make it possible for families to make ends meet, that offer education and training, that provide the tools necessary for a person to improve his or her lot – to use those bootstraps, to refer to Sharilyn from Oregon.

And while we, in the faith community, are most concerned about the economically poor people who are bearing the burden of this sequester, the true cost of sequester is even broader than that.  The sequester is affecting all non-defense discretionary spending – not just the safety net – the true cost has great implications for public health, safety, and our very security, at home and around the world. The true cost of sequestration is also about cancer research, HIV medication, food safety, clean air and water, access to public and pristine wilderness, international diplomacy, disaster response, supports for women and children experiencing domestic and relationship violence… and livelihoods.  The federal government is the largest single employer in the nation, not to mention all the federal funds that pass through state budgets into the paychecks of state and local employees, like school teachers, police officers, fire fighters, and social workers.  The sequester is not just numbers on a page – it’s real people’s lives.

Instead of the blunt axe of the sequester, we need a fine scalpel – and a blood transfusion.  We need a discriminating eye that will review the budget and make judicious decisions about investments, effectiveness, and need.  We need to take a serious look at our military spending, which has doubled in the last ten years, even as the Pentagon is not audited or accountable for its use of taxpayer dollars.  And we need new revenue. There is simply no way to address the current economic situation – economic inequality, joblessness, under-education, systemic poverty – or our long-term fiscal challenges of deficits and debt, without new revenues.

Congress has an opportunity to address and mitigate a real harm.  The sequester is not a short-term problem.  Without congressional action, these undiscriminating cuts will take a chunk out of the budget pie chart for the next eight years, even before the policy and priority conversations begin.  As a result, by 2023 these caps will cut $1.6 trillion from discretionary programs, relative to the inflation-adjusted 2010 funding levels. Under sequestration, discretionary programs—including both defense and nondefense programs—will face more than $700 billion in cuts over the next eight years. And in two years, non-defense discretionary spending will equal a smaller percentage of our economy than ever before.

So, while Congress can’t undo the harm that the sequester has already inflicted, it can stop it for future years, as well as make the investments necessary to mitigate the effects for the people already suffering under sequester cuts.  And more than preventing harm, Congress actually has an opportunity here to further the common good – to make our economic system more just and less stratified.  As Mike laid out for us, there are many ways, within the enforcement of current law and with the closing of loopholes, that will make sure that from those to whom much has been given, much will be required.

We hope your takeaway today is that the faith community cares about the sequester because it affects real people – the very people who are sitting in our pews and coming to our soup kitchens – those who are being served and those who are serving.  We care because we believe that God has a better, more wholesome, loving, and inclusive vision for our human community.  We believe in a God of abundance who provides us with all that we need – and that it is our own failure that leaves some with too little and some with too much. 

In short, we care because we believe God has called us to care and called prophets like Sister Simone to make it a big deal.  We know that the sequester is doing real harm, and at the same time we know there are ways to accomplish our economic goals much more efficiently and effectively, without causing that harm, through common sense policy changes, like replacing the sequester with a balanced approach – that includes judicious spending cuts AND new revenues that ensure that those who have plenty are contributing their fair share to the good of all. We have the opportunity, not only to address some of the long-term fiscal challenges facing the nation, but also to invest in human capital and human need, to reduce spending responsibly while continuing to invest in the programs that make this nation strong and a place that seeks out the general welfare for everyone who lives here, not just a privileged few.

Office of Public Witness' Leslie Woods in Yale's Reflections Magazine

Leslie Woods, Representative for Domestic Poverty and Environmental Issues at the Office of Public Witness, has recently been published in Yale Divinity School's Reflections Magazine.  

The article, titled American Dream, American Nightmare: Poverty Today, calls attention to the reality of poverty in our country today, its impact in women in particular, and our responsibility to address these issues.  "It is hard for the rest of us – me included – to conceive of the pain and anxiety a woman feels when she cannot afford to fill a prescription for a sick child."

To read the full article, click the link below.
http://www.pcusa.org/media/uploads/washington/pdfs/yds_reflections_lwoods_womenandpoverty.pdf

Office of Public Witness Offers Information on Washington’s Debt Ceiling Deal

On Tuesday, August 3rd, Office of Public Witness staff worked with colleagues in the Interreligious Working Group on Domestic Human Needs (DHN) to present a webinar on the content of the debt ceiling deal approved by Congress and signed by the President earlier this week.  The deal will increase the federal debt ceiling by at least $2.1 trillion and cut federal spending by about the same amount.

The goal of the webinar was to present the details of the new law, in addition to outlining the faith community’s concerns in this debate and the steep road of work ahead.  To learn more about the newest law of the land, watch a recording of Tuesday’s webinar.

About five minutes before the webinar began, the hosting software reached its capacity, so that many people were unable to login to the webinar.  Because of this overwhelming interest, this webinar will be presented again on Tuesday, August 9^th, and 2pm eastern time.  Instructions for logging in will be available as soon as possible on the Office of Public Witness website, blog, and Facebook page.

The Faith-based advocacy community is gearing up for several more months, and even years, of witness on behalf of those who can least afford to bear the cost of budget cuts.  In Tuesday’s webinar, representatives from the United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society, PC(USA) Office of Public Witness, and Bread for the World, explained that there is much work to be done in the months ahead.

“Whatever you think about [this bill], this is only the first phase.  This was not the final card,” said Amelia Kegan, Policy Analyst from Bread for the World.

Watch the recorded webinar or join the reprise presentation on Tuesday, August. 9^th. http://umc.adobeconnect.com/p52l9dkkrln/