Oppose Budget Balanced on Backs of Poor People

Today the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives started debating their 2016 budget resolutions. Votes on these budgets will determine anti-hunger policy for the rest of this year and beyond.

If passed, the proposed budget cuts could lead to devastating increases in hunger and poverty in the U.S. and abroad. For example:

• The House budget proposal drastically cuts SNAP (formerly the Food Stamp Program) by at least 34 percent, the equivalent of up to 220 missed meals annually for each SNAP participant.
• Both budget plans would repeal the Affordable Care Act and block grant Medicaid, making deep cuts to health coverage for low-income people.
• Lifesaving international programs would be cut by 16 percent in the House budget. Funding for our international humanitarian aid budget has already been cut by 22 percent – we can’t afford any further cuts.
• Sixty-nine percent of the budget cuts in both the House and Senate come directly from programs impacting low-income people – placing the burden on those who are already suffering.
• Both House and Senate budgets allow to expire critical tax relief for the poorest workers, through the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC), plunging 16 million people, including 8 million children, into deeper poverty.
• Both budgets keep the automatics budget cuts of 2011 (called sequestration) in place – and cut even further. This puts programs like WIC, food aid, and poverty focused development assistance in grave danger.  

Raise your voice with thousands of faithful advocates. Call your Senators and Representative at (800) 826-3688 in the next 24 hours. Urge them to oppose cuts to programs that are working to end hunger and poverty in the U.S. and around the world.

For more information on proposed budget cuts to programs that serve the most vulnerable people, visit our blog.

* Many thanks to Bread for the World for use of their 800-number and permission to reprint an excerpt of their action alert.

What’s in Congress’ budget deal, and what isn’t?

House Budget Chairman Ryan and Senate Budget Chairman
Patty Murray announce the budget deal

With great aplomb, the media has been in a frenzy to report the new and seemingly unprecedented progress of Congressional budget talks.  Indeed, last week the House overwhelmingly approved (332-94) a two-year budget blueprint that will set the stage for the final weeks of negotiation at the start of the New Year.  The Members of the House who opposed the deal are, for the most part, on the far right or the far left.   The Senate will take up the measure this week, and while it has a steeper slope to climb in that chamber, it will likely pass there before the adjournment of the 1^st session of the 113^th Congress.

But what is actually in the deal?  And what is not?

First, this is NOT a funding bill.  It is a budget blueprint that essentially takes the place of the annual Budget Resolutions for Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 and 2015.  These Resolutions are usually passed no later than April 15^th of the year (April 2014 for the FY15 budget).  Congress must still act on spending bills by January 15^th to avoid another government shutdown.

So, what does the budget deal do?

• It makes it much more likely that Congress will reach spending deals and avoid a government shutdown in January.
• It is also more likely that FY2015 budget negotiations will proceed in the normal order, starting early next year.
• It shrinks the sequester (across-the-board spending cuts) by $45 billion in 2014 and $18 billion in 2015. 

• This year’s $45 billion increase will be split evenly between defense and non-defense discretionary programs (2015 increases will be split evenly also).
• The mandatory programs affected by sequester (including Medicare), on the other hand, see the length of their cuts extended for two additional years, in 2022 and 2023 (i.e. more cuts in the long-term to pay for these short-term increases).
• It means that appropriators in January will be able to put some funds back into the programs that serve the most vulnerable, like Head Start and Housing Vouchers.
• It continues to protect the Defense department from bearing its full share of spending cuts by restoring some of its funding, even after it was funded in FY2013 with an additional $20 billion above the original deal that created the sequester.
• It raises some new revenue for the federal government by increasing some fees and other premiums, included the following item:
• It increases retirement contributions for new federal employees, reducing their take-home pay, even after federal workers have already been seriously attacked in recent months through furloughs, sequester, and layoffs.

What does it NOT do?

• It does not extend Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits for the long-term unemployed (workers unemployed for 27 weeks or more, not including those who have given up looking for a job and “left” the labor force), which expire on Dec. 28. 

• Without an act of Congress, 1.3 million workers will lose benefits only days after Christmas, and an additional 3.5 million workers will lose their safety net in the course of 2014. 
• According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), allowing benefits to expire will harm the economy by resulting in up to 300,000 fewer jobs by the end of 2014.
• The modest economic boost achieved by partially offsetting the sequester will essentially be counteracted by the expiration of UI for the long-term unemployed.
• It does not do anything about the U.S. debt ceiling.
• It does not make some of the deepest cuts to social and safety net programs, about which we have been concerned all year.
• It does not close corporate tax loopholes or reform the tax code in order to achieve more economic equality.  

For a more in-depth analysis of the budget deal, see this paper released by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

In all, this deal is a mixed bag.  It could have been so much worse.  But we hoped that it would be so much better.  In the short term, it provides some stability and accomplishes some measure of bipartisanship.  It makes the brinksmanship of recent months all the less likely when Members of Congress return from the holiday recess, as so many Members, especially Leadership in the House, have agreed to these spending levels. It paves the way for final spending bills in early January that will avert the next government shutdown, whose deadline looms on January 15^th.

But this bill fails U.S. workers who are and have been struggling to find jobs in a still languishing economy. It reduces take-home pay for federal workers who have already borne the brunt of furloughs and budget cuts. And it locks in the sequester for 2016-2023, so we will continue to have these funding battles every year for the foreseeable future.

In all, it is positive sign that Members of Congress from across the aisle came to the same table and negotiated a compromise -- but this is a low bar. It is a very small step in the right direction, and the Senate should pass it.  But we can do so much better for this nation and for each other.

Moral Mondays and the movement to break boundaries

Moral Mondays

North Carolina civil disobedience movement recalls, reaffirms Mandela’s legacy

Published by the Presbyterian News Service

by Emily Enders Odom, Communications Associate 

Members of Salem and New Hope presbyteries gathered on
Moral Monday. From left to right: Alice Geils Nord, Bernie
 Nord, Bob Brizendine and Paula Applegate. —Mindy Douglas

Every Monday for the past eight months, like clockwork, the Rev. Frank Dew has sounded his rallying cry across the social media landscape.

“Let's go to Raleigh!’ reads a representative post to the Salem Presbytery pastors’ Facebook group June 23. “Leaving at 3:00 pm…for Moral Monday! What is happening in Raleigh is not who we are! We are better than that!”

Dew, pastor of New Creation Community Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, N.C., and chaplain at Greensboro Urban Ministry, an ecumenical outreach agency, was one of Salem Presbytery’s key leaders in the “Moral Monday” protests, a statewide civil disobedience movement.

The North Carolina NAACP-led Moral Monday protests were organized in April to fight against cuts to social programs, education reforms and changes to voting laws in the state.  

Last week, North Carolina NAACP President the Rev. William Barber, II, and 11 others were found guilty of second-degree trespassing and violating building rules while protesting in April at the state legislature, according to a Dec. 4 article by the Associated Press. 

Dew himself was arrested as part of the third and largest group of protesters June 3.

“As a lifelong resident of North Carolina, I no longer recognize our state,” he said. “Although over my lifetime I have seen slow but steady progress toward social justice, during this last legislative session I have seen our state turn back the clock in terms of voting rights, education funding, environmental concerns, health care (not expanding Medicaid), worker’s rights (not extending unemployment benefits) and the elimination of the Racial Justice Act, which allowed Death Row inmates to appeal based on racially selected juries. I believe that the Moral Monday protests have helped shine a light on these changes that the people of this state will remember come 2014.” 

The Rev. J. Herbert Nelson, II, director of the PC(USA)’s Office of Public Witness (OPW) in Washington, D.C. — himself no stranger to being arrested for acts of civil disobedience — also took part in the Moral Monday protests, which have spread across the state to other North Carolina cities since the movement began.

“I attended the Asheville, N.C., Moral Monday in August after preaching at a youth conference in Montreat,” Nelson said. “Moral Monday is a powerful model for social and transformative change in a period when both individual and collective human rights are being suppressed. I have known Rev. Barber and worked with him for several years while serving as a pastor and community leader in North Carolina. He is a great critical and strategic thinker about issues regarding social change.” 

Nelson acknowledged that the organizing strategy behind Moral Mondays shares some key similarities with the model for the OPW. “Of course our specific objectives are different, but framing the movement for social justice is similar,” he said. “The OPW’s mission is about breaking boundaries established by the political order, organizing coalitions around a central theme rather than single issues, promoting basic issues that impact most people and building internal coalitions around those issues; that is, big tent versus silos.” 

The Rev. Arthur Canada, vice chair of the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board and pastor of McClintock Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, N.C., has also participated in Moral Mondays. 

“We had a great turnout at Marshall Park in Charlotte this summer,” said Canada. “People speaking from a variety of different perspectives all came together to get the legislature to do what’s beneficial for the people, especially the poor. Charlotte Presbytery was well represented by a number of teaching elders, council leadership and committee members, including our presbytery’s [2013] moderator, Floretta Watkins.”

The North Carolina NAACP’s Barber was quoted in the Associated Press story as saying that a protest had been planned for later this month and a large rally scheduled in February that he hopes will draw thousands to Raleigh. “We’re going to be back,” he said. 

Nelson found the timing of a December event — a Moral Monday Service of Redemption at the State Capitol in Raleigh scheduled for Dec. 23 — to be especially significant.

“As the world celebrated the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela this past week, it is important to remember that many of the contextual struggles of human rights across this nation and around the globe are being challenged every day,” he said. “Our spiritual, moral and ethical focus as Presbyterian Christians must be centered on recapturing the essence of our social justice advocacy while finding new ways to resist the marginalization of more people in this country and around the globe. Moral Monday is one significant model in this effort.”

Dew said that he hopes the Forward Together Movement started by the North Carolina NAACP will cause some people “to take a second look at Church and Christianity.” 

“As we stand up and speak out with — and on behalf of — the poor and left out of our state, I hope people will see that this is what Christianity looks like,” he said.

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.