Not long ago that permenent resident of Upside-down World Paul Ryan denied that his budgets hurts the poor, and further claimed that his budget was "Driven by His Catholic Faith"
David Brody: Tell me a little bit about the morality and the debt. Where does your Catholic faith play into the way this budget is crafted?
Paul Ryan: A person’s faith is central to how they conduct themselves in public and in private. So to me, using my Catholic faith, we call it the social magisterium, which is how do you apply the doctrine of your teaching into your everyday life as a lay person?
To me, the principle of subsidiarity, which is really federalism, meaning government closest to the people governs best, having a civil society of the principal of solidarity where we, through our civic organizations, through our churches, through our charities, through all of our different groups where we interact with people as a community, that’s how we advance the common good. By not having big government crowd out civic society, but by having enough space in our communities so that we can interact with each other, and take care of people who are down and out in our communities.
Basically Ryan's claim is that if you
Dis-empower National Government from being able to aid the poor, you somehow, magically,
Empower Local Government and institutions to take up the task. He claims that National government engenders "Dependency" on aid, while Churches would - somehow - create independence from aid, during which he ignores that Welfare was "reformed" almost two decades ago under President Bill Clinton to put specific limits on the length that aid could be provided. You can't become "dependent" on something that's going to run out in a year or two.
He wants to massively cut the Food Stamp/SNAP program by over $100 Billion even when the FDA reports that this program alone reduced poverty by 8% during the midst of the Great Recession..
Ryan claims this is despite the fact that many of the programs his budget would cut, like Medicaid and CHIP are already handled locally by the states, while being funded federally because the communities and states that are in the worst economic state Don't Have The Funds to pull their out people out of doldrums. It takes the strong economic states, the ones who actually donate more money in Federal taxes than they get back to help fill the gap for the beneficiary states. Ironically, the Donor States tend to be Blue (or Green in the following Map) and the Beneficiary states, tend to be Red.
So if the Donor States are no longer going to help the Beneficiary States, how exactly - economically - are they going to help themselves, when they don't even have enough money to give to charity and churches? Where else is that missing money going to come from?
And just what do Catholic Leaders think of this?
As you'll see over the flip - a lot.
Basically, they don't like it. Nope. Not at all.
If it became law, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s federal budget would decimate food stamps, Head Start, higher education assistance, Medicaid, Medicare, job training and other programs that help vulnerable working families make it through tough times and live better lives. It would push more Americans into poverty, while dramatically cutting taxes for the richest people in the country. “It’s the height of hypocrisy for Rep. Ryan to claim that his approach to the budget is shaped by Catholic teaching and values,” said Fr. John Baumann, S.J., founder of PICO National Network. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has been clear about where they stand on protecting the poor in the federal budget.
The Catholic Church not only sponsors a vast array of anti-poverty programs and initiatives, but has been at the forefront of lobbying Congress to reject the radical proposals to cut social programs for the vulnerable while reducing taxes on the wealthy. During last year’s budget debate, the Bishops, along with leading Evangelical and Mainline Protestant religious leaders said in their Circle of Protection statement 1 that any effort to reduce the deficit must not increase poverty or inequality. The Bishops reiterated that clear standard of assessing budget proposals based on whether they promote the common good and protect “the least of these” (Matthew 25) in their March 6, 2012 letter to Congress:
“A central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it affects “the least of these” (Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first.”
Yeah, but for Ryan they don't come first, or second, or even fourteenth. The great downtrodden and trample masses of RICH PEOPLE come first. The so-called Job creators who've been making more money over the last ten years than we've even been albe to
count before. Ryan wants to cut taxes for corporations, when over 50% of U.S. corporations
Don't even pay any taxes.
(Reuters) - Most U.S. and foreign corporations doing business in the United States avoid paying any federal income taxes, despite trillions of dollars worth of sales, a government study released on Tuesday said.
The Government Accountability Office said 72 percent of all foreign corporations and about 57 percent of U.S. companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005.
More than half of foreign companies and about 42 percent of U.S. companies paid no U.S. income taxes for two or more years in that period, the report said.
Even though most of these companies are paying essentially
nothing in taxes, Ryan wants to make their tax rate
less than nothing because then, and only then, will they finally start making jobs.
Yeah, and if I give the stick-up guy my wallet - then and only then - will he not shoot me.
IN FACT - while he's taking away services and giving higher tax breaks to the rich, Ryan's plan actually raises taxes on the poor.
Ryan isn't driven to this by his Catholic Faith, it's his Blind Faith in Ayn Randian Fantasy and Koch Brothers money that drives him.
Vyan