Republicans would LOVE to hear what the bishops say about lady parts. About caring for the poor,
all Jesus-style? Not so much.
Today, as the
Senate plays its favorite game—Who Gets Screwed and Who Gets Saved: Tax Cuts Edition—let's take a moment to review the Strongly Worded Letter
TM sent to senators by the nation's most important authority on morality and government policy, according to Senate Republicans:
As you prepare to consider legislation that addresses deficits and spending, I reiterate the following moral criteria to guide these difficult budgetary choices:
1. Every budget decision should be assessed by whether it protects or threatens human life and dignity.
2. 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.
3. Government and other institutions have a shared responsibility to promote the common good of all, especially ordinary workers and families who struggle to live in dignity in difficult economic times.
Wow, that's some hardcore commie Marxist collectivist Kenyan socialism right there, isn't it? Government has a responsibility to workers and families? The federal budget
must care for "the least of these"—which is not, contrary to Republican ideology, the poor struggling millionaires who are too "uncertain" to contribute to the country unless they're given an extension of their super-sweet Bush tax cuts.
But that's not all:
A just framework for future budgets cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons; it requires shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs fairly.
Translation: Stop cutting services that poor and struggling families need to survive; start cutting our grossly over-bloated defense budget; and raise taxes on the richest Americans who are paying lower taxes than ever before.
We urge Congress to maintain and strengthen the bi -partisan commitment to assist those working families who struggle the most in these difficult economic times. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church clearly states the importance of ensuring that workers make a family wage, “a wage sufficient to maintain a family and allow it to live decently. . . . There can be several different ways to make a family wage a concrete reality. Various forms of important social provisions help to bring it about, for example, family subsidies and other contributions for dependent family members. . .” (no. 250). These tax credits that help low-income families live in dignity are important steps in this direction.
In other words, the Catholic bishops want Republicans to stop trying to screw poor people in order to protect the already historically low tax rate of the wealthiest Americans who don't need any help at all to be able to pay their rent or feed their families. Really, the message couldn't be clearer.
Not that this will make a damn bit of difference to Republicans. They love to cite the (ha) moral authority of the Catholic bishops when it suits their cause—say, when they and the bishops agree that having a vagina makes you a slut, and sluts don't deserve health care.
Isn't it amazing how sometimes you can "respectfully disagree" with God's law, and sometimes, if you dare to "respectfully disagree," you hate God and America and freedom? Yeah, funny that.
The Republicans have made perfectly clear how little they care what the bishops have to say on this issue. Right now, their top priority is screwing the middle- and working-class in order to give even more money to the perpetual war machine and the richest Americans who need help the least.