Let’s not slip the bill to the wrong people

As Congress works on settling some budget issues for the next fiscal year, these are some of the proposals likely to pass:

— Mandatory cuts in Medicaid funding. This would force the states to squeeze down on eligibility for this health care coverage, adding untold thousands — perhaps millions — to the ranks of the uninsured.

— Cuts to the food stamp program, this coming at a time when agencies assisting the poor and working poor already see an increase in their cases and when many of those displaced by the Gulf Coast hurricanes are still forced to depend on food stamps.

—Mandatory cuts in most of the federal programs that help the poor and near-poor maintain hope. These include Supplemental Security Income, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Social Services Block Grant, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Tens of billions of dollars are being spent through the federal government to help New Orleans and the Gulf Coast recover from hurricane damage. That money has to come from somewhere. Since the administration of President Bush, along with the Republican majority that controls Congress, will not consider raising or adjusting taxes, the argument is that the money must come from other parts of the federal budget. But those other parts turn out to be places where the neediest Americans, in effect, are handed the bill.

As Father Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA said in a letter to members of Congress, "It is not the poor, the hungry, the disabled or sick who should pay for (hurricane recovery)." He noted that, "in our Catholic social teaching, we are taught that the burden of financing the government should fall on those best able to pay."

Looking away from the area of direct hurricane damage, one effect of the recent storms in the Gulf of Mexico has been a squeeze on supplies of heating oil and natural gas. As winter draws near, experts in the energy business are telling us it will cost up to 50 percent more to heat our homes. Here again the neediest among us will feel that burden most keenly.

There is a federal program to help poor families with heating costs, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. It will surely be inadequate for this winter’s needs without additional funding, which is being resisted by congressional leaders. Two recent efforts in the Senate to put another $3.1 billion into the program failed by only a few votes. This is another instance of the bill for hurricane effects being presented to those least able to pay.

Pope Benedict XVI offered an alternative during his Angelus address Oct. 16. He asked for a greater commitment to solidarity with the needy and called on governments "to hear the cry of the poor."

The pope referred to the Oct. 17 International Day for the Eradication of Poverty and offered prayers for poor people "fighting courageously to live in dignity and care for their families." Wherever we see people in need, we must act, the pope said, "because we all have the duty to take care of our brothers and sisters."

This duty is carried out in both personal charity and support for social systems that share social costs equitably. We have watched as our tax system has been adjusted in favor of people with money. The presumption in such a shift is that this is the way to raise investment in economic production and aggregate income. Whether that presumption is true or not, it cannot be the whole of a governing philosophy — not if we are a decent people, moral beings rather than a mere collection of economic ciphers. We must not act as if needy, vulnerable people among us have no value.

For Christians the needy are our clearest encounter with the face of God. For all of us as citizens they are fellow members of this national family. We must not allow them to be slipped the bill for hurricane recovery with the excuse that there’s no other way to pay for it. That is nonsense and we know it.

Write and call our senators and members of Congress. Tell them you aren’t willing to take benefits away from needy people so that you won’t be taxed a little more to meet the hurricane emergency. Tell them we’re a bigger people than they think; a people who care more about justice and equity than a few dollars more in the tax bill.