wfn.org | ELCA Presiding Bishop Questions Morality Of Federal Budget

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ELCA NEWS SERVICE

March 10, 2005

ELCA Presiding Bishop Questions Morality Of Federal Budget
05-040-FI

     WASHINGTON, D.C. (ELCA) -- The Rev. Mark S. Hanson,
presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
(ELCA) and president of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF),
challenged the values reflected in the federal budget that U.S.
President George W. Bush proposed for 2006.  Hanson and four
other church leaders met with reporters here March 8.
     "We are here today, in concerted action, because we believe
that the Administration's proposed federal budget priorities
stand in contradiction to biblical tradition.  If enacted, it
will be truly devastating for people living in poverty in this
country and around the world," Hanson said.
     Hanson used Baltimore-based Lutheran Services in America
(LSA) as a specific example.  LSA is an alliance of the ELCA, the
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and their nearly 300 health and
human service organizations.
     LSA social ministry organizations provide care in 3,000
communities, serving more than 6 million people, or one of every
50 people across the United States and the Caribbean.  The
operating budgets of member organizations exceeded $8 billion in
2004.
     Hanson said it is possible for Lutheran social ministry
organizations to operate on such a large scale "only because of
the funding provided by the federal government through federal
and state programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, low-income
housing, child care, child welfare services, Social Services
Block Grants, WIC, Head Start and many other similar programs.
Lutheran provider organizations receive billions of dollars of
governmental support each year, with 90 percent coming from the
Department of Health and Human Services."
     The bishop said those programs are at risk in the proposed
federal budget, as are programs ELCA congregations administer to
provide housing for the elderly, nutritional meals for children
and fixed-income adults, after-school programs, space for WIC and
Head Start programs, and shelter for the homeless.
     The proposed federal budget reduces income by offering new
tax cuts and extending old tax cuts, Hanson said.  "That will
reduce revenues by $129 billion over the next five years and $1.4
trillion over 10 years.  This figure rises to $1.6 trillion when
the added interest payments on the debt are taken into account,"
he said.
     "Most of the tax benefits go to those with incomes more than
sufficient to provide for their 'daily bread,'" Hanson said.
     "The domestic discretionary programs for people in need did
not create the deficit, and the Administration should not be
allowed to reduce the deficit solely on their backs," he said.
     To reduce the federal deficit, both revenue and spending
must be "on the table," Hanson said.
     The Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold, presiding bishop of the
Episcopal Church, New York, presented a joint statement from the
five church leaders.  "Even as it reduces aid to those in
poverty, this budget showers presents on the rich," the statement
said.  "If passed in its current form, it would take Jesus'
teaching on economic justice and stand it on its head."
     The Rev. Elenora Giddings Ivory, director, Washington
Office, National Ministries Division, Presbyterian Church
(U.S.A.), represented the church's stated clerk, the Rev. Clifton
Kirkpatrick.  "As both chambers of Congress develop their
respective budget resolutions for the coming year, the churches
of this nation urge them to develop resolutions that respond to
the real deficits faced by our society -- the deficits of hunger,
poverty and access to health care," Ivory said.
     The Rev. Ron Stief, leader of the public life and social
policy ministry team, Justice and Witness Ministries, United
Church of Christ, Washington, represented that church's general
minister and president, the Rev. John H. Thomas.  "This budget
holds back women who are trying to establish careers or working
to head their households," Stief said, citing budget cuts to
rental assistance vouchers and high school vocational education,
which have a direct impact on women.
     James Winkler, general secretary, General Board of Church
and Society, United Methodist Church, Washington, asked, "How are
we as a nation -- the richest nation in the world -- caring for
our children?"	He said 11 million children live in poverty and
13 million go hungry on any given day in the United States, but
the proposed federal budget reduces funding to assist those
children and saddles them with "a crushing federal debt."
     Talking with reporters, Hanson said personal moral values
played an important role in recent national elections.	"We
believe the very same core of our faith -- the Holy Scriptures --
widens that lens of morality from simply looking upon the
morality of individuals to morality of us as a people, as a
nation, and that morality in the light of the Scriptures will
always be tested finally on the condition of the poor amongst
us," he said.
     Hanson challenged those who support tax cuts to look beyond
"economic theory" and consider the morality of cutting the taxes
of the wealthiest Americans while reducing services to the
poorest Americans.
     The people of United States are generous, Hanson said.  "We
see over and over again when the will of the American people is
to respond to human suffering, party designation, blue state-red
state designation falls away," he said.
     When President Bush saw an outpouring of contributions to
support survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami in December, he
called on representatives of Lutheran World Relief to see that
the help reached those most in need, Hanson said.
     "What enabled those gifts to get to the victims in the
tsunami area was a public-private partnership," he said.
"Lutheran Services in America has for generations been part of
that public-private partnership, and we want to continue.  This
budget threatens that relationship and finally threatens those
who have benefited from it for so many years."
     Hanson told reporters that, as LWF president, he applauded
President Bush's announcement that the United States would commit
$15 billion to the Millennium Challenge Account to deal with
HIV/AIDS and other diseases in Africa.	He said he just returned
from a tour of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria.
     Hanson said he was deeply concerned that such public
promises often don't have the support of "budget allocations that
are approved by Congress."
     "I applaud the $150 million in this budget for Palestinian
humanitarian relief," he said.	The ELCA is part of an interfaith
effort, "pleading for the United States to take a more active
role in brokering peace in the Middle East, to continue to
support the State of Israel, but to bring relief to humanitarian
suffering among Palestinian people.  I hope that will remain in
this budget and be adopted," he said.
     "This budget is simply held up as a mirror to reflect
commitments and values of a whole nation not just its president,"
Hanson said.
     Based in Geneva, Switzerland, the LWF is a global communion
of Christian churches in the Lutheran tradition.  It has 138
member churches in 77 countries, with a membership of nearly 66
million Christians.
-- -- --
     The full statement of ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson
for the March 8 news conference is at http://tinyurl.com/3v4gl on
the Web.
     An audio news report on this story is available
in either a RealMedia http://tinyurl.com/46rpd or
MP3 format http://tinyurl.com/4yc7j on the Internet.

For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or news@elca.org
http://www.elca.org/news