wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Religious leaders protest cuts in services to poor

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Note #9006 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05594
Nov. 3, 2005

Religious leaders protest
cuts in services to poor families

Giddings Ivory joins group calling for government 'heart transplant'

by Toya Richards Hill

LOUISVILLE - The Rev. Elenora Giddings Ivory prayed on Capitol Hill Thursday
as she and other religious leaders urged Congress not to cut services to the
nation's poor.

	The ecumenical group held a news conference on the federal budget
reconciliation packages now under consideration in the House and Senate, then
trekked to the capitol rotunda for prayer and a show of force.
	
	"We come here today as people of faith," said Giddings Ivory,
director of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s Washington office. "We come
here to hold up our icons, the prophets, the disciples, the Messiah, who
still challenge us to 'hate evil and love good and establish justice in the
gate,' where injustice to the vulnerable ... will thrive if these budget cuts
are realized.

	"I am here today to express concern. ... Our nation is about to
balance its budget on the backs of the poor."

	Giddings Ivory was accompanied by the Rev. Bob Edgar, general
secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC);
Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform
Judaism; and the Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners and editor of
Sojourners magazine. Participating by telephone was the Rev. Thomas L. Hoyt
Jr., the NCC president. 

	"We need a compassionate government, and not a punitive one," said
Hoyt, also a bishop in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in
Mississippi and Louisiana. "We need a 'heart transplant' in this government."

	The U.S. Senate was expected to vote on a budget reconciliation
package before the end of the week. A vote in the U.S. House of
Representatives is expected next week. The package includes cuts in
entitlement spending and other programs for disadvantaged families.

	"The House budget reconciliation package incorporates the
reauthorization of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program ...
increasing the work requirements for TANF recipients, without adequate
funding for child care to meet the needs of working parents," Giddings Ivory
said. "Some 270,000 children in low-income working families would likely lose
child-care assistance by 2010 under this plan.

	"Whatever happened to the congressional calls for greater support for
families? Don't poor families count?"

	Wallis challenged Christian members of Congress to "dust off your
Bibles ... and do some Bible study," calling the bill "a reversal of Biblical
priorities."

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