wfn.org | [ENS] Federal budget is 'beyond redemption,' bishop says

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

Friday, November 04, 2005

Federal budget is 'beyond redemption,' bishop says

ENS 110405-1

[SOURCE: Episcopal Public Policy Network] Standing in the LBJ Room
of the U..S. Capitol adjacent to the Senate floor, the Right Reverend
F. Neff Powell, bishop of the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, declared,
"The current budget reconciliation package in Congress is quite frankly
beyond redemption and should be abandoned."

Bishop Powell spoke at a press conference November 2 with U.S. senators
Max Baucus of Montana and Dick Durbin of Illinois to criticize the fiscal
year 2006 federal budget reconciliation bill now before Congress.

Also participating in the press conference were Judy Cato of Camp Springs,
Maryland who formerly ran a home for low-income retired seniors and
Medicare recipients, and Thomas G. Giessel, a life-long farmer from
Larned, Kansas..  Both raised objections to the package.

The press conference was held as the Senate prepared to vote on the
budget-reconciliation package this week with the House vote expected to
follow next week.

The Senate narrowly passed its version for the budget on October 27, which
includes $39 billion in cuts, including cuts to Medicaid, student aid,
and farm subsidies while offering limited Hurricane Katrina relief. The
House bill cuts $50 billion for programs serving the working poor,
children and the elderly, including eliminating 300,000 individuals
and families from nutritional assistance, 40,000 children from free or
reduced-price lunch programs, and reducing care for 4,000 foster children.

If the House bill passes, the House and Senate bills will go to
"conference" where differences will be ironed out. A final vote on any
compromise measure is now expected before Thanksgiving.

Since its introduction earlier this year, the budget targeted cuts
affecting those most in need.  Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold and leaders
of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Methodist General
Board of Church and Society, Presbyterian Church (USA), and United Church
of Christ have questioned the budget's priorities throughout the year.
They have been joined in their objections by the U.S. Catholic Conference
of Bishops and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

"Our concerns, however, have grown more urgent as we have seen the faces
of poverty exposed during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita," Powell said at
the news conference. "And read the statistics on poverty contained in
the most recent Census Bureau and Department of Agriculture reports;
we now know that 37 million people in this nation lived in poverty in
2004 - 10 million of them children."

Maureen Shea, director of the Episcopal Church's Office of Government
Relations in Washington, D.C. said that, "Episcopalians across the country
have been heavily engaged in the budget issue. Letters to the editor and
opinion pieces by members of the Episcopal Public Policy Network and
our bishops, as well as calls and letters to key Members of Congress,
are building a chorus of concern about this budget package."

John Johnson, a domestic policy analyst in the government-relations
office, explained that budget rules protect the reconciliation process
from filibuster in the Senate and limit the amount of time the budget
bill can be debated.

"In addition to hurting the working poor, children, and elderly of our
nation, this budget reconciliation package threatens the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge; drilling proponents were able to include Arctic drilling
in the budget reconciliation package as a way to avoid filibuster in
the Senate," he said.

"Congress and the President must come together and focus on the poverty
that exists across the nation, and not exacerbate poverty by passing a
budget reconciliation bill that further impoverishes one group of poor
people in order to help those impoverished or further impoverished by
the hurricanes," Powell said.

For further information on the church's advocacy work on public
policy, go to www.episcopalchurch.org/eppn. You can read a copy of
"A Moral Choice for the United States: The Human Rights Implications
for the Gwich'in of Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge," a report done in partnership with the Episcopal Church at
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3654_69063_ENG_HTM.htm

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