ACTION ALERT
Call on Congress to make the moral choice: Remind them that poor and vulnerable have a special moral claim to limited funding.
What's the issue? In their FY 2012 budget resolution the House of Representatives cut the international assistance budget by more than one third. While CRS and USCCB do not support the entire international assistance budget, we strongly support the poverty-focused accounts. A cut of the proposed magnitude is likely to devastate povertyfocused efforts and the people who benefit from them. The House budget also disproportionately cuts programs that serve poor people in our own nation. The Senate will soon consider its budget resolution and then the two chambers will have to reconcile their budget blueprints.
What do you want me to do? Contact your members of Congress now, especially members of the Senate and House Appropriations and Budget Committees, and urge them to preserve poverty-focused international assistance in the FY 2012 budget at the President's FY 2012 request level. Tell them that:
- It is morally unacceptable for our nation to balance its budget on the backs of poor people at home and abroad.
- Fiscal responsibility is important for the common good, but it must be achieved in morally responsible ways.
- A just budget framework cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor people. 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.
Take Action Now! Call 1-866-596-7030 for talking points and to be connected to your members' office.
Prayer for Courage
We gather in your presence Lord. We ask that this prayer will draw us deeper into right relationships with You, with ourselves, with each other, with institutions and with the earth. We place our hopes, our dreams, our works and our efforts for justice in particular the eradication of poverty before You. We pray that we may listen deeply and reflectively so that we will be more consciously aware of the needs of the most vulnerable in our society. Having identified those needs may we have courage to work courageously for the Reign of God and the transformation of our World, Amen.
Reflection
"If a brother or a sister be naked and in want of daily food," says St. James, "and one of you say to them, 'Go in peace, be warm and filled,' yet you do not give them what is necessary for the body, what does it profit?" (James 2:15-16) Today no one can be unaware of the fact that on some continents countless men and women are ravished by hunger and countless children are undernourished. Many children die at an early age; many more of them find their physical and mental growth retarded. Thus whole populations are immersed in pitiable circumstances and lose heart." [PP 45]
"... It is not just a question of eliminating hunger and reducing poverty. It is not just a question of fighting wretched conditions, though this is an urgent and necessary task. It involves building a human community where men can live truly human lives, free from discrimination on account of race, religion or nationality, free from servitude to other men or to natural forces which they cannot yet control satisfactorily. It involves building a human community where liberty is not an idle word, where the needy Lazarus can sit down with the rich man at the same banquet table.
On the part of the rich man, it calls for great generosity, willing sacrifice and diligent effort.
Each man must examine his conscience, which sounds a new call in our present times. Is he prepared to
support, at his own expense, projects and undertakings designed to help the needy? Is he prepared to
pay higher taxes so that public authorities may expand their efforts in the work of development?
Is he prepared to pay more for imported goods, so that the foreign producer may make a fairer profit? ..."
[PP 47]
POPULORUM PROGRESSIO [45 – Aid to Developing Nations] [47 – A World of Free Men] ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PAUL VI ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF PEOPLES. Read Entire Encyclical here.
For more information, please visit the following sites: UN.org and PaxChristi.net
