Nuns on the Bus Believe That Paul Ryan’s Budget Cuts Leave Something To Be Desired: Morality

This column about the Nuns on the Bus, a group of women of the cloth who are hoping to promote “solidarity, justice and the common good,” from the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne raises some interesting points about Paul Ryan’s proposed, oft-touted budget — namely, that it doesn’t take into account how much difficult the private sector would have in matching the work of the federal government in assisting the underprivileged in America.

From the Washington Post:

The nuns’ message on poverty got some reinforcement in a statement late last month from Cardinal Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York and Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn. “There are very dark clouds,” they wrote. “Too much rhetoric in the country portrays poor people in a very negative way.”

They argued that the economy is not only failing to “provide sufficient jobs for poor people to earn a decent living to support themselves,” but is also offering fewer “resources for government to do its part for Americans in need.” The situation, they concluded, is “devastating to struggling families throughout the country.”

…

[Sister Simone Cambpell of Nuns on the Bus] points to a study from Bread for the World, a genuinely nonpartisan group that advocates on hunger issues, to suggest one useful line of questioning. To make up for the food stamp cuts in Ryan’s budget, the group found, “every church in the country would have to come up with approximately $50,000 dedicated to feeding people — every year for the next 10 years.” Can government walk away like this? Can we realistically expect our houses of worship to pick up such a tab?

For more, see the Washington Post.

This article appears in Oct 4-10, 2012.