Paul Ryan's budget is a moral budget

[Geee]

Washington Examiner:

House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., provoked some angry push-back when he claimed that not only is his proposed sweeping revamp of the U.S. budget fiscally sound but also morally sound.

 

In a CBN interview, Ryan said he draws inspiration from his Catholic faith.

He argues that Catholic priority for caring for the poor should focus on helping folks move out of poverty: "Don't make people dependent on government so they stay stuck in their station in life, help people get out of poverty, out onto life of independence."

Catholics criticizing Ryan don't see it this way. They see him cutting back on welfare programs that focus on the needy.

But this is not a new debate, and it's not limited to Catholics. Those on the Left of all religious persuasions have long been criticizing religious conservatives, claiming they're indifferent to poverty and care only about abortion and homosexuality.

It's a critical discussion for our nation today, and Ryan deserves credit for casting his proposed reforms in moral as well as economic terms. It provides the opportunity to challenge today's mistaken conventional wisdom, which holds that morality and economy are separate universes having little to do with each other.

I can speak from personal experience going back to my years on welfare. The intent of federal welfare programs might have been to help the poor, but they caused far more damage than benefit.

When you tell a poor mother that to qualify for her check, she must demonstrate that she is single, not working and has no savings, what are the chances she'll get married, look for a job or put money in the bank? When this goes on for generations, what do you think this does to a community?

It's no accident that in 1960, according to the Pew Research Center, five years before President Johnson signed into law his War on Poverty, 61 percent of black adults were married. By 2008 this was down to 32 percent. In 1960, 2 percent of black children had a parent that had never been married. By 2008, this was up to 41 percent.

[Saltbag]

Good article, but I don't like entangling religion with his budget.