The Missionary Messenger Volume 1- Issue 1 | Página 15

Congress: Restore Your Reputations
Bishop Don DiXon Williams
Recent polls indicate that the approval rating for Congress has fallen to 10
percent—a historic low. Bickering and dysfunction on Capitol Hill are
seemingly to blame for this frustration with lawmakers.
Over the past three years, efforts to reduce the federal deficit have
overshadowed the people who are most in need of assistance. The most
conservative wing of the House of Representatives has pushed for deep and
disproportionate cuts to programs that help poor people. However, by fits
and starts, Congress has come to agreement with the president on about $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction without
gutting anti-poverty programs. Cuts to programs for poor people have come to about $25 billion—just one
percent of the radical cuts that the House has proposed.
But deeper cuts to vital programs are inevitable unless Congress commits to work together and with the
president on a sensible plan. When negotiations between Congress and the president broke down earlier this
year, sequestration went into effect, triggering automatic budget cuts.
These cuts are doing real harm—70,000 fewer children will be enrolled in Head Start this year, for example, and
millions of meals to housebound seniors have been eliminated. Unless sequestration is replaced, deeper cuts will
continue each year and fewer vulnerable people will be protected.
During the economic crisis of 2008, hunger surged in the United States, but it has not since increased, even
though poverty and unemployment rates have remained high. Because the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps), which is funded through the farm bill, was protected during budget
battles, the vital program helped to keep hunger at bay.
This summer, the House Agriculture Committee proposed a farm bill that included $20 billion in cuts to SNAP.
That is equivalent to eliminating half of all the charitable food distribution by churches and food banks over a
10-year period. But some House members wanted even steeper cuts—the House recently doubled the proposed
cut to $40 billion.
A House committee has approved a cut of 26 percent to development assistance programs that provide help and
opportunity to extremely hungry and poor people around the world. These cuts would leave millions of people,
in countries such as Ethiopia and Tanzania, without access to food aid, clean water, and life-saving medicine.
Such cold, uncompromising decisions contribute to public disapproval of elected officials.
The nation is again approaching hard deadlines that will require our leaders to come to bipartisan agreement on
budget matters. Failure would lead to government shutdown and, once again, risk our nation’s creditworthiness
and economic recovery.
We ask members of Congress to put an end to brinksmanship and come to
agreement on these difficult issues. We must all urge them to maintain a
circle of protection around the programs that help hungry and poor people in
our country and abroad.
Bishop Don DiXon Williams is racial-ethnic outreach at Bread for the World
and sits on the Board of Bishops of the United Church of Jesus Christ,
Baltimore, Md.