Catholic Social Ministry Gathering 2012 Hill Notes: Protecting Poor and Vulnerable People

Hill Notes on Protecting Poor and Vulnerable People, February 2012 (For CSMG participants)

• Over 46 million Americans (15 percent) live in poverty—the highest level in 50 years.
• Nearly 25 percent of children are below the poverty line.
• Catholic teaching calls us to focus on “the scandal of so much poverty and so many without work” and to assess economic choices by their impact on human dignity and the least advantaged.

Bishops' Budget Principles

1. Assess every budget decision by whether it protects or threatens life and human dignity.
2. Prioritize the needs of “the least of these” (Mt 25): hungry, homeless, unemployed, and impoverished people.
3. Share responsibility across society to promote the common good, especially for ordinary workers and struggling families.

The "Circle of Protection"

• A bipartisan, interfaith coalition safeguarding poverty-focused programs from across-the-board cuts.
• Core tenet: deficits must be reduced, but not on the backs of hungry and poor people; efficiency is welcome, cuts are not.

Priority Advocacy Areas

1. Unemployment Insurance (UI)

• Decent work at decent wages is the best path out of poverty.
• Four jobseekers compete for every opening; UI supports families while they search for work.
• Must extend emergency UI benefits without imposing harsh eligibility limits.

2. Child Tax Credit (CTC)

• Pro-work, pro-family, effective at lifting 1.3 million children out of poverty in 2009.
• Current rules allow immigrant parents to claim CTC with a Taxpayer Identification Number; new SSN requirements would exclude vulnerable children of working immigrant families.
• Excluding them is unjust—they did not create the deficit.

3. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)

• Rapidly responsive safety net; efficient and well-targeted with low fraud rates.
• Wrong to balance the budget by cutting nutrition assistance that serves poor children.

Shared Sacrifice and Revenue

• Deficit reduction must include fair revenue increases, not just program cuts.
• Restoring economic growth and decent jobs is a powerful way to shrink deficits.
• Redirect agricultural subsidies from large, affluent producers toward small farmers and hungry consumers rather than cutting SNAP.
• Urge your Members of Congress to extend UI without restrictive barriers.
• Oppose any proposal that would deny the CTC to children of immigrant families.
• Defend SNAP from cuts in the FY2013 budget debate.
• Call for revenue-raising measures and economic-growth strategies that share sacrifice equitably.

Hill-Notes-Budget-Protect-the-Poor-Feb-2012.pdf