Letter to Senate Foreign Ops Subcommittee from Bishop Pates and CRS, March 23, 2012

Letter from Bishop Richard E. Pates, Chairman, Committee on International Justice and Peace and Dr. Carolyn Y. Woo, President, Catholic Relief Services to Senate Foreign Ops Subcommittee, March 23, 2012

As you deliberate on the FY 2013 State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs budget, we urge you to protect funding for lifesaving poverty-focused international humanitarian and development programs as listed on the attached table. 

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and Catholic Relief Services (CRS) continue to acknowledge the difficult fiscal challenges that Congress faces.  We support fiscal responsibility and urge you to pursue this goal in morally responsible ways.  We must draw a “circle of protection” around the most vulnerable at home and abroad and the programs that serve them. 

The President’s budget request would increase the overall International Affairs Budget by 2.4% in fiscal year 2013 relative to fiscal year 2012, but would cut poverty-focused programs.  The poverty-focused programs advance solidarity with poorer nations and enhance global security.  They save lives by curing and preventing diseases, making farmers’ fields more productive, caring for orphans whose lives hang in the balance, feeding people victimized by natural and man-made disasters, and housing and caring for refugees.  Your leadership to protect these accounts is more important than ever given the current debate in the House. 

We urge you to increase funding to these programs because careless cuts cost lives.  We are particularly concerned about the President’s proposed cuts to the following accounts: Migration and Refugee Assistance, HIV/AIDS, other health and nutrition programs, and International Disaster Assistance.  While we appreciate our nation’s fiscal challenges, the current economic crisis disproportionately impacts the world’s poorest people.  Given inflation and high food prices, neither they nor we can afford cuts to these life-saving accounts.

letter-to-senate-foreign-ops-subcommittee-from-bishop-pates-crs-2012-03-23.pdf