Dear Paul Ryan....

Paul Ryan Challenged On Budget By Georgetown [CATHOLIC] Faculty (UPDATED)

Dear Rep. Paul Ryan,

Welcome to Georgetown University. We appreciate your willingness to talk about how Catholic social teaching can help inform effective policy in dealing with the urgent challenges facing our country. As members of an academic community at a Catholic university, we see your visit on April 26 for the Whittington Lecture as an opportunity to discuss Catholic social teaching and its role in public policy.

However, we would be remiss in our duty to you and our students if we did not challenge your continuing misuse of Catholic teaching to defend a budget plan that decimates food programs for struggling families, radically weakens protections for the elderly and sick, and gives more tax breaks to the wealthiest few. As the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has wisely noted in several letters to Congress – “a just framework for future budgets cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons.” Catholic bishops recently wrote that “the House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria.”

In short, your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Her call to selfishness and her antagonism toward religion are antithetical to the Gospel values of compassion and love.

Cuts to anti-hunger programs have devastating consequences. Last year, one in six Americans lived below the official poverty level and over 46 million Americans – almost half of them children – used food stamps for basic nutrition. We also know how cuts in Pell Grants will make it difficult for low-income students to pursue their educations at colleges across the nation, including Georgetown. At a time when charities are strained to the breaking point and local governments have a hard time paying for essential services, the federal government must not walk away from the most vulnerable.

While you often appeal to Catholic teaching on “subsidiarity” as a rationale for gutting government programs, you are profoundly misreading Church teaching. Subsidiarity is not a free pass to dismantle government programs and abandon the poor to their own devices.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/2 ... r=Politics

No doubt these Catholics are considered the "wrong sort of Catholics" to dare to question some extremist Ayn Rand-ian nutjob's budget that screws the poor to give bigger tax-cuts to the millionaires... (Trickle-down STILL doesn't...)

Isn't it great that the Ryan budget has been hung around Romney's neck like an albatross... He's already scrambling.

Lessee, today being Tuesday, one of today's flip-flops has to do with Ryan's budget--(You know...the one that he said was marvelous ). Ryan's budget factors in the return of student-loan rates to their original 6.8%...more than double what it is now. But FEAR NOT!!....Romney stuck his finger up in the wind, and made the command-decision that he agrees with the President that the rates "should not go up."!!

If you don't like Mitt's policies, just wait... He has others...or the ones he has will change. :Whistle

Sure, let's keep spending money we don't have. I don't have kids who will have to pay it back. Trillions.

It's not "money spent" if it's paid back with interest... But thanks for playing.

Sounds good as an "outrage of the day" faux talking-point. :Snooze

Yep, those catholics at Georgetown are correct, we should print and borrow $2Trillion instead of $1Trillion, and feed everyone in Africa and India and everywhere else too. Lots of people are in need of food. Its only paper and interest rates are low.

"We don't have a long term plan, we just know that we don't like yours"

Yes, they ARE correct. We should NOT be giving more tax-breaks to rich people who don't need them; we should start cutting unnecessary military bases and other expenditures; we should stop giving $4billion/year subsidies to energy companies who are making hundreds-of-billions in profits already and don't need them, etc., etc.

Yes, they ARE correct...We SHOULD be using our money to help the poor instead of Ayn Rand's vision of selfishness and elitism. It's not a matter of spending more...It's a matter of cutting more in the RIGHT AREAS--and that does NOT include screwing the middle-class and poor to boost spending to the plutocrats that don't need it, and the military that get too much already.

Monetizing the debt, have to love it. Are we still at spending 66% more than we are bringing in?

And how much will the Buffett/Golden Corral Buffet tax bill bring us? Hours of extra spending.

I don't care where they start cutting the GOP excesses... Nobody said the Buffett Rule was the whole solution to the national debt. It's a GOOD place to start.

It's time to start cutting the Bush Tax-Cuts; It's time to raise the rates on the over-$250,000 crowd; It's time to cut the military budget; It's time to raise the rates on capital gains back to income rates; It's time to stop letting hedge-fund managers get away with paying capital-gains rates on their obscene incomes; It's time to stop rewarding companies for sending their jobs overseas; ....

I don't CARE how much, as an overall percentage, the Buffett Rule cuts the deficit. It's STILL A GOOD PLACE TO START.

LadyJazzer wrote: It's not "money spent" if it's paid back with interest...

How the hell is it not money spent?

Do you actually believe it (principle) ever gets paid back? It is an interest only loan, infinite term, no principle payment, future interest rate unknown and unlimited. (see Greece and Spain).

I love liberal math, I could sit and watch it all day.

Ask the Pope. He thinks BO is a Buffoon.

Joe wrote:

LadyJazzer wrote: It's not "money spent" if it's paid back with interest...

How the hell is it not money spent?

Do you actually believe it (principle) ever gets paid back? It is an interest only loan, infinite term, no principle payment, future interest rate unknown and unlimited. (see Greece and Spain).

I love liberal math, I could sit and watch it all day.

They skipped that class in school and replaced it with Entitlement Utopia 101.