U.S. Bishops Say Trump Budget Underfunds ‘The Poor, Diplomacy, and Environmental Stewardship’

In a sharply worded statement, two chairmen of bishops’ committees have critiqued the Trump administration’s budget proposal for “underfunding” poverty and environmental programs while overfunding national security measures.

In Tuesday’s statement, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace, and Bishop Frank J. Dewane, chairman of the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, took issue with the proposal’s “deep cuts to vital parts of government, including underfunding programs that serve the poor, diplomacy, and environmental stewardship.”

“The federal budget is a moral document,” the bishops state, and budget decisions “ought to be guided by moral criteria that safeguard human life and dignity, give central importance to ‘the least of these,’ and promote the well-being of workers and families who struggle to live in dignity.”

“Our nation must never seek to balance the budget on the backs of the poor at home and abroad,” they declare.

While praising the proposal’s wresting of federal funds from “certain abortion providers” and “providing increased resources to combat opioid addiction,” the bishops denounce “calls for increases in immigration enforcement spending and further increases in military spending, including on nuclear weapons.”

The statement urges Congress and all Americans “to evaluate the Administration’s budget blueprint in light of its impacts on those most in need, and work to ensure a budget for our country that honors our obligations to build toward the common good.”

According to Catholic teaching, government exists to provide for the common good, which is understood as the sum total of social conditions that allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.

Providing for the common good means defending the inalienable rights of citizens, in particular, the exercise of natural freedoms, making accessible what is needed to lead a truly human life, and the security of society and its members.

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