by
Laurence
M. Vance

Recently
by Laurence M. Vance: Should
Libertarians Be Conservatives?

As expected,
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget resolution (H.
CON. RES. 112), which he called “The Path to Prosperity:
A Blueprint for American Renewal,” went down in defeat recently
in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

After passing
by a vote of 228-191 in the House (all Democrats and 10 Republicans
voted against it), it failed in the Senate by a vote of 41-58 (all
Democrats and 5 Republicans voted against it).

On the very
same day, the Senate also rejected four other budget resolutions,
including the president’s budget proposal, which was voted down
unanimously by senators from both parties.

Although Ryan
did not invoke religion when he first introduced his budget proposal
on March 20, in an interview last month with David
Brody of Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, he
described how his Catholic faith, particularly the principle of
subsidiarity, guided his thought process and is consistent with
Catholic social teaching:

David
Brody: Tell me a little bit about the morality and the debt.
Where does your Catholic faith play into the way this budget is
crafted?

Paul Ryan:
A person’s faith is central to how they conduct themselves in
public and in private. So to me, using my Catholic faith, we call
it the social magisterium, which is how do you apply the doctrine
of your teaching into your everyday life as a lay person?

To me, the
principle of subsidiarity, which is really federalism, meaning
government closest to the people governs best, having a civil
society of the principal of solidarity where we, through our civic
organizations, through our churches, through our charities, through
all of our different groups where we interact with people as a
community, that’s how we advance the common good. By not having
big government crowd out civic society, but by having enough space
in our communities so that we can interact with each other, and
take care of people who are down and out in our communities.

Those principles
are very very important, and the preferential option for the poor,
which is one of the primary tenants of Catholic social teaching,
means don’t keep people poor, don’t make people dependent on government
so that they stay stuck at their station in life. Help people
get out of poverty out onto life of independence.

Liberal Catholics,
of course, were outraged.

According to
Daniel
Maguire, professor of ethics at Marquette University, a Jesuit
institution, subsidiarity “means that nothing should be done
by a higher authority that can be done by active participation at
lower levels. Right-wingers like Paul Ryan grab that one word, ‘subsidiarity,’
and claim it supports their maniacal hatred of government. It doesn’t.”
He faults Ryan’s budget for cutting “programs that help the
99 percent.” The Ryan budget “defends greed over need.
Extend the tax breaks and further deregulate the dogs of greed.”

The U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops reiterated their demand that
the federal budget protect the poor, and said the GOP measure “fails
to meet these moral criteria.”

Sixty
Catholic social justice leaders, theologians, and clergy also
released a statement saying that “this budget is morally indefensible
and betrays Catholic principles of solidarity, just taxation and
a commitment to the common good.”

The Georgetown
University faculty wrote in an open letter to Paul Ryan:

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.

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.

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.

Added Thomas
J. Reese, a Jesuit, and one of the organizers of the letter:
“Our problem with Representative Ryan is that he claims his
budget is based on Catholic social teaching. This is nonsense. As
scholars, we want to join the Catholic bishops in pointing out that
his budget has a devastating impact on programs for the poor.”

But Catholic
critics of the Ryan budget plan have nothing to fear. Republicans
are as firmly committed to funding the federal leviathan as the
Democrats are.

Paul Ryan may
be a devout Christian, but since he is the one who claims his faith
guided his thought process when he prepared his budget, I have some
questions about the extent of this guidance.

What kind of
faith proposes an unbalanced budget with a deficit of $833 billion
for fiscal year 2013?

What kind of
faith proposes to take from Americans $517 billion and redistribute
it to other Americans in the form of TANF, refundable EIC, SSI,
unemployment, food stamps, housing and energy assistance, and school
lunch subsidies?

What kind of
faith proposes to take billions from taxpayers’ and give it to foreign
governments in the name of foreign aid?

What kind of
faith proposes to fund Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP when the Constitution
nowhere authorizes the federal government to have anything to do
with health care?

What kind of
faith proposes to fund the thieves and sexual predators in TSA uniforms?

What kind of
faith proposes to fund the Department of Education, an unconstitutional,
unnecessary, and harmful department that Republicans have talked
for years about shutting down?

What kind of
faith proposes to fund bloated military budgets and senseless foreign
wars and occupations?

What kind of
faith proposes spending $21.7 billion on agriculture in the form
of direct assistance, export assistance, loans to food and fiber
producers, agricultural research, commodity programs, crop insurance,
and disaster assistance when no spending on agriculture is anywhere
authorized by the Constitution?

What kind of
faith proposes a “fiscally conservative” budget that is
only within 5 percent of the almost $4 trillion that liberal Democrats
want to spend?

Not the faith
of anyone who is committed to the Constitution, less government,
less spending, less regulation, deficit reduction, limited government,
liberty, the free market, fiscal conservatism – and other things
Republicans say they believe in.

It is not Ryan’s
faith that I seriously question, but his Republican thought process.

For Catholics
who are confused about the diverse voices in their church over the
Republican budget plan, I can recommend two resources. The first
is a new work by Randy England titled Free
Is Beautiful: Why Catholics Should Be Libertarian. The second
is the definitive work by Thomas Woods titled The
Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy.
This latter work ought to be on the shelf of every Catholic inclined
in any way toward limited government and the free market. Read it;
study it; digest it. It is an ideal antidote to the economic fallacies
peddled by liberal and conservative Catholics.

May
30, 2012

Laurence
M. Vance [send him mail]
writes from central Florida. He is the author of Christianity
and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State, The
Revolution that Wasn’t, and Rethinking
the Good War. His latest book is The
Quatercentenary of the King James Bible. Visit his
website.

Copyright
© 2012 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in
part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

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