Columbus
Dispatch...
Catholic academics
blast Boehner over budget
Cuts conflict with church’s teachings on poor, group says
By Jack Torry
Thursday, May 12, 2011
WASHINGTON - A group of Catholic academics assailed House Speaker John
Boehner yesterday for backing a budget plan that is “particularly cruel
to pregnant women and children” while dramatically revising the federal
health programs of Medicare and Medicaid.
In a letter to the Republican from southwestern Ohio, more than 70
Catholic university professors, priests and nuns from across the
country charged that the House Republicans’ 2012 budget proposal “guts
long-established protections for the most-vulnerable members of
society.”
They also asserted that Boehner’s long voting record in the House “is
at variance from one of the Church’s most-ancient moral teachings”: to
help the poor. They wrote that “your record in support of legislation
to address the desperate needs of the poor is among the worst in
Congress.”
The sharply worded letter is one of the most-intense attacks on Boehner
for his effort to slash federal budgets to reduce the deficit. Boehner
is a Catholic from the Cincinnati suburb of West Chester.
The letter was sent days before Boehner is to give the commencement
address on Saturday at the Catholic University of America in
Washington, D.C. More than two dozen academics from Catholic University
signed the letter, while 14 scholars and professors from Ohio schools
signed as well.
Brittany Bramell, a Boehner spokeswoman, said the speaker will “be
delivering a personal, nonpolitical message” that “he hopes will speak
to all members of the graduating class, regardless of their backgrounds
or affiliations.”
“He is deeply honored to have been invited by CUA to address the
school’s graduating class and is looking forward to receiving an
honorary degree from the only Catholic college in our country that is
chartered by Catholic bishops.”
Victor Nakas, a university spokesman, said in a statement that the
letter raised “diverse viewpoints on these questions not only within
our university, but also within the Catholic community in the United
States.”
In a backhanded swipe at Boehner, the authors of the letter wrote that
“it is good for Catholic universities to host and engage the thoughts
of powerful public figures, even Catholics such as yourself who fail to
recognize ... important aspects of Catholic teaching.”
House Republicans earlier this year approved a budget for the 2012
federal spending year that begins Oct. 1. It not only includes deep
cuts in social programs, but also would transform Medicaid, a
federal-state program that covers health costs for the poor, into a
block grant for the states, giving them broad authority to design their
own programs.
In addition, the House GOP budget would end Medicare’s fee-for-service
plan and instead provide seniors with a voucher to buy insurance
offered by private companies.
The letter accuses the House GOP budget of “gutting maternal- and
child-health grants and slashing $500 million from the highly
successful Women Infants and Children nutrition program.”
“The House budget radically cuts Medicaid and effectively ends
Medicare,” they wrote. “It invokes the deficit to justify visiting such
hardship upon the vulnerable, while it carves out $3trillion in new tax
cuts for corporations and the wealthy.”
Among those in Ohio signing the letter were John Sniegocki, professor
of Christian ethics at Xavier University, and Vincent J. Miller, Gudorf
Chair in Catholic Theology and Culture at the University of Dayton.
Boehner is a graduate of Xavier.
Read it at the Columbus Dispatch
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