Republican Ryan Cites Pope to Defend Budget Cuts

[Al Moritz]

Originally Posted by bellasbane

Paul Ryan got busted by the experts and is now trying to back-track. It is perfectly clear to anyone who has read Ayn Rand that in form and rhetoric Ryan models himself according to her philosophy. Thank God for the Jesuits and Catholic academics who really know their stuff and are willing to call him out on it and not let him distort Catholic Social teaching:

"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.”
http://www.c-span.org/uploadedfiles/..._april2012.pdf

The problem with the Ryan budget is not that it cuts the budget, but that it makes disproportionate and unnecessary cuts to programs that support the poor in order to pay for tax breaks to the wealthy. The preferential treatment for the wealthy as opposed to the poor is the inherent immorality of the GOP economic model - which does NOT work except to create the massive income disparity we now have between the top 1% and the middle class.

How some Catholics on this board can defend Ryan's plan is beyond me.

[MJE]

Here are quotes from Father Robert Sirico, president of the Acton Institute, re: Ryan's proposal. Occasionally Father Sirico is on EWTN.
As Father notes, many of those who signed the protest letter are dissenters of Catholic dogma re: life. They are defenders of big centralized government but not the Catholic understanding of the human person.

Acton Institute Core Principles
Integrating Judeo-Christian Truths with Free Market Principles
1. Dignity of the Person
2. Social Nature of the Person
3. Importance of Social Institutions
4. Human Action
5. Sin
6. Rule of Law and the Subsidiary Role of Government
7. Creation of Wealth
8. Economic Liberty
9. Economic Value
10. Priority of Culture

http://www.christianpost.com/news/in...octrine-73582/

Sirico: The motivation of subsidiarity is that human needs are complex and sometimes very nuanced. When you pull back and make human needs abstract, you don’t get to the core of what the need is, so that people closest to human need can make that determination better than bureaucrats or politicians that have other pressures and motivations far away from the person who is actually in need.
Sirico: It's also intriguing, by the way, to see how many names on that list are dissenters from Catholic dogma. Questions of whether or not you should have food stamps, what the minimum wage should be if you have one, all those are prudential questions. They are not part of Catholic dogma. The Catholic Church, including the bishops conferences, doesn't even profess to have the competency to define that dogmatically. There is no economic system that the Catholic Church endorses. All of that is part of an open debate. But, [a number of] the people who have signed that letter dissent from the Catholic Church on abortion, women's ordination, same-sex marriage, a whole host of things.
Sirico: The operating paradigm [of those who have been critical of the Ryan budget] is that there is a static amount of wealth in the world and that the essential moral undertaking is to find ways to redistribute that to ensure the well-being of the poor. That is their essential worldview. What I'm saying, what I think Ryan is trying to say, and I'm not a Republican by the way, is that wealth is dynamic. You can create more of it and if you do that, then it is not a question of dividing up the pie, but growing the pie. It is all the difference in the world between an economic view that is zero-sum and economic view of the world that is creative and dynamic.

[Swiss Guy]

Originally Posted by Al Moritz

How some Catholics on this board can defend Ryan's plan is beyond me.

Ryan is a Catholic, so obviously some Catholics can defend it. Also keep in mind this forum is REALLY conservative. Although sometimes that's really nice...

[Pork Roll]

Paul Ryan is doing the same thing that pro-choice catholics do, pick and choose which catholic teachings to support. It is morally wrong for a nation to intentionally live in debt, but how you reign in that debt is the big question. Ryan seems to want to cut exclusively government social programs and not also the defense budget. I don't think the church has ever supported our massive defesne spending. I think Ryan is trying to accomidate catholic social teaching withing the context of republican fiscal policy. I think he owes his allegiance to the church first and should steer the GOP closer towards the catholic ideal.

The Acton Institute is backed by powerful neo-conservative finacial interests and obviously have an agenda to promote unregulated free-market capitalism.

[Pork Roll]

You can create more of it and if you do that, then it is not a question of dividing up the pie, but growing the pie. It is all the difference in the world between an economic view that is zero-sum and economic view of the world that is creative and dynamic.

I agree that is the gist of it: trickle down wealth. This isn't catholic BTW but is in reality a distortion of what the bible says, that God blesses people with wealth and punishes them with poverty. This is a common theme in the old testament and may have traction with some Jews and evangelical protestants. May or may not be a good idea.

[rlg94086]

Originally Posted by Pork Roll

I agree that is the gist of it: trickle down wealth. This isn't catholic BTW but is in reality a distortion of what the bible says, that God blesses people with wealth and punishes them with poverty. This is a common theme in the old testament and may have traction with some Jews and evangelical protestants. May or may not be a good idea.

A growing pie does not trickle down. If it does, the filling is far to runny, and your crust will probably be mushy. You may want to check your recipe.

Btw...there is nothing about growing the economic pie that is contrary to Catholic teaching. The Church does not view economic growth as a negative...only Democrat Catholics do.

[Swiss Guy]

Originally Posted by Pork Roll

Paul Ryan is doing the same thing that pro-choice catholics do, pick and choose which catholic teachings to support. It is morally wrong for a nation to intentionally live in debt, but how you reign in that debt is the big question. Ryan seems to want to cut exclusively government social programs and not also the defense budget. I don't think the church has ever supported our massive defesne spending. I think Ryan is trying to accomidate catholic social teaching withing the context of republican fiscal policy. I think he owes his allegiance to the church first and should steer the GOP closer towards the catholic ideal.

The Acton Institute is backed by powerful neo-conservative finacial interests and obviously have an agenda to promote unregulated free-market capitalism.

I agree that the US spends WAY too much on defense and there are parts of his budget I don't like, but you can't just say Ryan isn't a faithful Catholic just because you don't like his budget. Abortion is an intrinsic evil; cutting or not cutting spending to programs isn't.

[EmperorNapoleon]

Originally Posted by Caldera

The debt was $10 trillion in 2008. Today it's $15.6 trillion and growing, not shrinking. Over the next 10 years it's projected to grow to $26+ trillion. Where is the urgency to get something done? It's not there on the part of the Democrats.

Ryan's plan would balloon the deficit by more than $6 trillion over a period of 10 years and you're criticizing Democrats?

[MJE]

Pork Roll writes:
The Acton Institute is backed by powerful neo-conservative finacial interests and obviously have an agenda to promote unregulated free-market capitalism.

Are you suggesting Father Sirico plays fast & loose re: morality of Ryan's proposal to line the pockets of The Acton Institute ?

[Pork Roll]

but you can't just say Ryan isn't a faithful Catholic just because you don't like his budget

I never said that. Unlike Nancy Pelosi, his policies do not make him a bad catholic. He's pro-life and that matters much more. It's my opinion that his finacial policy is not entirely "catholic" in inspiration but it should be.

The Acton Institute is backed by powerful neo-conservative finacial interests and obviously have an agenda to promote unregulated free-market capitalism

This isn't opposed entirely to catholic teaching. only that the Acton institute isn't funded by the vatican or by readers of GK Chesterton. It may be good, I do not know.

[ProVobis]

Originally Posted by Caldera

Before his Georgetown speech, however, Ryan disavowed Rand's views.

But is this necessarily a good thing?

Alan Greenspan had espoused Ayn Rand, in fact wrote on it, but was selected to head the Federal Reserve, the very entity which she condemned. Perhaps Reagan selected him because he supported the Rand philosophy, maybe not, but he sure didn't implement her philosophy. And look where we are today because of his policies.

[ishii]

Originally Posted by EmperorNapoleon

Ryan's plan would balloon the deficit by more than $6 trillion over a period of 10 years and you're criticizing Democrats?

Source?

[EmperorNapoleon]

Originally Posted by ishii

Source?

http://www.factcheck.org/2011/05/ryans-budget-spin/

[ishii]

Originally Posted by EmperorNapoleon

http://www.factcheck.org/2011/05/ryans-budget-spin/

So can I start a pro-Republican website that "fact checks" on controversial issues and then people can cite it as "objective" ?

Ishii

[Caldera]

Originally Posted by EmperorNapoleon

Ryan's plan would balloon the deficit by more than $6 trillion over a period of 10 years and you're criticizing Democrats?

See the difference in budgets:
http://budget.house.gov/UploadedFile...tInBudgets.pdf

The question is: do the American people really want to continue travelling down the road to even bigger centralized government paid for with higher taxes and more debt when there is a better alternative?