Faith leaders call Paul Ryan a hypocrite

Paul Ryan wins prizes for audacity and depravity in claiming that his vicious budget blueprints have been "informed" by his faith. It is refreshing to see faith leaders call him a hypocrite.

“It’s the height of hypocrisy for Rep. Ryan to claim that his approach to the budget is shaped by Catholic teaching and values,” said Fr. John Baumann, S.J., founder of PICO National Network. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has been clear about where they stand on protecting the poor in the federal budget.

Ryan is a serial hypocrite as religious leaders condemned his 2011 budget blueprint for the exact same reasons. Ryan and his fellow conservatives want to increase the suffering of people at the bottom of the economic ladder while giving more tax cuts for the wealthy.

For the second year in a row, the Catholic Bishops have pointed out the moral failure in the Ryan budget blueprint.

“A central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it affects “the least of these” (Matthew 25).  The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first.” 

By these measures, the Ryan budget is a severe failure. It places the burden of reducing the deficit on the backs of struggling families, while cutting the taxes of the wealthiest Americans by trillions dollars. The non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that two out of every three dollars cut from non-defense spending would come from program that serve people of limited means. The Center’s analysis is that the Ryan proposal would produce “the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history and likely increase poverty and inequality more than any other budget in recent times (and possibly in the nation’s history).”

I could only stand and cheer this characterization of the Ryan budget.

Rep. Ryan’s claim that he is helping the poor by making their lives more difficult is inspired by radical Libertarian novelist Ayn Rand (author of a book entitled "The Virtue of Selfishness"), not Holy Scripture. The mission of the Church is to “bring good news to the poor” and to protect the vulnerable, not to justify the impoverishment of the very young, the very old and the sick in order to enrich the wealthy. The debate over the federal budget is not an intellectual exercise.  It has real life consequences for families, parishes and communities. American families are under enormous economic and social pressures; the Ryan budget would make their lives more difficult by removing much of the social safety net that families rely on at times of need.

What more needs to be said? Well, I can think of one thing. As incisive as these statements condemning Paul Ryan are, I cannot help but wonder about another double standard. John Kerry was denied communion and harshly criticized by Catholic leaders for his support for abortion rights. How come deliberately and repeatedly attempting to harm the poor, sick, and vulnerable all over America warrants only a wag of the finger?