November 4, 2005

WASHINGTON – Standing in the LBJ Room of the U..S. Capitol adjacent to the Senate floor, the Right Reverend F. Neff Powell, bishop of the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, declared, "The current budget reconciliation package in Congress is quite frankly beyond redemption and should be abandoned."

Bishop Powell spoke at a press conference November 2 with U.S. senators Max Baucus of Montana and Dick Durbin of Illinois to criticize the fiscal year 2006 federal budget reconciliation bill now before Congress.

Also participating in the press conference were Judy Cato of Camp Springs, Maryland who formerly ran a home for low-income retired seniors and Medicare recipients, and Thomas G. Giessel, a life-long farmer from Larned, Kansas. Both raised objections to the package.

The press conference was held as the Senate prepared to vote on the budget-reconciliation package this week with the House vote expected to follow next week.

The Senate narrowly passed its version for the budget on October 27, which includes $39 billion in cuts, including cuts to Medicaid, student aid, and farm subsidies while offering limited Hurricane Katrina relief. The House bill cuts $50 billion for programs serving the working poor, children and the elderly, including eliminating 300,000 individuals and families from nutritional assistance, 40,000 children from free or reduced-price lunch programs, and reducing care for 4,000 foster children.

If the House bill passes, the House and Senate bills will go to "conference" where differences will be ironed out. A final vote on any compromise measure is now expected before Thanksgiving.

Since its introduction earlier this year, the budget targeted cuts affecting those most in need. Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold and leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Methodist General Board of Church and Society, Presbyterian Church (USA), and United Church of Christ have questioned the budget's priorities throughout the year. They have been joined in their objections by the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

"Our concerns, however, have grown more urgent as we have seen the faces of poverty exposed during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita," Powell said at the news conference. "And read the statistics on poverty contained in the most recent Census Bureau and Department of Agriculture reports; we now know that 37 million people in this nation lived in poverty in 2004 – 10 million of them children."

Maureen Shea, director of the Episcopal Church's Office of Government Relations in Washington, D.C. said that, "Episcopalians across the country have been heavily engaged in the budget issue. Letters to the editor and opinion pieces by members of the Episcopal Public Policy Network and our bishops, as well as calls and letters to key Members of Congress, are building a chorus of concern about this budget package."

John Johnson, a domestic policy analyst in the government-relations office, explained that budget rules protect the reconciliation process from filibuster in the Senate and limit the amount of time the budget bill can be debated.

"In addition to hurting the working poor, children, and elderly of our nation, this budget reconciliation package threatens the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; drilling proponents were able to include Arctic drilling in the budget reconciliation package as a way to avoid filibuster in the Senate," he said.

"Congress and the President must come together and focus on the poverty that exists across the nation, and not exacerbate poverty by passing a budget reconciliation bill that further impoverishes one group of poor people in order to help those impoverished or further impoverished by the hurricanes," Powell said.

For further information on the church's advocacy work on public policy, go to http://www.episcopalchurch.org/eppn/. You can read a copy of "A Moral Choice for the United States: The Human Rights Implications for the Gwich'in of Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," a report done in partnership with the Episcopal Church at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3654_69063_ENG_HTM.htm.

Episcopal News Service
Episcopal Public Policy Network