The Hill: Ryan says faith helped shape his budget
... The White House has attacked the plan, saying in a statement that Republicans “banded together to shower millionaires and billionaires with a massive tax cut paid for by ending Medicare as we know it,” and President Obama has called it “thinly veiled Social Darwinism” that disproportionately hurts the poor.
"It's antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everyone who's willing to work for it, a place where prosperity doesn't trickle down from the top, but grows outward from the heart of the middle class,” the president said at a luncheon hosted by The Associated Press last week.
But in the CBN interview, Ryan made a moral case for his budget, saying that the government shouldn’t be responsible for lifting its citizens out of poverty — rather, that it’s the obligation of the citizens themselves to be society’s caretakers.
“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,” Ryan said.
“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 into a life of independence.” ...
So is it possible that people from different political vantage points who genuinely care about poverty might come to dramatically different conclusions about the moral thing to do? Nah. I'm going with one side or the other has to be Satan incarnate while the other is Mother Teresa. ;-)
