DON’T BALANCE BUDGET ON BACKS OF THOSE IN NEED

LETTER TO THE HOLLAND SENTINEL: Holland — To Congressman Bill Huizenga: I was grateful for the opportunity to meet recently with your legislative assistant Peter Stehouwer. Peter told us that you see deficit reduction as the number one moral issue facing the United States today. It is certainly a serious problem and I agree it needs addressing. None of us want to saddle our children and grandchildren with this debt burden.

However, debt is not the only major moral question before us. We also face the equally important moral issue of how the deficit is reduced. For 25 years all bipartisan deficit reduction plans (1985 and 1987 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings laws, the 1990 Budget Enforcement Act, the 1993 deficit reduction package, the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, and the 2010 pay-as-you-go law) have exempted important low-income programs from automatic cuts. We have a choice as to how we reduce the deficit. Please vote to continue the precedent to protect both domestic and international programs vital to hungry and poor people. These programs save lives and ensure children will not be mentally and physically stunted.

As a person of faith, I ask you to call on our government to fulfill the biblical mandate for justice for those in need. As King David prayed for his son Solomon, “May he [as king] defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy” (Ps. 72.4), Nay our government do so today for “the least of these.” We need a balanced, moral approach to deficit reduction: an approach that increases revenues and trims programs that do not target poor people.

Carol Myers
Holland