THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD
(apologies to Keith Olbermann)
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) told Christian Broadcast Network earlier this week that the House GOP’s budget, which he wrote, was driven by his Catholic faith. “A person’s faith is central to how they conduct themselves in public and in private,” Ryan said, and Catholic principles are what led him to cut programs for the poor so as to keep people from becoming “dependent on government.”
Paul Ryan is living proof that religion is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Clearly and openly willing to selectively cherry-pick through Catholic doctrine to buttress his draconian budget, Ryan is using his faith as justification for gutting social services and leaving millions of Americans to fend for themselves.
Ryan conveniently ignores Catholic social teachings that provide for assisting the poor and improving access to food, jobs, health care, housing, and the social safety net. His “immoral disaster” masquerading as a budget displays the vision of someone thoroughly beholden to the 1%. Fr. John Baumann, S.J., head of the PICO National Network, is one of Ryan’s most vocal Catholic detractors, calling his budget as “a severe failure.”
“It’s the height of hypocrisy for Rep. Ryan to claim that his approach to the budget is shaped by Catholic teaching and values,”…. “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.”…. “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….”
Ryan’s includes cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Pell Grants, and “other programs that help vulnerable working families make it through tough times and live better lives.” Meanwhile, the wealthiest individuals and corporations would be given generous tax breaks. This despite Conservatives like Ryan loudly decrying redistribution of wealth as “Socialism.” That objection evidently doesn’t come into play when wealth is redistributed upward. Fully 62% of Ryan’s budget cuts come from programs that benefit the poor. For Ryan to claim the imprimatur of the Almighty in order to rationalize and justify his draconian socioeconomic engineering is as arrogant as it is blasphemous.
Jesus Christ was not concerned with the well-being of the wealthy; he focus was on the welfare of the “least among us.” Perhaps if Ryan cracked his Bible once in awhile, he might be reminded of that. He may profess to be a “Christian”, but he clearly doesn’t understand the first thing about the teachings of Jesus Christ.
