One Catholic priest is arguing that H.R. 1 ("The One Big Beautiful Bill Act") would not only decimate public safety nets and lavish more money on the wealthiest Americans, but it would also subvert basic principles of Christianity.
In a Tuesday essay for Religion News Service (RNS), the Rev. Thomas Reese — who is an ordained Jesuit priest — made the case that the Republican tax and spending bill currently being debated in the U.S. Senate would be a "disaster for America" if passed and signed into law. Reese warned that the legislation would "add trillions of dollars to the federal debt, give tax breaks to the very wealthy and cut programs that help the middle class and the least advantaged," as well as betray Christian values.
"The Trump administration, like barbarians and terrorists, is capable of destroying but not building," he wrote. "It has turned on its head the gospel imperative of caring for the most vulnerable, and cares only for the rich and powerful."
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Reese went on to point out that in order to pay for trillions of dollars in tax cuts that are heavily skewed in favor of the wealthy, Republicans want to cut federal funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) by hundreds of billions of dollars. And he observed that they're proposing these cuts at a time when average families are having greater financial difficulty affording groceries.
"About 40% of SNAP recipients are children, and that program will be cut by nearly $300 billion at a time when food prices have gone up," Reese wrote. "... Rather than a preferential option for the poor, the Trump administration has a preferential option for the rich. Rather than honoring humble love, it glorifies arrogant power."
The Jesuit priest also blasted both Trump and Republicans for the bill's proposed cuts to the President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which he credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives in underdeveloped countries. He additionally lamented that cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would likely result in many more preventable deaths of the world's most vulnerable populations.
"We used to think of the White House as a bully pulpit, but now it is simply occupied by a bully," he wrote.
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Click here to read Reese's full essay in Religion News Service.