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How Should We Vote?

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First of all, we should vote.  I join others in saying that to vote is actually part of our Christian calling.  Given the responsibility of the state to pursue justice, the chief goal of democracy is not to give citizens the right to determine the state’s purpose, as secular justifications for democracy might suggest.  Rather, when citizens vote, they share with their fellow citizens the duty to discern and pursue together justice and the common good.  This is a responsibility we may not ignore.  It’s a remarkable privilege—and a daunting one.

Second, we should vote biblically.  I’ve been impressed over the past nine months with how my partners in this conversation have worked to consider how biblical givens can be brought to bear on some of the most controversial issues we face in American society.  This is really hard work, particularly when people I respect come to conclusions with which I disagree (Mr. Teetsel comes to mind!), but who are evidently seeking the same goals as I am.  Clearly, this is a matter that requires yet more conversation and yet more prayer. 

Third, we should vote politically.  In these conversations, I have also been reminded that  political morality is only one dimension of morality.  Not all moral questions properly belong to the political—not all moral questions require a legislated response.  This means, among other things, that we should resist the temptation to see our principal task to be one of judging the personal morality of candidates.  Personal morality can shed some light on questions of character, but it pales in significance compared to the task of determining candidates’ political morality.  We need to consider programs, policy positions, and political principles as a way to gauge how candidates see the state to be implicated in the various questions we face as a nation.  This too is a lot of work.  No one said that citizenship is easy!

Fourth, we should vote to pursue public justice.  This means, for one thing, that our vote cannot be determined by calculations of self-interest (lower taxes for me, lower fuel prices for me, preserving my favorite tax credit).  So, for example, if we believe that justice requires that all members of society have an opportunity to participate in our common life, this will imply that in our efforts to confront our coming fiscal crisis, the burden should not be borne by the most vulnerable members of our society.  I believe that we need a more progressive tax system than we have currently, but regardless, a commitment to shield the most vulnerable may mean that I have to pay more taxes in the not-too-distant future.  I don’t relish paying taxes, but I must love my neighbor in that way, if that is what justice requires.

Finally, we should vote in hope.  Like many of my correspondents, I am not enthused about the options before voters in November.  Over the long run, I’d love to consider how structural changes to our electoral system might provide better choices.  Yet I know in politics what I also know to be true in the rest of life: that Christ is risen.  A politics of the resurrection means that the long, slow work of pursuing justice is not a work in vain, and that even a choice between two less-than-sterling candidates is still a choice that has kingdom significance.  Politics is messy, and American politics is particularly so, but the kingdom hope that is found in the resurrection can carry Christians through the messiness of campaigns, into the voting booth, and on into the rest of their political lives.

Abortion in the 2012 Election

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Well, we certainly cannot complain in this election cycle that the abortion issue is being ignored.  The selection of the resolutely pro-life Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney’s running mate and the continuing fall-out from the Todd Aikin controversy has ensured that the abortion debate will receive plenty of attention in coming weeks, much to the dismay of Romney, who clearly is trying to change the subject.    

While I’m always glad when electoral campaigns range over many issues, I have my doubts as to how constructive this discussion will be, particularly at a time when the two parties both seem preoccupied with their ideological electoral bases instead of reaching for the independents that are so important for success on election day.  What I hear are strong, defiant statements of principle, expressed in “here, I take my stand” tones, and full-throated rejections of alternative points of view.  Civility is an early casualty in this form of political discourse.

Of course, it’s not hard to understand why candidates would seek to distinguish their own views from those of an opponent.  But candidates (and their staffs) would do well to recognize that a move towards civility does not weaken one’s position, and actually might strengthen it.  I distinguish two ways this may be true with respect to the abortion question. 

First, in a civil discussion, statements of principle require justification.  My sense is that in a society where there is so much disagreement about moral foundations, we attempt to avoid explaining why we hold the moral positions we do—we simply expect that others disagree with those foundations, or even that others simply cannot understand them.  And so we have pro-lifers arguing their position as though it descended upon them from the sky, and we see pro-choice advocates repeating the “right to abortion” mantra as though a rights claim isn’t a moral claim that needs to be considered alongside other moral claims.    

For a civil debate, we need more than this; otherwise we simply hurl our principles at each other, again and again, while the public moral ground is ceded to mere pragmatism (go with what works) or majoritarianism (the majority is always right).  The loss of a genuinely principled public discussion is a loss for all sides.

Second, in a civil discussion that is taking place within the political space, we need arguments that are genuinely political.  This requires, among other things, the recognition not only that there are people who disagree with us, but also that after the election, some of those people are still going to be hanging around.  This means that if we want to make progress on the policy front, we’re going to have to get along with these people.  So while I personally find many of the pro-life arguments to be persuasive, I think it spectacularly unwise to seek nothing less than a full abortion ban.  In the America in which I live today, there are simply too many people who disagree—many of whom I otherwise have great respect for—and so I have to accept that for the time being, any legal protections for unborn children that we might achieve politically will be partial and incomplete. 

Again, for a civil debate, we need more than what we have—we need arguments from the candidates (on both sides) concerning how they will pursue their goals with respect to abortion politically—that is, we need to know how they get from personal morality to political morality.  We need to see how the candidates see their goals concerning abortion policy as part of their larger task of promoting justice in politics—how abortion policy fits into their political worldview.

Given how important the issue is to so many people, it’s remarkable how rarely candidates take up the abortion question.  This time around, there’s a genuine opportunity for an alternative political conversation—let’s make the most of that opportunity.

How we Reduce the Deficit is a Moral Issue

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“You don’t know what you have here in America, you know?” said the cabby who drove me home from the airport. When his father died in Ethiopia, he had to drop out of his American university where he was studying computer engineering to start driving cabs to support his family back in Ethiopia. Ethiopia has no social safety net.

“In America,” said my cab driver, “you have services and programs that help keep families together in hard times.” He hasn’t seen his family in nine years. His cab-drivers’ salary is hardly enough to pay for a plane ticket to Ethiopia. Besides, if he takes time off, that would be less food, education, and possible eviction for his mother, brothers and sisters.

While it is true that America has a social safety net, it is weaker than it was just forty years ago and it’s come under more intense attack in recent years. The deficit is the justification for shredding the net now. And extremists are pushing the party that claims a lock on “family values” to nullify the programs that protect at-risk American families from slipping into poverty.

In the name of “fiscal responsibility,” the Tea-Party led House GOP passed H.R. 1956, a bill that takes cash from the hands of America’s poorest working families in order to protect the richest of the rich. HB 1956 requires workers to present a Social Security Number rather than an IRS issued Individual Tax Identification Number to claim the child tax credit. Seems simple enough, but the bill is crafted to target working immigrant families the hardest, even if they are legal residents or have children that are American citizens. The GOP called this a compromise. H.R. 1956 is what they offered in return for the extension of the Payroll Tax cut. Congress could have paid for that extension by ending the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which were set to expire on January 1, 2012. But the GOP said absolutely not. Instead, they crafted H.R. 1956.

Think about that. The House GOP took cash from the hands of poor children to prioritize tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.  And now the bill is being considered by the Senate.

According to the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Bush-era tax cuts will be the single largest contributor to America’s long-term debt within seven years. When we add the residual costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, together these two expenses will account for half of the entire U.S. Public Debt (measured as a share of the economy). Check out this graphic.

In a recent emailed statement Ellen Nissenbaum, senior vice president of government affairs for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, stated: “In both a legislative and political context, the threats are growing to the core safety net programs that are the most essential to reducing poverty and helping vulnerable families.” Nissenbaum added, “Attacks on SNAP, the refundable tax credits for working families, Medicaid and even on Unemployment Insurance, which obviously is not limited to low-income workers, are growing in the campaign airwaves.” Roadside campaign rhetoric cultivates the climate for post campaign policy-making. If this rhetoric was actual policy at the time of the economic downturn, then millions more people would have fallen into poverty without a safety net in 2010.

We know how to balance the deficit without threatening the lives and livelihoods of poor people and without making middle class and working people more vulnerable to poverty in hard times.

  1. If we ended the Bush-era tax cuts we would cut the long-term deficit by one third over the next seven years.
  2. One of the greatest contributors to the deficit is escalating health care costs and their drain on programs like Medicare and Medicaid. The solution is not to cut aid to hurting people. It is to cut costs. The chief recommendation of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in a 2010 report was the addition of a “Public Plan” to Insurance Exchanges to drive down the cost of health care.
  3. Protection of programs like SNAP/Food Stamps not only protected 2% of the population from falling into poverty in 2010, this program and other safety net programs like it serve as great boosts to depressed economies. Money flows directly from the hands of recipients and into local super markets, farmers’ markets, and convenience stores.
  4. Continue the present administration’s moves to make the military more efficient, nimble, and cost effective.

Budgets are moral documents and how we reduce the deficit is a moral issue.

Nowhere in scripture do we see an example of God instituting or approving policies that snatch money from the hands of poor people to protect the wealthiest individuals and businesses—nowhere. Rather, we see God’s establishment of the Sabbath, the Sabbatical Year, and the Year of Jubilee. All three policies protected the poor and workers and limited the level of wealth that could be amassed by any one individual, family, business, or even by the nation of Israel itself within a generation.

I am not advocating that America becomes a theocracy or adopts these policies verbatim. We are a democratic republic, by and for the people, not a theocracy. What I argue is that these three fiscal public policies offer a window into God’s priorities. In God’s economy people are more important than profit. Under God’s governance food is never ever ripped from the mouths of hungry children in order to line the pockets of the rich. Never.