Anyone who wants to speculate on what Jesus might or might not cut from the federal budget needs to begin that conversation by reading the Tenth Commandment: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” Most commandments condemn actions; this one condemns thoughts. Coveting what our neighbor has is bad for us because envy leads to theft and strife rather than working in unity to achieve common goals and mutual success. In other words, class warfare is unbiblical.
In any case, most millionaires, as Dan Henninger of the Wall Street Journal reminds us, are very grateful and generous with their wealth. In 2007, according to the Center on Philanthropy and Wealth at Boston College, “households with $1 million or more in net worth gave 52% [of all money given away in the U. S.], or $126.15 billion.” This lavish giving helps support (according to the IRS) 110,000 grant-giving private foundations in America. And this benevolence extends to stray animals, wounded veterans, distressed college students, and many causes, major and minor. People want to help people–and that help often comes when someone gets rich through a new invention, or just hard work.
When some politicians, using Jesus’ name, campaign to take money forcibly from the rich to give to the poor they are saying that politicians know better how to spend money than the people from whom the money is taken. Just to take one example, in 1932 politicians took $300 million in tax dollars to set up the Emergency Relief Administration–the first direct welfare program in U. S. history. How did the politicians decide to distribute the tax dollars received? Illinois, a swing state, received more than $55 million. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Nebraska, all of which tended back then to be Republican states, all received zero dollars. Thus, Massachusetts had to raise money to support its own unemployed people as well as giving tax dollars to support Illinois.
If we could cut most of the social programs from the federal budget, we would be returning money to Americans. And some of that money would go to strengthening our private charities and toward one-to-one giving–which benefits givers and receivers alike. That sounds much more like something Jesus would do rather than asking rich people to further support a bloated federal bureaucracy that sends regular checks to politically influential groups of middle-class and poor voters. Burt Folsom
