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President Biden Pares Back The House Proposal

Vulnerable Americans Still Shoulder Too Much 

Washington, D.C. — The White House and House Leadership have announced a debt ceiling framework. If it holds, the economy of the United States will avoid default. The full faith and credit of our economy will be held harmless. The routine and ordinary flows of credit and capital can continue. Normal economic activity can carry on.

As details emerge, it seems that vulnerable Americans will pay a steeper price than wealthy individuals or corporations to achieve this outcome.

President Biden has taken the needed steps in debt ceiling negotiations required to meet his pledge to protect American families. A framework has been announced to avoid the risk of economic collapse and protect us from the worst expected impacts of default. The full faith and credit of the U.S. economy has been preserved.

We appreciate the President’s efforts, and those of his team, working to protect our planet, the U.S. economy, and government programs that serve vulnerable Americans.

While details are still emerging, this deal seems to pare back the approach offered by the House-passed legislation, the Limit, Save and Grow Act, but will nevertheless cause harm to many Americans. It will still risk food assistance for very low-income older adults (SNAP) and interfere with state-based determinations on how to run effective anti-poverty programs (TANF). To do so, it protects defense spending, favors cuts to IRS funding, and simultaneously presses for policies that would protect wealthy tax dodgers and also provide tax cuts for high-income people.

Vulnerable and working Americans, those struggling to survive or to get along, should not be required to shoulder the burden of the deficit while wealthy American individuals and corporations slip free of obligation.

In effect, House leadership and strategists are requiring vulnerable Americans to pay the nation’s deficit down while, at their expense, providing rich people a free ride. Instead, leadership should be debating how our budget can reflect the best of American values and strategizing what policy agenda can deliver that outcome. Such an agenda might put families first, looking to ensure that everyone has the basic needs of food, a roof, and health care met. Solutions can come from private or public quarters, or both.

Our Unitarian Universalist principles and values, ask us to live at the center of a worldview defined by compassion, democratic process, and active engagement.  While we are uncertain if abolishing the debt ceiling would improve matters, we are certain that this hostage-taking is detrimental to the public good, the brinkmanship harmful to our democratic norms, and the deal as a whole contrary to our Unitarian Universalist worldview.

We should not have been put in this position.

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