House Republicans

3-05-2014
On Thursday, the EIT announced its support for the House Republican reform proposals. EIT leaders hail from the left and right of the political spectrum, including leaders of Focus on the Family, National Association of Evangelicals, Sojourners and the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
3-05-2014
On Thursday, the EIT announced its support for the House Republican reform proposals. EIT leaders hail from the left and right of the political spectrum, including leaders of Focus on the Family, National Association of Evangelicals, Sojourners and the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Sandi Villarreal 10-01-2013
Image: U.S. Capitol Building, S.Borisov / Shutterstock.com

Image: U.S. Capitol Building, S.Borisov / Shutterstock.com

The federal government began shutting down overnight, for the first time since 1996, after Congress failed to compromise on how to fund federal agencies — battling instead over implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

From The Washington Post

The impasse means 800,000 federal workers will be furloughed Tuesday. National parks, monuments and museums, as well as most federal offices, will close. Tens of thousands of air-traffic controllers, prison guards and Border Patrol agents will be required to serve without pay. And many congressional hearings — including one scheduled for Tuesday on last month’s Washington Navy Yard shootings — will be postponed.

Faith leaders on Monday called on Congress to end partisan brinkmanship and consider the real damage their actions have on the American people.

Flickr.com / Shutterstock.com

Pope Francis, by Catholic Church (England and Wales) / Flickr.com; U.S. Capitol Building, Orhan Cam / Shutterstock.com

The message of Christ is not often so clearly presented in American media as it was yesterday, nor is that message as clearly contradicted in the same news cycle.

Yesterday, Pope Francis, while not actually changing any doctrinal stance of the Catholic church, clearly asserted in a rare and frank interview that compassion and mercy must be the light that radiates from the global church for the world to see, rather than the church’s current “obsession” with gays, birth control, and abortion.

At the same time that the pope’s words were cycling through the media, other words were also coming through loud and clear: those of Republican lawmakers who have decided that the least of these will remain just that and, accordingly, voted to slash the food stamp budget by almost $40 billion.

The juxtaposition presented between these two events is striking. It also represents an enormous divide among Christians, and, frankly, demonstrates why so many feel Christianity is a religion full of hypocrisy. 

the Web Editors 9-20-2013
Politician swearing oath with fingers crossed, Minerva Studio / Shutterstock.com

Politician swearing oath with fingers crossed, Minerva Studio / Shutterstock.com

Yesterday, before Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to push through a plan to slash nearly $40 billion from the food stamp program, Jim Wallis said we would keep an eye on which way of our elected officials voted.

"We will be watching who votes against feeding the hungry this week and will remember to bring that to public attention when they run for re-election. We will be doing our own faith count today. Stay tuned for the results."

Well here are the results. The plan passed narrowly, 217-210 — with all the yea votes coming from the Republican side. Fifteen Republicans joined with the Democrats against the plan. 

So, who voted for that $40 billion cut to the food stamps program, which would kick an estimated 4 million hungry people out of the program next year? Here's your list. Is your Congress member on it?

QR Blog Editor 9-19-2013
U.S. Capitol Building, Orhan Cam / Shutterstock.com

U.S. Capitol Building, Orhan Cam / Shutterstock.com

The House of Representatives on Thursday evening narrowly passed a plan that cuts about $40 billion* from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps program. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the move will push nearly 4 million low-income people off of the program in 2014. USA Today reports

"The House voted 217-210 for the bill that cuts nearly twice as much from food stamps as a bill the House rejected in June. It is also far more than a Senate measure passed earlier this year that would trim about $4.5 billion in spending. The bill failed to draw the support of a single Democrat, many of whom have said the steep cuts would erode a key safety net depended upon by families with children, seniors, veterans and people looking for work."

Earlier on Thursday, Sojourners President Jim Wallis condemned the then-proposed cuts, saying, "These same politicians are not willing to go to where the real money is: the Pentagon budget, which everyone knows to be the most wasteful in government spending, or the myriad subsidies to corporations, including agribusiness subsides to members of Congress who will be voting to cut SNAP for the poor. ... They are going after cuts to the poor and hungry people because they think it is politically safe to do so. So let’s call that what it is: moral hypocrisy."

Check back with Sojourners for details on how your congressperson voted. 

QR Blog Editor 7-17-2013

President Barack Obama pushed back immigration reform on Tuesday indicating the bill will likely be passed in the fall. Expressing his opinion to Telemundo’s Denver affiliate, Obama supports the notion that all illegal immigrants be granted citizenship following an agreement upon GOP leaders. The Washington Post reports:

The president said that denying undocumented immigrants the chance to become citizens would leave them “permanently resigned to a lower status. That’s not who we are as Americans.”

Read more here.

Ivone Guillen 2-06-2013

In case you’ve missed the news surrounding immigration reform, here’s a brief update.

Last week, a bipartisan group of eight Senators unveiled a set of principles in support of immigration reform. The following day, President Barack Obama spoke at Del Sol High School in Las Vegas., where he released his proposal for a commonsense solution for immigration reform. Both parties see the moral and political need to address this issue.

President Obama is keeping up the pressure as he continues dialogue with numerous stakeholders to highlight the broad support for reform. On Tuesday he met with numerous external leaders hosting two separate meetings at the White House — one with progressive and labor leaders and the other with leaders from the business community — to discuss his continued support for an immigration reform package he hopes will pass this year.

Ham sandwich. Image by Marshall Astor via Wylio, http://bit.ly/zjSmtb.

Ham sandwich. Image by Marshall Astor via Wylio, http://bit.ly/zjSmtb.

WASHINGTON — Exhibit A in the fight over President Obama's mandate for religious institutions to provide insurance coverage for contraception: a ham sandwich.

At a hearing Thursday convened by House Republicans to cast opposition to the mandate as a matter of religious liberty, Roman Catholic Bishop William E. Lori invoked the image of a kosher deli forced to sell ham sandwiches.

"The mandate generates the question whether people who believe — even if they believe in error — that pork is not good for you, should be forced by government to serve pork within their very own institutions.

"In a nation committed to religious liberty and diversity, the answer, of course, is no," said Lori, the bishop of Bridgeport, Conn., and the point man on religious liberty for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.