www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Q&A from US Bishops on Health Care Reform

Our U.S. Constitution specifically delegates the duties of the federal government (generally to keep us safe against foreign invaders and to promote the general welfare). It provides a listing of the duties and responsibilities of the federal government and directs that those things not specified are the retained to the individual States. Justification for taxation would be limited firstly to those things the Constitution specifically authorizes the government to do. Of course, this has been ignored by Congress in its quest for power.

And yet the roles of providing a common defense and providing infrastructure are delineated in the Constitution. Those are among the legitimate uses of taxes.

The way you worded this comes across as “I’m scandalized because not taking money from my neighbors to pay for pay for education might put me out of a job.”

Ultimately, your premise is false. There is a need for education. There is no need for government run education. Had the government (and taxpayer money) not been available the need would have been filled in other ways, including those who can afford it paying tuition and charitable subsidies for those who could not afford it. Catholic schools have been operating on those lines for a long time.

But can we conclude that you are saying the ends to justify the means, and that good works and good intentions justify the taking of money from your neighbor to pay for things you think important? You have not confirmed it but this is what you are saying.

We agree on part of this. While I believe my argument regarding the funding of education is solidly moral and that yours is not, I do not believe the government is going to listen to me anytime soon. It would be a positive step towards a better spending of taxpayer money if Americans force the federal government to get out of equation entirely. The evidence solidly shows that the best results come when local people are responsible for education. As long as public education exists that means local school boards should control education, and where corruption reigns and voters cannot resolve it the State (and not the feds) should step in, but only to clan house and not to take over.

The question is not small government vs big government. The question is a moral one: "What is the moral justification for demanding that your neighbor pay for activity X for either you or the larger society." The example regarding health care is this: "Do you, Erie Byz, think it is morally acceptable to demand that your neighbor pay for your annual physical by your doctor (or for that twice yearly teeth cleaning at the dentist)?" Ryan says "yes" (or seems to since he won't answer directly). What say you, EB?

No. That is incorrect. The Church does not and never has required the Christian faithful to put their trust in governments, or to support a government plan to redistribute wealth. Any fair reading of the Church's teachings puts things like caring for the poor upon the Church, and the individual Christian. Demanding or expecting a government to step in to do these things is common these days but it is a cop out.

And on some social issues (like abortion) the teaching is indeed black and white: abortion is always murder. There are many ways to help those in need and the Church does not and has never demanded giving money to the government to support those tasks.

Do you see the moral difference between voluntarily giving and enforceable taking?

Universal health care always means rationing, and the current plans openly speak of rationing health care for our seniors (President Obama said they should not expect health care beyond a pain pill]. I see this purposeful planned denial of helath care to our seniors as immoral.

Publicly subsidized housing also has immoral elements. In reality in the Black community it has helped to destroy the Black family by herding the single moms with kids into projects. With lots of young boys and no father figures in their lives... well that's all been very well documented. Had the single moms been left scattered across the community and cared for by the local churches (even if tax money was used) all would be better. But instead we taxpayers are forced to contribute to immoral things.

New York Times [nytimes.com]: "Federal auditors have estimated that $23 billion in Medicare payments last year (1996) -- about one dollar in every seven -- was due to fraud or mistakes." I see this as immoral. Do you agree? Or are you happy with it?

And another conversation we could have is about the moral implications for us (individual Christians and the lager Church) when we abandon our individual and church responsibility to care for those in need and demand that others do it (through government programs that take money from our neighbors).

What is that a justification of? It certainly does not justify your taking money from others to pay for your doctor or dentist!

John:

Your position scandalizes me not because it might put me out of a job (although it not only might put me, but my wife and thousands and thousands and thousands of others out of jobs, and I would like to think you would care about that), but rather it scandalizes me because your position, were it to rule the day, would likely mean that I, and millions of others, would have been denied an education. You say that my premise is false, but how can you be so sure that the need would have been filled in other ways. As much as the public schools in the community where I grew up were far less than perfect, they were the only game in town. There were no Catholic schools-or any other religious private schools. That has often been the case in rural, poor areas like the area where I grew up.

The Catholic Church herself acknowledges the legitimacy of using taxes to support education. The "Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church" states

241. Parents have the right to found and support educational institutions. Public authorities must see to it that “public subsidies are so allocated that parents are truly free to exercise this right without incurring unjust burdens. Parents should not have to sustain, directly or indirectly, extra charges which would deny or unjustly limit the exercise of this freedom”. The refusal to provide public economic support to non-public schools that need assistance and that render a service to civil society is to be considered an injustice. “Whenever the State lays claim to an educational monopoly, it oversteps its rights and offends justice ... The State cannot without injustice merely tolerate so-called private schools. Such schools render a public service and therefore have a right to financial assistance”.

This speaks of the use of "public subsidies" and "public economic support". This is speaking of public support of private schools. However, I cannot imagine that the Church would teach that only those parents who choose to enroll their children in private schools are entitled to public assistance with the costs of educating their children. What are the sources of such public funds other than tax revenue?

Ryan

No, it does not mean that at all. You would have gotten a different sort of education. Possibly a better one, in fact.

I notice you simply ignored my proposal that, education being a public good, and talent not being correlated to economic status, public funds for education should be made available through vouchers attached to the child himself, and not through direct funding of publicly operated lower and secondary schools. If a district wished to operate such schools, it would have to compete for students against private schools by delivering a superior product at an affordable price. Competition is good, it causes people to think about what they do, to be innovative and results oriented. The past half century of public education shows what happens when government has a monopoly.

All efforts by the public education establishment to reform itself have failed, mainly because it is the primary cause of the failure. The foxes are guarding the henhouse, so naturally the solution to all problems is "give us more chickens". Whatever vestiges of good will public education had in this country were used up some years ago, so don't blame people if they no longer trust you to deliver the goods.

Stuart:

I have some reservations about your proposal, but I have no ideological or moral opposition to it. However, my discussion was with John's assertions regarding his claim that it is immoral to use taxes to fund public education, not with your proposals regarding the use of vouchers attached to the child himself. Even though I am a public school teacher, I believe in parental choice concerning education, so I don't oppose vouchers.

As to the last sentence of your post, I found it to be unnecessary and to border on the insulting. To the extent that I would agree with your claim about the total lack of good will towards public education (and I think you exaggerate the matter, I've encountered a fair amount of good will towards public education both as a student in the system and as a teacher), I believe I have no responsibility for it. I have no authority to make policy. My colleagues and I try to make sensible suggestions about how to improve education, and we are routinely ignored by administration. I make a good-faith effort to provide quality teaching to my students. Last school year, I spent several hundred if not a thousand or more dollars on supplies for my classroom. Very few of the copies I ran for my classes were made on paper paid for by the school-I purchased somewhere from 20-30 reams of paper. I supplied paper and pens to my students on a regular basis, along with nasal tissue and hand sanitizer, which teachers seem to be expected to provide. I'd like to know just what I've done that I should feel in any way responsible for any lack of good will towards public schools. I dare say that to the extent that there is reason for a lack of good will towards public schools, it is largely the fault of politicians and administrators, and not of the classroom teachers, who for the most part care greatly for their students and make great efforts to impact their lives for the good.

Ryan

I think it is acceptable to say that we all need to chip in and pay for health care for those who do not have access to it or cannot afford it. Archbishop Wuerl in recently penned Op-Ed writes: He continues
It is also not "enforceable taking," like it or not WE elected the members of Congress and the Administration, so through the use of logic it is voluntary.

John, I also think you use this forum as your bullhorn. By posting under your Administrator alias it sends the message "because this is my forum, this is truth." I think to have honest conversation, you should abandon your Administrator Alias and only use that when you need to be Administrator and not a contributor.

However, my discussion was with John's assertions regarding his claim that it is immoral to use taxes to fund public education, not with your proposals regarding the use of vouchers attached to the child himself. Even though I am a public school teacher, I believe in parental choice concerning education, so I don't oppose vouchers.

It can be immoral use taxes to support public education if:

a. The funds are not wisely used, or are squandered on things not expressly related to the education of children;

b. The results of public education are not commensurate with the investment;i.e., kids are not learning. It is always immoral to throw good money after bad.

c. The public school system is teaching values that are not consistent with Judeo-Christian morality.

I would submit that in the majority of public school systems across the country, one or more of the conditions above pertain. Take the issue of wise investment: over the past half century, we have seen the educational establishment embrace one new fad after another (mainly because ed schools are run by people who have to make their reputations by inventing new theories of education and new pedagogical methods to go with them. At each turn, this has required large investments in teacher training, textbooks and materials--without any real validation that the new methods work.

At the same time, public school systems have become bloated bureaucracies devoted mainly to their own perpetuation. In most school systems, administrative overhead exceeds both direct salaries for teachers and support for classroom activities. In Fairfax County, the regional paper used to publish a list of all public school employees, their positions, and their salaries. It ran to four tabloid pages with four columns of very small print. One did not begin running into classroom teachers until the middle of page three. Everyone else above that was doing something not associated with teaching. And Fairfax is considered a "good" public school system. Across the river, the DC Public Schools are a financial shambles. Nobody knows how much is spent, or on what it is spent. We do know that the head of the teachers union embezzled several hundreds of thousands for personal clothing, jewelry, furniture, etc.--and is now doing time in the hooskow for it. Similar stories from across the nation--bad stewardship of resources.

If your school system can't supply you with the wherewithal to do your job, maybe you need to ask where all the money has gone. Your complaints that the administration ignores you ought to be enough to prove John's case: the school system is not being run for the sake of educating children, but of employing government bureaucrats. How, with any knowledge of the workings of government, you could expect anything else, is beyond me.

On the second point, all I can say is you are supposed to get what you pay for. Since the mid-1960s, expenditures on public education have more than tripled in real terms (i.e., adjusted for inflation). Yet, by all accounts, our schools are not three times better, our kids not three times smarter. If anything, the state of education in this country has regressed. If, in any other enterprise, you got less for every marginal dollar you put in, you would say it was a bad venture. Well, I am saying it about public education.

And I am placing the blame directly on the shoulders of teachers, their unions, the education schools, and the political parties that enable them in exchange for their money and votes at election time. As I said, product of the public school system, son of a public school principal, brother of a public school teacher--and parent of two kids who have been in both private and public schools. I don't care if you are insulted, I've got my credentials, too.

Finally, we come to the matter of values. The Church has always taught that parents have the primary responsibility for the moral upbringing of their children, so what are we to say when public schools usurp the role of parents and not only conduct moral education, but a moral education that contradicts the faith and values the parents wish to instill in their children--and then uses the power of the state to coerce parents to comply with its wishes.

So we have three instances under which the use of tax monies for public education can be immoral--and as noted, almost every public school system in the country is guilty of at least one (and the larger ones certainly guilty of all three and then a few others).

I'll see your Wuerl and raise you a Nickless.


Actually, it's only truth when I endorse it.

Ryan,

Providing education in rural areas has always been challenging. Where there are more to be educated there is more opportunity for competition. Where there are less people to be educated it is difficult for various providers to make a profit (or even make ends meet) in education. That is where charitable giving comes in.

It is true that it could be difficult to find charitable donors - especially now when people have been trained that they have no responsibility to do such things and all that responsibility falls on the government and financed by their neighbor. Look at where that has let us. The government just took billions of dollars from you and your neighbor (more then all of us here on the Forum combined will ever pay in taxes in a lifetime) to help some people buy new cars. I won't mention some of the nasty things the government pays for with money taken from you, me and other Americans. We are at the point in this country where about half of Americans receive some sort of transfer of funds from other Americans. That is economically unsupportable for much longer. We really need (as a country) to re-visit the moral issues (which is one of the underlying reasons for this discussion).

You still have not stated it directly, but we can conclude that you see it to be moral to demand that your neighbor pay for the education of others?

John

Ryan,

Thanks for the post.

If the public schools were not the monopolies that they are I might not have such strong reservations about taxpayer financing. [The world is far different today then it was when I went to elementary school in a 3 room school with 120 students and 3 teachers for six grades.] Through taxes I am forced to pay (for local schools) that teach that abortion is a good thing (and where to get one without your parents knowing), that sexual activity outside marriage is normal and healthy, that homosexual marriage is just. Those are aspects of education that demonstrate that the government should not be involved.

As to the Compendium, you quote rightly that “Parents have the right to found and support educational institutions”. You are correct to say that the teaching expects public authorities to allocate public subsidies. But nowhere does the teaching state that one must support taxes to support education. Section 24 is all about justice – that if public monies are spent on education private institutions (like Catholic schools) should be given their fair share. It complains against State controlled monopolies on education. I think it would be far more moral (and a wise use of funds) for me to take whatever percentage I pay in property and wage taxes that support my local school and give it directly to a Catholic or other private school.

Catholic schools (many of which deliver a good educational bang for the buck) are funded not through taxes but through charitable donations. Section 24 of the Compendium is directed to the State, telling that if it uses tax money for education it must give the private schools started by parents a fair share. We can see in recent months that President Obama ended the District of Columbia’s school voucher experiment. He did so because the teachers unions saw that it was successful and pressured him to do so. So the next generation of economically challenged Black children in DC (not far from the White House) will not get to enroll in a successful school but will stay in a failing one. I don’t see that as moral use of my tax dollar and think the moral position is to fight against it.

John

Public education is unfortunately one of our sacred cows in the United States. Even 40 years ago when I was a 4th grader, we had teachers arrogantly telling us that we'd all be illiterate without the public school system. I was taught to read, write and do basic math by my parents before I started school, so I owe no debt of gratitude to public educators.

When I look at the current alternate history textbooks used in our public schools, see the values (or lack there of) that are being taught, and look at the results of the so called socialization process (that homeschoolers miss out on) I simply conclude that I know longer want to be robbed by the state to mass produce students who will have no admiration for there Founding Fathers, and who will embrace Globalism, Socialism and Secular Humanism.

Not everyone is so fortunate.

Ryan

Somehow, I'm not surprised.