[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 33 (Tuesday, March 16, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H1079-H1080]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES BEHIND THE BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 20, 2004, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Maryland has talked 
about the budget that was supposed to come out this week, but is now 
apparently languishing someplace in the back room on the Republican 
side. The problem apparently is that some want to spend money and some 
do not, and they cannot agree among themselves and there is going to 
have to be some twisting and turning before it all happens.
  So while we are in that period of waiting for them, I thought that 
since many in this House have begun to show an interest in Biblical 
principles on which this country should be run, and certainly on which 
the government of the United States should operate, I thought it would 
be good to talk about the Biblical principles behind the budget.
  There are a lot of people who want to talk about the Christian 
teaching and so forth, as though it were an issue of right and wrong 
and those kinds of things, but if we look carefully at what went on in 
the New Testament, certainly there is an awful lot of talk about social 
justice.
  There was a day when Christ brought all the people to the mountain 
and said, I am going to give you a little talk here; it is called the 
Sermon on the Mount. It is in Matthew 25, for those of my colleagues 
who have a Bible and read it on a regular basis. They might go and read 
it. Sort of the latter part of that chapter they will find the 
instructions that Jesus gave to the people.
  A budget is how a society makes a statement about what it really 
cares about. If we spend our money on military, well that is clearly 
what we care about. If we spend our money on education, that is another 
kind of priority. So as the House gets ready to write a budget, we are 
going to set the priorities of this body for this country for the next 
year.
  Christ started out by talking about feeding people. He said, when 
somebody's hungry, feed them because when you do that, you feed them in 
my name. He made it a Biblical priority to do this. Nobody should be 
hungry. All we have to do is look in this country and look at the 
problems we have in obesity and all the other things, and we see that 
this country has problems

[[Page H1080]]

with nutrition, and certainly the rest of the world does.
  There is no problem with food in the world. We make enough. We grow 
enough. It is a matter of distribution. Maybe the priorities should be 
for a little bit more to USAID so that they can spread food across the 
world in places where people are hungry, rather than selling them arms. 
I mean, USAID is supposed to be an aid organization, and one would 
think that they would aid people in what they really need. Do they need 
to sell them arms, or do they need to get food to them?
  Another thing is housing. Christ talked about the fact that some 
people were homeless. I mean, that word's right there in the Bible, and 
in this country we have many homeless people. I live in a city where 
there are so many homeless families that we have one school that is 
designated as the school where the homeless kids are all brought. From 
all the shelters all over the city, they are picked up by buses and 
brought to one school. The city of Seattle has institutionalized an 
acceptance of homelessness. What has happened in housing since 1980 to 
today is stupendous. We have spent practically nothing in housing over 
the 15 years that I have been in the Congress. It was once $40 billion 
in the budget. Now it is down somewhere under $10 billion, and we have 
homeless all over this country.
  We have got plenty of money to put up a nuclear missile shield. I do 
not remember that being in the Sermon on the Mount. I cannot remember 
if He said you were supposed to put a nuclear missile shield or build 
bigger arms or what it was. No, of course, He did not. He talked about 
the homeless. If we want a Biblical perspective on this State and this 
country and this body, we ought to think about what Christ actually 
said.
  He also talked about clothing people. There should not be any problem 
with anybody not having warm clothes, and we should not have people 
freezing to death and all these kinds of things that happen in the 
world; but, no, we have to build arms.
  Then healing, the President talks about universal health care for 
Iraq, but not for the United States.
  Put the budget together on the basis of the principles of the Bible, 
and I will vote for it.

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