Jesus, Hypocrisy, and Government Spending

Perhaps you’ve heard something like the following:

Those right-winged Christians are a bunch of hypocrites. I wonder if Jesus would have promoted cutting welfare benefits or channeling government money from the poor to the Wall Street bankers. If they really cared about people and were real Christians, those wingnuts on the right would stop marshalling their forces for greater tax cuts or obstructing government policies that are helping the poor.

As for trying to make Jesus a liberal or a conservative, that's like trying to pin him to the Pharisees (more conservative) or Sadducees (more liberal). The fact is that both groups hated him and he chastised both groups the same.

If you think that Jesus' ethic is to give assistance to the unmarried woman with ten children or Social Security benefits to Warren Buffet, then we're not reading the same New Testament. Jesus helped people individually; he didn't go to the Roman consuls and call them "uncharitable" for not having pity on the poor. Jesus helped people with real needs--the blind man, the man with a sick child, or the crowd that would "faint in the way" unless they got something to eat. Jesus’ accusation of hypocrisy was aimed mostly at those that had perverted the Law of Moses, not at those who claimed to help the poor with the one hand, but hurt them with the other.

Pointing the finger at the "political right" and calling them “hypocrites” is like having two onions talking together with one of them saying, "I know we stink, but not as bad as those onions over there."

Having said that, the problem with the economy is not “right-winged hypocrisy” or “tax cuts,” it's spending. Money is flowing out of our government like a severed artery. No one even has an inkling as to how much. We could tax the American people into oblivion but it's not going to fix the spending issue; in fact, it will just make it worse. The main reason why the economy is in the tank at present is the housing crisis which was brought on by Fannie, Freddie, and their poster child on the Hill, Barney Frank. Even tax cuts aren’t going to fix the easy-money holiday invoked by Democrat policies prior to the housing collapse. If the conservatives bear any fault in this disaster, it’s because some (but not all) of them went along with this nonsense.

President Reagan, like President Kennedy, cut taxes and the economy boomed. In the case of Reagan, it boomed even though he invoked higher deficits as a result.

Haven’t we lived long enough to observe the behavior of our government? Which of the following two scenarios is more reflective of our government’s thinking?

1. “We have some extra money. Let’s put that money toward paying down our debt and decrease our liability and dependency.”
2. “We have some extra money. Let’s fly to Vegas. By the end of the week, we’ll be millionaires!”

You don’t even have to be remotely attentive to know the answer to this.

The only way that the government is going to spend less money is if it has less money. That’s true of most people and it’s certainly true of our president and the gang on Capitol Hill.

We need to face the fact that the government has enough money. Like everyone else, they need to make do with what they have. Hilarious commercials about Paul Ryan sticking it to Granny aren’t going to help. Progressives and conservatives need to get on the same page if the economy is going to improve. They will have to eventually, or watch the demise of our economy. It’s time for the leaders to step forward and make it happen.