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VeritasLuxMea
Guest
This was a good decision by the administration. Why would government pay others in effect for proselytizing?
Obama administration deletes religious service for student loan forgiveness
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Bubba_Switzler
Guest
Of course, paying taxes does reduce monies available for other purposes.
Every dollar that the government takes is a dollar unavailable to the care of the community.
Contrary to your imputation that people can only choose whether government money is used for religious purposes, they can, in fact choose to avoid that entire round trip and give directly to Catholic charities.
Rendering the entire issue of government support for religious activities moot.
I am not lobbying you, I am simply exposing you.
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Bubba_Switzler
Guest
Why would Catholics want to pay the government for in effect proselytizing secularism?
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Rence
Guest
It doesn’t matter because one is still required to pay taxes.
They still have to pay their taxes. They can’t give to Catholic Charities instead of paying their taxes.
Exposing me for being a good citizen. Because I know paying taxes isn’t a sin or contrary to the teachings of the Church. In fact, Jesus told us to pay our taxes.
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Rence
Guest
They don’t have to “want to”, they are required to. Death and taxes.
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VeritasLuxMea
Guest
Good question. I don’t believe in taxes myself, but the Church leadership does. So I would recommend asking them!
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Bubba_Switzler
Guest
It doesn’t matter because one is still required to pay taxes.
They still have to pay their taxes. They can’t give to Catholic Charities instead of paying their taxes.
Exposing me for being a good citizen. Because I know paying taxes isn’t a sin or contrary to the teachings of the Church. In fact, Jesus told us to pay our taxes.
The Jews had no choice because they were subjects under Roman rule.
American Catholics do have a choice, though obviously you wish them to think otherwise.
Why do you seek to obfuscate? What are you hiding?
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Bubba_Switzler
Guest
I suspect they will be asking themselves over the next few decades as the secular state begins to close in on them.
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Rence
Guest
Ok, I truly don’t understand what you think I’m trying to hide or what you’re trying to say. What do you mean Catholics have a choice? A choice to do what? They don’t have a choice when it comes to paying taxes because there are unpleasant consequences that will occur for not doing so: fines, jail time, garnishment of wages, the government taking your possessions to pay for unpaid taxes. It’s a known fact that citizens are required to pay taxes. It’s a known fact that the taxes we pay go towards all sorts of community services, regardless of whether we like it or not, or whether we use them or not. It’s a known fact that refusing to pay one’s taxes will lead to fines, jail time and garnishing of wages. It’s also a known fact that not paying one’s taxes as a means to protest will land one in jail. There’s nothing to hide in anything I’ve said. If you don’t like the laws regarding paying taxes, lobby your lawmakers. I don’t mean to insult you, but with all due respect, being ill with me because you have to pay your taxes is really silly. But I guess being ill with me is just as effective as being ill with our politicians: the outcome is the same because you still have to pay taxes.
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mlund
Guest
Actually, we do have a choice. We can vote against the taxes and spending that implement a Social Welfare State by means of the government. We should stop pretending that a secular (not really secular, but militantly atheist) central state overbearing on everyone is a proper expression of Christian Charity.
- Marty Lund
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Rence
Guest
Yep, voting and lobbying and writing your lawmakers is the only way to get out of doing something that the law requires. But until that happens, you have to follow the laws until they are changed. But you can’t just not pay the taxes. You have to work through the system properly.
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Erich
Guest
There are a lot of places the government has stuck its nose where it doesn’t belong.
The enumerated powers of the federal government to spend money are defined in the Constitution under Article I, Section 8. These powers include the right to “establish Post Offices and post roads; raise and support Armies; provide and maintain a Navy; declare War…” and to conduct a few other activities related mostly to national defense. No matter how long one searches, it is impossible to find in the Constitution any language that authorizes at least 90 percent of the civilian programs that Congress crams into the federal budget today.
Stephen Moore noted in 1997:
Since its frugal beginnings, the U.S. federal government has come to subsidize everything from Belgian endive research to maple syrup production to the advertising of commercial brand names in Europe and Japan. In a recent moment of high drama before the Supreme Court, during oral arguments involving the application of the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution, a bewildered Justice Antonin Scalia pressed the solicitor general to name a single activity or program that our modern-day Congress might undertake that would fall outside the bounds of the Constitution. The stunned Clinton appointee could not think of one.
During the debate in Congress over the controversial 1994 Crime Bill, not a single Republican or Democrat challenged the $10 billion in social spending on the grounds that it was meant to pay for programs that were not the proper responsibility of the federal government. No one asked, for example, where is the authority under the Constitution for Congress to spend money on midnight basketball, modern dance classes, selfesteem training, and the construction of swimming pools? Certainly, there was plenty of concern about “wasteful spending,” but none about unconstitutional spending.
Most federal spending today falls in this latter category because it lies outside Congress’s spending powers under the Constitution and it represents a radical departure from the past. For the first one hundred years of our nation’s history, proponents of limited government in Congress and the White House routinely argued—with great success—a philosophical and legal case against the creation and expansion of federal social welfare programs.
…
The federal government has no authority to pay money to farmers, run the health care industry, impose wage and price controls, give welfare to the poor and unemployed, provide job training, subsidize electricity and telephone service, lend money to businesses and foreign governments, or build parking garages, tennis courts, and swimming pools. The Founders did not create a Department of Commerce, a Department of Education, or a Department of Housing and Urban Development. This was no oversight: They did not believe that government was authorized to establish such agencies.
Recognizing the propensity of governments to expand, and, as Thomas Jefferson put it, for “liberty to yield,” the Founders added the Bill of Rights to the Constitution as an extra layer of protection. The government was never supposed to grow so large that it could trample on the liberties of American citizens. The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution states clearly and unambiguously: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution…are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” In other words, if the Constitution doesn’t specifically permit the federal government to do something, then it doesn’t have the right to do it.
The original budget of the U.S. government abided by this rule. The very first appropriations bill passed by Congress consisted of one hundred and eleven words—not pages, mind you, words. The main expenditures were for the military, including $137,000 for “defraying the expenses” of the Department of War, $190,000 for retiring the debt from the Revolutionary War, and $95,000 for “paying the pensions to invalids.” As for domestic activities, $216,000 was appropriated. This is roughly what federal agencies spend in fifteen seconds today.
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Bubba_Switzler
Guest
Asking good questions is the first step on the path to truth.
Catholics are a sizable proportion of the electorate. What Catholics decide matters very much to politicians.
So while I understand your desire to shift the discussion toward the payment of taxes, the choice that you are ignoring, and perhaps seeking to obscure, is the choice that Catholics make on whether to support politicians who take from them and sanitize their money of religious influence or Catholic Charities who do not.
Refusing to pay taxes is a risky proposition, but even here people do have a choice. It’s not the choice that I was referring to previously but it is a choice.
The bishops, for example, have a choice as to whether to follow the Obamacare law. They have declared that they will disobey that law. That is their choice.
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Bubba_Switzler
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estesbob
Guest
They shouldnt be forgivng student loans regardless of where the graduates work.
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Rence
Guest
Well on that I think we both agree. My loans are costing me $550/month
I wish someone would forgive my loans.
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Rence
Guest
With all due respect, considering I have mentioned lobbying politcians in my replies, your accusation that I am ignoring, or seeking to obscure choices that Catholics can make is again, silly. I think Catholics do know their right to lobby and how their vote affects the laws, as they have had quite a hand in putting our leaders in power.
Yes, life comes with many choices, one of them being to either choose to pay your taxes, or to choose to incur penalties, spend some time in jail, have one’s possessions taken for payment, and to have one’s wages garnished. Taxes will be paid one way or another: one can choose to do it the easy way, or choose to do it the painful way. But they will be paid. In addition, if questioned, one chooses to devulge that they have purposely not paid taxes in protest…one will choose jail time because it’s against the law. There are other ways to protest laws that are perceived to be unjust, and as I have mentioned, voting and lobbying are two lawful methods.
Yes it is. On that we agree.
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Bubba_Switzler
Guest
And, yet, you keep trying to turn the discussion back to whether or not Catholics should pay their taxes. As if Catholics needed instruction on the dangers of crossing the IRS.
And, as if on cue, here we go again:
Similarly, you were quite concerned that Catholics should see the “wisdom” of the administration’s decision not to allow public monies to be used to forgive loans for religious activity but quite disinterested in the wisdom of taking those monies in the first place even though both are political decisions over which Catholics have equal influence.
I’ll leave all this for you to work out with your conscience but I hope you see my point.
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Rence
Guest
Well if you keep asking and responding about it, I’ll go ahead and reply as well. Why is it okay for you to bring it up but I am hiding something by replying and commenting on something you brought up?
Are we done now about not paying taxes or would you like me to comment on it some more so you can say I comment about it too much? Go ahead, ask again 
The only point you’re making is that you don’t like how taxes are being applied by those who are in charge of applying it. And that’s okay. I don’t think it’s expected that every tax payer is going to agree with how money is applied, or use all the services available, or even ‘approve’ of the services being made available. If Catholics want a change in how monies are allocated, they should start writing to their politicians, lobbying their politicians and voting accordingly – just like everyone else does. In addition, after paying their debt to Uncle Sam, they can set aside their own money to give to the charity organizations of their choice. That makes sense to me
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Bubba_Switzler
Guest
I will be quit surprised if you don’t trot it out yet again.Well if you keep asking and responding about it, I’ll go ahead and reply as well. Why is it okay for you to bring it up but I am hiding something by replying and commenting on something you brought up?
Well, of course, not only is the above wrong, it is easily contradicted by what I have written in this very thread.The only point you’re making is that you don’t like how taxes are being applied by those who are in charge of applying it. And that’s okay. I don’t think it’s expected that every tax payer is going to agree with how money is applied, or use all the services available, or even ‘approve’ of the services being made available. If Catholics want a change in how monies are allocated, they should start writing to their politicians, lobbying their politicians and voting accordingly – just like everyone else does. In addition, after paying their debt to Uncle Sam, they can set aside their own money to give to the charity organizations of their choice. That makes sense to me
I know you would like to pretend that “the only point I am making” is that I don’t ilk how taxes are being applied but that is, of course, not the case.
Now I don’t expect everyone to agree with my points but I’m not sure why you would be so shocked when you are called out for your misrepresentations and obfuscations.
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