2400+ religious leaders sign letter condemning 'fundamentally unjust' Republican tax bill

[babylonsister]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/11/30/1719903/-2400-religious-leaders-sign-letter-condemning-fundamentally-unjust-Republican-tax-bill


2400+ religious leaders sign letter condemning 'fundamentally unjust' Republican tax bill
By Hunter
Thursday Nov 30, 2017 · 1:32 PM EST


More than 2,400 religious leaders just sent the Senate a letter condemning the Republican "tax plan" that the party intends to shove through, raising taxes on millions, cutting key services like Medicare, and making other tax changes in order to provide a windfall to the very richest Americans.

We, the undersigned faith leaders representing the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Buddhist and other faith traditions and denominations across the country, express our strong opposition to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act adopted by the Senate Finance Committee. This bill violates our moral principles of equality, justice, and fairness.

We call on Congress to oppose the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act due to our strong belief that this bill is fiscally irresponsible, endangers our country’s economic health, and disproportionately benefits the wealthy at the expense of vulnerable people and low-income families. [...]

As people of faith, we view decisions about tax policy and the federal budget as moral decisions. Simply put, this proposed legislation is fundamentally unjust.

There was once a time when Republicans would mew endlessly about their supposed morality; they have largely stopped now, or at the least nobody is bothering to put those statements on camera anymore. Electing Donald Trump and standing by him despite a string of racist, sexist, crooked, and generally Constitution-punching things seems to have been the thing that finally shamed omnipresent Republican God-botherers into silence. At this point the "moral" crowd of far-right preachers and patriots is engaged in explaining why child molestation is a tolerable sin in exchange for certain tax cuts. You don't often hear Paul Ryan blustering over his supposed deep faith these days. Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. is a running joke of a man, and good evidence that the conservative religious movement has, as an entity with any identifiable moral backings at all, collapsed.

So it is not likely that the Senate Republicans receiving this letter from 2,400 of the nation's actual, practicing religious leaders will so much as give it a glance. The concept of a "moral principle" was something to be pretended at, come election-time; the battle they are currently waging has not a thing to do with America or Americans, but is a desperate exercise to convince a few dozen of the very wealthiest Americans that their future political careers are still worth funding. This is a battle for patronage, not morality. Morality was loaded into the trunk of Donald Trump's limousine and is currently buried somewhere on the grounds of his Florida golf course.

This is just a grift. You can call your own senator and let them know that you know that, and that you will never forgive or forget a vote to turn Americans away from their medical treatments or for raising your own taxes so that Ivanka and Donald Jr. do not have to pay theirs. You should do that. You should do that immediately.

Jam your senators' phone lines at [phone]. Tell them to vote "no" on the Republican tax bill.