A Big Immoral Budget Bill sits before the Senate. A niece of mine with a PhD as a nurse practitioner sent this report recently from the front lines that I think is important for all to consider and act upon in the context of the upcoming Senate vote.
For the past four months, I have been working primarily with people who have been pushed to the margins of society — LGBTQ+ folks, people struggling with housing instability, individuals with significant cognitive, emotional, or physical disabilities, single parents, the forgotten elderly…
I asked a 23-year-old woman who came in with abdominal pain what she eats, and she said, “I don’t eat much because I can’t afford food.” I offered to help her apply for SNAP or connect her with a food pantry, and she said, “I already get assistance, but I use it for my kids. They’re growing, and there’s not much left for me.”
This week an 81-year-old man wouldn’t get a critical diagnostic test I recommended based on concerning exam findings. He’s scared Medicare/Medicaid won’t cover it and he might get billed retroactively. “If I get a bill, I might not be able to afford food.”
This is where we are as the wealthiest nation in the world—-people are afraid to use healthcare safety nets and they will die because of it.
Another patient told me he had $60 left for groceries with two weeks to go in the month because he had to buy medications that should have been covered. Insurance companies and government programs are designed to delay and deny. It’s criminal — or at least it should be.
I have seen transgender patients who could benefit profoundly from gender-affirming care, both physically and mentally. Some of them are scared to even start. One said, “I don’t want to begin and then have to stop right away if coverage disappears.” That fear is real and valid. Gender-affirming care is not a luxury. For many people, it’s the difference between living and not. Access to this care has been shown in scientific studies to lower rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide.
These are not isolated stories. This is every week in every clinic day in waiting rooms across this country. People absolutely will die because of this legislation now before the Senate.
It’s unbearable to hear a fellow human justify these cuts by saying, “we’re all going to die anyway.” It makes me wonder how I can live in a country where people in power seem to share none of my values. How do I keep paying taxes into a system that lets this happen? How can we grow as a society — as a species — when this is the ideology of our “leaders”?
Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP are not handouts. They’re lifelines. And when we talk about rolling them back, we’re not just making budget cuts — we’re pulling the rug out from many people who are already hanging on by a thread.
Working at a COVID vaccine outreach project a few years ago, multiple Black patients told me they were afraid to get the vaccine because of Tuskegee. Many Black people did not get needed vaccinations because of this and in this way Tuskegee is still killing.
I keep thinking of Gandhi: “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” We are not only failing, we’re being super gross about it too.
To me, liberty and justice for all has to mean that people get to live with dignity, hope, and with some kind of stability.
Leaders who talk about other humans with such casual cruelty should sit next to the people whose lives they are affecting—share a little life with them— hear their stories— etc. I can’t imagine not being changed by it.
See Matthew Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.
Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election.
Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society.
Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.
Banner Image: November 2024 rally against the Republican tax plan, which cuts trillions of dollars in funding for Medicare, Medicaid, public and higher education, and other vital social and domestic programs and services that millions of everyday Americans rely on. Photo by Working Families Party on Flickr.
Queries for Contemplation
I recommend sharing these frontline stories with senators about to vote and with your fellow American citizens. What other ways can you contribute to spreading the news of the utter vileness and immorality of this budget which is designed to make the very rich much richer (through tax breaks) and the very poor die early and the middle class pay more taxes and the country go into more debt?
Recommended Reading
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE.
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science. A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Fox’s spirituality weds the healing and liberation found in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of every religious and political persuasion to unite in a new vision through which we learn to honor the earth and the people who inhabit it as the gift of a good and just Creator.
“A watershed theological work that offers a common ground for religious seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
“I am reading Liberating Gifts for the People of the Earth by Matt Fox. He is one that fills my heart and mind for new life in spite of so much that is violent in our world.” ~ Sister Dorothy Stang.
