With all of the attention focused on Sarah (will-she-or-won’t-she-make-a-fool-of-herself) Palin during the Vice-Presidential debate this past week, one small little line of Joe Biden’s slipped by with nary so much as a comment as far as I’ve been able to find. Gwen Ifill asked if, in the aftermath of the $700 billion bailout, any of the plans on the Democratic platform might have to change. Here was Biden’s response:
Well, the one thing we might have to slow down is a commitment we made to double foreign assistance. We'll probably have to slow that down.And that was it. He vowed not to move forward with the current administration’s proposed tax cuts and then said that they wouldn’t back down from creating new jobs through an energy policy or education or health care. There was only one explicitly stated plan that would be deferred or delayed – foreign assistance.
So there’s a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street (and no, I’m not naïve enough to think that had nothing been done, Main Street would not have felt a serious, if not Depression-era, impact). And then there’s the $130 billion tax-cut on folks making over $250,000 that a Democratic administration would not permit and an additional $350 billion corporate tax cut that would be axed and, if the Republican candidate is to be believed, Obama is proposing an additional $1 trillion in new spending (which he is not, but that’s another matter). With all these billions and billions of dollars, the first thing the VP candidate thinks of that they won’t do is an additional $25 billion (to get to $50 billion) in foreign assistance?
For a moment, let’s forget that this amounts to just over two months of Iraq war spending or that even $50 billion doesn’t get us anywhere near the 0.7% to which all UN nations have committed. What we should not forget, not even for a moment, is that without the assistance of the wealthiest nation on the planet, children will continue to die every 3 seconds from preventable diseases and half-a-million women a year will die childbirth-related deaths. Yes, the US economy is in trouble and it will impact the worldwide economy. And the basic economics of that don’t required a Columbia degree to understand – those that can least afford it will be hit the hardest. It’s as simple as that.
So I want to issue a challenge to all people of good will who might read these words. The challenge is this – dig deeper. God never set a maximum tithe requirement, you know. God gives us everything and then says we can keep 90%, but he doesn’t say we have to keep that much. Can you give another 1% above what you’re already giving? Can you give another 0.7%? If you’re making $25,000 per year, 1% is $250; 0.7% is $175. If you’re earning $100,000, those numbers are $1,000 and $700. I’m willing to bet that we as individuals can do what our government cannot – make sure that the aid doesn’t dry up when times get tough at home.
I’m sure that many of you are affected by the current economic crisis. A mortgage you can’t pay, credit you can’t get, caught in the spiraling unemployment statistics. My heart goes out to each and every one of you. But the challenge is for you, too. Even your worst money-day is better than living on less than $1 per day as a billion of your fellow humans do every day. So I say to you, too – dig deeper.
There’s a great spiritual principle involved in this – if we trust in God to provide for everything that we need, we’ll never lack for anything. Seek first God’s kingdom. Or in the great words of the prophet Malachi:
Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing. (3:10)
