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TechnoratiChronic poverty in America, according to the UCC voter guide, is exclusively faulted on a parsimonious nation unwilling to care for the needy through a boundary-less Welfare State. Regrettably, it opines, President Bush’s 2009 budget “continues tax breaks for the most affluent, cuts health, education, child welfare and other services, seeks the highest Pentagon base budget ever, and asks for another $70 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Arguably, the billions spent by the U.S. military have provided more quantifiable results than the trillions of dollars engorged by the Welfare State. But the UCC wants more spending on failed policies, rather than examination of social pathologies that actually perpetuate poverty.
Similarly, the UCC voter guide believes the U.S. is drowning in a health care “crisis” engendered by the federal government’s not taking over the health care industry. It demands wider health care coverage at less cost, apparently unaware of the potential contradiction. “People have talked about fixing our health care crisis for a long time, no real substantive action has been taken to fix it,” candidates are to be told. “If elected, what strategy do you have to pass real health care reform? Will you make access to quality health care a top priority?”
On trade issues, the UCC voter guide imagines that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other trade pacts have only exacerbated poverty and suffering everywhere. “All indications point to a glaring and disturbing fact: poor people throughout all three countries have suffered as a result of the policies put in place by this agreement,” it laments. “The wealth…has been dramatically siphoned upward into the hands of exceedingly rich.”
Besides candidates for office, the UCC voter guide is very distressed about “some of the threats to justice” from local ballot initiatives that are “anti-affirmative Action, anti-choice, anti-GLBT and anti-immigrant measures.” According to the UCC, “this is truly scary stuff and can easily go unnoticed” because “initiatives are often given deceptive names so that when voters enter the voting booth they don’t always know what it is they’re voting on.” The UCC voter guide is primed to alert the casual voter, lest he or she accidentally vote for a socially conservative referendum.
Conservative religious vote guides, typically distributed by parachurch groups rather than denominations, target millions of socially conservative church goers. The UCC voter guide, like other Religious Left attempts to influence voters, largely targets clergy and small cadres of left-leaning activists. According to some polls, even most church going UCC members tend to vote Republican. UCC elites undoubtedly would prefer not to stir them up.
Mark D. Tooley directs the United Methodist committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C.
