Republican Budget Bill is a Spiritual Crisis As Much As an Economic One

We Have Lost Our Connectedness

Budgets are normally long, boring documents, especially at the federal level. Most of the time, little attention is even given to the budget process in Washington. We all just know they spend a hell of a lot of our money.

But that is the key…it is our money. How they spend it reflects a great deal on who we are and what we believe to be important.

The Budget is a Spiritual Document

At the core of the budget process is the concept that it not only reflects the priorities of taxing and spending, but it reflects the values of who we are as a nation and as American people. In that sense, the budget is a spiritual document, a moral document or map, and a document that deserves scrutiny and reflection….mostly of ourselves.

Until we begin to see our budget as something spiritual, we will continually drift into a complete state of disconnectedness, despair and poverty.

Think of the budget like a big mirror turned back at us that says, “Here is who and what you are. Take a good look. Do you like what you see?”

The 2025 Republican budget is so far outside the normal range of priorities and values of humanity that in a very real sense, it represents a spiritual crisis for the nation. The mirror reflects something very ugly. We have become disconnected from each other and from the natural world around us.

What I am suggesting in this post is that the Republican budget reflects a basic disconnect between human beings as shown by apathy, a lack of empathy, and a total disregard for those in need. It reflects a spiritual crisis as a document that has lost its connective tissue between humans and the natural world.

The Republican Budget is Cruel & Cynical

Looking at the budget in terms of outcomes, we can easily predict that this current budget reflects an America that is based on crass individualism, selfishness, survival of the fittest, profit over people, cruel insensitivity to the needs of the least of these, with no sense of collective effort or help. This Republican budget seeks to reward those who have much and punish those who have little, mostly due to no fault of their own.

Poverty in this budget is viewed as a character flaw. They deserve what they get or don’t get. Poor people cannot be trusted so we need to require layers of paperwork to qualify for assistance. And the environment? It is there for us to use, abuse and exploit for profit with no thought to the consequences.

This budget paints a cynical view of the world where those with means exploit and deliberately impoverish those living on the margins. It refuses to see the spiritual connection between humans and the living environment around us. We are siloed into individual compartments with no tether or connection to anyone or anything else. We are tossed about in a sea of grift, uber competition, and oligarchic domination.

This budget shows us that we have reached a point where we realize the Titanic is sinking and it every person for themselves, climbing over each other, clawing at a chance to gain space in the life raft. There is no humanity, no cooperative effort, no sense of connection between my welfare and the welfare of those who are suffering or have fewer resources. The lower classes are locked in the hull of the ship….be damned.

Yes, this budget reflects a much bigger problem than the MAGA movement. As a nation and as a people we have become devoid of humanity and purpose beyond our own check book, personal wellbeing, property lines, and personal net worth. Everyone else can go to hell.

In essence, we are soulless and devoid of spiritual connection necessary for the sustenance of our country, our species, and even our planet. This type of budget will lead to misery for more, hardship for many, and for the unfortunate, premature death.

Now, let me clarify that there is no such thing as a perfect budget document. Especially in a Democracy where compromises are the pathway to progress, there will be twists and turns, give and take, and crooked roads toward the goal of finding a way to benefit and help all citizens.

But we have tried to do so in the past, with varying degrees of success.

Some examples would include the New Deal programs of the 1930s which kept millions of people a day’s pay away from starvation, the Great Society Programs of the 1960s which promoted the healthcare for the elderly and disabled, and education of all citizens, and the Biden Budget of the 2020s which created the most jobs of any period since the New Deal. These budgets were not perfect, but they did prioritize people over profit, and they led to the prosperity and advancement of the middle class and raised the standard of living for all in the decades prior to 2025.

Okay, let’s get into some specifics. I’ll divide this review into two parts. Harm to people, and harm to the environment. Both are at stake and both represent a spiritual crisis.

Budget Harm to People

Under the House Republican bill, the households with incomes in the top 1 percent would receive tax cuts over two and a half times the size of those for households with incomes in the bottom 60 percent, measured as a share of after-tax income. The top 0.6 percent of people — the 1.2 million people with annual incomes above $1 million — would receive more total tax cuts than the 127 million people with incomes below $100,000.

This windfall for the ultrawealthy would be paid for by gutting programs that create American jobs and help Americans afford the cost of basic needs, such as healthcare and groceries. If enacted, the bill would amount to the largest cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in history.

We will focus just on the human toll of the cuts to these two programs. These are not just government programs, but they are life-saving tethers that keep us connected to each other and our common humanity. That tether is being cut.

Medicaid Saves Lives

Medicaid funding will be cut by $700 billion. These savings will offset the massive tax cuts that will go primarily to the top 5% of wealthiest Americans. These cuts will cause 13.7 million people to become uninsured. It will also affect nearly 22 million people who have health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. These cuts are cruel and cynical. While publicly saying they want to encourage more people to go to work to get the benefit, the real purpose is to fund tax cuts for the rich.

Ironically, the changes proposed will have the opposite effect from what Republicans want. Instead of ending “fraud, waste, and excess,” by adding a layer of red-tape reporting, the programs will become more expensive to monitor. It will impose a harsh penalty on the people who rely on Medicaid for their very lives. People who need insulin and other life-saving medications may not be able to access them. People will die prematurely.

Who is on Medicaid?

Meet “Greg” who almost drowned in a lake when he was 17. By the time Greg was pulled from the water, he had suffered severe brain damage. He spent the next month in a coma, hooked up to a ventilator. During that time, the doctors told his family the best they could probably hope for was that one day, Greg might be able to breathe on his own again.

But Greg surprised everyone and came out of the coma. His family took him home from the hospital and, with their love and support, he started the slow and difficult process of rehabilitation. It has not been an easy journey. In the two decades that have passed since his accident, Greg and his family have had to come to terms with the lifelong effects of the brain damage he suffered – including tremors, short-term memory loss, and behavior that includes angry outbursts and agitation. Greg was also subsequently diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Fortunately, Greg has health care coverage through Medicaid and Medicare. Together, these programs have covered almost all of Greg’s medical and prescription drug costs since the accident. He has relied on disability to cover his living expenses.

Now 40, Greg lives with his parents. Over time, and with the help of medication, his quality of life has improved, and he has become more independent. Greg’s hope is to get a job so that he can become even more self-sufficient and one day live on his own. If Greg’s Medicaid benefits are cut, he will lose a substantial quality of life.

SNAP Benefits

Feeding those who cannot feed themselves seems coherent, logical, and compassionate. Lawmakers have lost their soul in this regard. The House budget resolution proposes slashing at least $300 billion from the program—a staggering 20 percent reduction in total funding that would be the largest cut in SNAP’s history. To make matters worse, these cuts are happening at a time when the cost of living and food prices are rising across the country.

To illustrate the human impact, consider the story of Sarah, a mother of two and an elementary school paraprofessional in Georgia, who relies on SNAP to help feed her family. Each of these proposed changes will not affect families in isolation. When benefits are reduced, food choices restricted, and eligibility tightened, Sarah will face impossible trade-offs between food, rent, and childcare.

Limiting what kinds of food SNAP recipients can purchase would make grocery shopping even more challenging for Sarah. With few grocery stores in her neighborhood, her primary option was the now-closed corner store, which already had a limited selection of fresh food. If new restrictions prevent her from buying certain items such as “accessory foods”, she may struggle to find eligible foods nearby, creating more stress for Sarah and her family.

It is important to recognize that restricting food choices is about policing people experiencing poverty, not improving public health. “We don’t trust these folks because they are poor.” These restrictions contradict the very purpose of SNAP, cutting benefits while simultaneously limiting food options only deepens food insecurity.

Patrick Kearns, an Iowa City father of two adult children with disabilities, is angry that members of Congress say they are targeting "waste, fraud and abuse" within these programs. “My children are not scamming a system,” he said. “The idea that they’re somehow gaming the system at the detriment to the rest of society, especially when people like Elon Musk are using words like ‘parasite’ to describe my children — anger doesn’t quite encompass how I feel.”

These cuts represent a spiritual crisis that allows lawmakers to disregard the humanity and lives of those who are most vulnerable while ignoring the fraud, subsidies, and out right stealing committed by the wealthy.

The prophet Amos over two-thousand years ago criticized those whose wealth leads them to abandon working for the common good and who give up any sense of responsibility for their neighbors.

Amos connects indolent wealth with oppression when he accuses the idle rich of wrongdoing, violence and robbery (Amos 3:10). God will bring a swift end to the wealth of such people. God will “tear down the winter house as well as the summer house and the houses of ivory” (Amos 3:15). Amos levels an excoriating blast against the luxuries of “those who are at ease in Zion” (Amos 6:1). They are first to fall, he observes, as they, “lounge on their couches” (Amos 6:4) and “sing idle songs to the sound of the harp” (Amos 6:5). When God punishes Israel, they will be “first to go into exile” (Amos 6:7).

Yes, this is a spiritual crisis.

Budget Harm to the Environment

The House Republican’s budget bill guts federal support for wind, solar, storage and other clean energy industries. The bill terminates most technology-neutral clean energy tax credits for projects placed in service after 2028 and those that begin construction more than 60 days after the bill’s passage.

Clean energy advocates and trade groups said the bill would devastate an industry driving the United States’ manufacturing boom while increasing customers’ utility bills and threatening the stability of the electric grid.

However, the failure of lawmakers to see the interconnectedness of sound clean energy policies and the harm it will cause humans represents a fundamental spiritual crisis. Already communities disproportionately impacted by climate change include those with low incomes, communities of color, people experiencing homelessness, immigrant populations, and indigenous communities. These groups often live in areas prone to extreme heat and lack resources to adapt to changing weather patterns. Additionally, they may be more vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change, such as increased respiratory and cardiovascular disease.

The farmer-poet, Wendell Berry has written extensively about the spiritual connection to the land…a sense of place. He warns us of dire consequences when that connection is severed:

Without a complex knowledge of one's place and without the faithfulness to one's place on which such knowledge depends, it is inevitable that the place will be used carelessly and eventually destroyed. Without such knowledge and faithfulness, moreover, the culture of a country will be superficial and decorative, functional only insofar as it may be a symbol of prestige, the affectation of an elite or "in" group.

Berry also understood the connection between people as human beings and their place in the natural environment. He wrote:

“A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.

Likewise, the great naturalist, Aldo Leopold understood the spiritual nature of the land. He has written extensively about the abuse of the land and its impact on the human soul.

“Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

Leopold wrote of the “land ethic” and described it this way:

“The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land... In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members and respect for the community as such.”

We are in a spiritual crisis. Lawmakers who fail to understand that when the least of us suffer, we all suffer. When the environment is seen as a commodity for exploitation, we are exploiting ourselves and our future. When healthcare is denied to some, all bear the cost. When food is made harder to access for those with little, it damages our communities, it damages our souls and our very existence.

“There is an unseen dynamic world in and around us that scientists have only just started to scratch its surface. It is a massive web of energy that interconnects us all, and all that is, for the best and the worst, and in between.

Claudys Kantara, Rebel Thoughts of Wisdom

Failure to grasp this truth is failure to live fully human lives. In the end it isn’t just the poor who grow poorer or the weak who grow weaker; we all become poorer, weaker and less human, especially the wealthy. Our civilization will grow poorer even as the super-rich become even richer. The moral-spiritual rot will lead to the collapse of the American ideal.

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