Finding the Way...

Today is another depressing day in real life.  (Not everything is depressing...but waffling around doesn't make a very compelling blog.)  This morning the North Carolina news reports that the billions-dollar budget shortfall is likely to be partly addressed through the elimination of the state Earned Income Tax Credit for the poorest of our residents.  Twenty-two percent of NC children (494,023) live in poor families.      Some of their parents have full time jobs.  Some work part time or part year.  (Read more...)

Republican Representative Edgar Starnes said about the possible cut (which gives families about $288 dollars in state refund a year), "If you owe zero taxes to the state of North Carolina, that's a pretty good benefit." (insinuating that $288 is some spectacular amount of money for a family living below the poverty line?) Perhaps these children have lazy parents.  Perhaps they have parents who look for jobs and can't find them. Perhaps these parents work one or two jobs and still can't make a living for their children.  (All of those are legitimate scenarios in today's North Carolina.)  Starnes self identifies as an investment broker--the bottom 10% of which earn about $66,000 a year.  Starnes also brings home NC Representative salary of just under $14,000 (in 1997).  Now I don't know this for sure, but I bet any of those parents would be thrilled to give up their EITC for Starnes minimum salary of $80,000.  I bet they would even be happy to pay some taxes.

What hurts is our willingness to balance our budgets on the backs of our poorest citizens while working hard to not tax those of us who make a reasonable amount of money.  $300 a year tax for one poor family would cost me less than $30 a month.  I spend a good bit more than that eating out at lunch for the sake of convenience.

What hurts even more is the feeling that I absolutely cannot influence the process.  It seems like those with major resources always need more, even though those "jobs" we are assured the wealthy tax cuts will create never materialize.  It just seems to be a hole we cannot get out of.  In our national congress this week we cut 4 billion of programming costs, but every Republican voted to maintain all oil subsidies that would have saved us 30 billion dollars.  What is right about that?

So what to do?  Grouse?  I do that well...but this morning I read a line from Quest for God by Abraham Joshua Heschel...and I quote:
Prayer...is, rather, like a beam thrown from a flashlight before us into the darkness.  It is in this light that we who grope, stumble and climb, discover where we stand, what surrounds us, and the course which we should choose.  Prayer makes visible the right, and reveals what is hampering and false.  In its radiance, we behold the worth of our efforts, the range of our hopes, and the meaning of our deeds.  Envy and fear, despair and resentment, anguish and grief, which lie heavily upon the heart, are dispelled like shadows by its light.

So, my plan is to pray...and look ahead into the darkness hoping I can see what God has in mind, is doing to bring it about, and what part I might play in that.  Here's to finding the way...