You will find scriptures for the care of the poor in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity and I suspect in many other religions as well. And if you are Atheist or Agnostic, you are probably guided by some principle to make this world a better place for all.

Dear Neighbor, 

Congress just passed and Donald Trump signed the big bill that Donald Trump has been pushing. What seems to be clear about this law from most independent analyses is that the net effect of the bill will be to transfer wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthiest Americans, that is, the Robin Hood effect in reverse. It will cause hardship for the poorest Americans by removing them from health insurance, decreasing food assistance, and closing some rural hospitals. This will cause the death rate to increase among the poor and the lower part of the middle class. This situation caused me to pause and think about the words of the prophet Amos. 

In Amos 8: 4-7 we read:

4 Hear this, you who trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land,

5 saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah smaller and the shekel heavier and practice deceit with false balances,

6 buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and selling the sweepings of the wheat.”

7 The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. (NRSVUE)

I couldn’t help but feel that God is not only speaking to the citizens of Israel in the early eighth century B.C.E. but may be speaking to us now. This scripture makes it clear that God is not pleased with those that abuse and take advantage of the poor and the marginalized. Yes, some of those in the lower middle class may get a small tax cut which will be more than offset by the destruction of much of the social safety net. The poor will be devastated. It is already true that in 2023 over eight hundred people a day died due to poverty according to the Poor People’s Campaign. This bill will just make it worse.

This is a moral issue. The care for the poor is an essential in most of the major religions.

You will find scriptures for the care of the poor in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity and I suspect in many other religions as well. And if you are Atheist or Agnostic, you are probably guided by some principle to make this world a better place for all.

There is a certain amount of smoke and mirrors here as one attempts to understand this law. All of the financial data and projections are for ten years, but the cuts and other changes are not evenly spread over the decade. The effective date of many of the cuts to Medicaid and SNAP are set to occur in 2028, the last year of Trump’s term. (New York Times) Importantly this will be after the midterm elections of 2026 and people may get the perception that nothing bad is happening. But happen it will.

To get a more direct sense of what the effect will be we can look at Medicaid expansion in North Carolina. As part of the Affordable Care Act, states were given the option of expanding access to Medicaid in exchange for which the Federal government would pay 90% of the cost. Finally in December of 2023, after years of refusing, the North Carolina legislature agreed to expand Medicaid. Very quickly 650,000 people signed up for the program. 

The Medicaid cuts are likely to decrease the Federal funding to Medicaid. When the legislature expanded Medicaid, it included a “kill switch” in the legislation such that if the Federal government failed to provide their 90% then Medicaid expansion would end immediately throwing these 650,000 people off Medicaid and returning them to an uninsured status. (Guardian)

It is not that the effects of this law were a mystery. It has been pretty clear for some time that the poorest of Americans will be heavily impacted by this law. The effect is to trample on the needy of our land. To all of the congressmen and women who voted for this law and who claim to be religious, how do you live with your conscience on this? God was not pleased with the powerful in eighth century B.C.E. Israel, and I can’t imagine that He is pleased with our Congress and President now. I will have to leave this between each of them and God.

“Dear Neighbor” authors are united in a belief that civility and passion can coexist. We believe curiosity and conversation make us a better community.