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For weeks, political commentators have asked how this government shutdown will end. At the US Capitol today, we glimpsed a possibility.
Trained to report on politics as a debate between two sides, mainstream media have framed a now month-long shutdown as an impasse between Democrats who insist on re-negotiating healthcare for the American people before they vote to re-open the government and Republicans who want to pass short-term funding, then negotiate.
But this frame assumes a deliberative process that does not currently exist in Washington, DC. A rapid descent into an authoritarian crisis over the past nine months has revealed a President who is willing to defy convention, moral values, and the law. Congressional Republicans have been unwilling to check Trump’s abuses of power.
MAGA’s Mike Johnson and John Thune do not negotiate with their political opposition to find a compromise that will serve all Americans. They take orders from Donald Trump like he is a gang leader, enacting vengeance on Americans they imagine to be their enemies.
Johnson and Thune insist that theirs is a righteous crusade against people who are not like them and regularly twist religion to try to whitewash their misdeeds. But our moral traditions are clear. Some things are just wrong.
Readers of this newsletter know that Moral Mondays have insisted for the past six months that extreme cuts to healthcare and nutrition assistance in the federal budget are immoral. They do not heal, but hurt - especially poor people and low-wage workers of every race.
That’s why clergy have brought people who are directly impacted by these cuts to cry out for justice in the public square.
Today, for the first time in this campaign, we brought a Moral Monday delegation to the US Capitol to share with members of Congress who want to know people who are directly impacted by the cuts and hear clergy re-frame the political battle they are embroiled in as a moral position. Our delegation was made up of local pastors working in poor and low-income communities and leaders of national denominations and religious bodies who represent millions of America’s people of faith. We met with Leader Jeffries and several members of his caucus. (Speaker Johnson was not available to meet with us, though we’ve offered to come back when he is.)
Bishop Barber summarized the moral framing we shared in his statement to press after our closed-door meeting.
Our best religious and moral traditions teach us that we can learn to see what’s happening in the world more clearly when we sit and listen to the most vulnerable in our society.
Traveling to DC with clergy from their communities, directly-impacted people shared their experience of poverty and their anxieties about cuts to SNAP, Medicaid, and ACA marketplace healthcare. In a room in the basement of the Capitol, they invited members into their pain. Before the cameras, they showed the nation that so many of the people being hurt by extremists from our beloved South look and sound like the people whose policies are hurting them.
The government doesn’t need to be shut down.
Members of Congress are still getting paid while 42 million poor people and low wage workers are about to lose SNAP benefits.
This Congress passed a law that says SNAP benefits should be paid with contingency funds if Congress fails to pass a spending bill, but the White House says they will not follow this law.
This is lawless. This is immoral. Every person of faith and conscience – whatever their political beliefs – must raise a dissent against this policy violence.
MAGA Mike Johnson and some preachers who are willing to bless his misdeeds say they are against “political violence” and for “life.”
Like those religious nationalists, we also decry political violence. Every life is gift from God. But if you believe that, you have to also oppose policy violence. Because it kills precious children of God just the same.
After her husband was a victim of political violence, Coretta Scott King said, “Starving a child is violence.”
Taking away people’s healthcare is violence.
Attacking immigrants because of the language they speak or the color of their skin is violence.
This unnecessary shutdown, which is being used as an excuse to further cut essential programs, is policy violence, and it will lead to policy death.
In the richest nation in the history of the world, we have enough to make sure no child goes hungry and no one dies from lack of healthcare.
The vast majority of Americans want this.
Most people of faith know that this is what God calls us to. It’s why churches and synagogues and mosques in every poor community in this country are working overtime in their food banks and emergency health clinics.
What we need right now is courageous moral leadership that refuses to accept the lies.
We need Leader Jeffries and other members to name this as a moral moment and shift the frame around what the shutdown in about from a disagreement about policy to a moral struggle for the soul of the nation.
This shutdown will end when it gets reframed as the crisis of civilization that it is. After just a couple of hours with our delegation, we were glad to hear the Leader referencing what he’d heard and seen in his press briefing this afternoon.
In this moment of crisis, we need a united moral opposition rooted in a vision for an America where every worker earns a living wage, every person has access to healthcare, every child has access to a fully funded, high quality public education, and every voter has access to the ballot and can vote for candidates who will fight for that vision.
We cannot just decry the darkness. We’re following the leadership of people who’ve experienced rejection because we believe what the Bible says:
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.
The people who know the pain of this policy violence are the leaders we’ve been waiting for, and while we have a long struggle ahead, it is good to see the Leader making an intentional effort to frame this as moral struggle that it is.
Today, we only brought a handful of impacted people. What’s needed is for the 16 million who are impacted by this healthcare crisis to flood Congress with calls, and come nonviolently by the thousands each day. Any members of Congress who are fighting for the people should invite people like Chris, Cassie, and Pam. Host them and lead them through halls. Have press conferences with them.
It’s time for a mass gathering of people with their canes and wheel chairs, oxygen tanks and medicines. Families should bring the death certificates of those who have died unnecessarily from lack of healthcare.
Now is the time to intensify and embolden our agitation. This shutdown will end when the masses who are being hurt and those who’ve been elected to serve the people join hand-in-hand with all people of good will to frame this fight for healthcare as the moral struggle that it is.
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