 Susan Pace Hamill |
A University of Alabama law professor is taking state and federal lawmakers to task for their decision-making process that does not incorporate their religious beliefs.
Such lawmakers are doing the nation a disservice, she said.
“Judeo-Christian principles guiding tax policy impose heightened moral obligations on political leaders of faith who have direct power to shape tax policy,” Susan Pace Hamill has written. “In the United States this includes members of Congress and the president. Christians and Jews holding these offices not only have a constitutional right but also an absolute moral obligation to draw upon the Judeo-Christian standards of justice and teachings on wealth when discussing, framing, debating, and finally voting on federal tax policy issues.”
She wrote that’s the case even “when this requires them to take tax policy positions contrary to their own personal self-interest or the financial interest of those making the largest donations to their political campaigns.”
Her comments here highlighted in a recent story in the Denver Post, which asked, “Who would Jesus tax?”
Hamill said that state and federal tax systems now generally burden the poor and relieve the rich, even though Jesus paid taxes, told followers to give the government its due and broke bread with tax collectors.
She cited the states of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, South Dakota and Texas as being the worst offenders of biblical principles in their tax-and-spend priorities.
She told the Post that Colorado is in the middle of the pack.
The worst states, she said, require the poor to pay a much larger share of income than the rich, while offering relatively little help by way of social services.
Even in Colorado the lowest-earning 20 percent of the population pay nearly 10 percent of their income in taxes. Meanwhile, the richest one percent pay only 6.1 percent of their income, she said.
Because the state’s sales tax also is “regressive,” meaning it hits the poorer harder, “the poor and middle class pay almost four times the tax, proportionately, than the rich people pay in Colorado,” Hamill concluded.
Her views have been getting attention nationally, including a recent article by the New York Times, which noted that her belief is that since the Judeo-Christian ethics “is the moral compass chosen by most Americans,” those priorities also should apply to the government.”
The Times reported the poorest one-fifth of Alabama families, those with income levels under $13,000, pay state and local taxes of about 11 percent. The richest one percent, those with annual incomes of $229,000 or more, pay less than four percent.
“The Bible commands that the law promote justice because human beings are not good enough to promote justice individual on their own,” she told the Times. “To assume that voluntary charity will raise enough revenues to meet this standard is to deny the sin of greed.”
Hamill has concluded that at least a mildly progressive tax system is needed, so that the biblical injunction the rich make some sacrifice for the poor, is met. She cites Jesus’ statement that “unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required…”
Hamill has reported that in her research, only one state, Minnesota, came close to reaching the principles she requires, with its “slightly regressive” tax system” and its heavy spending on social programs including schools.
“The sad, incredible truth is that virtually no state lives up to a minimal standard of fairness,” Matt Gardner, with the Washington-based Citizens for Tax Justice, told the Post. “You don’t need to be a divinity professor to know it’s indefensible … to tax poor people further into poverty.”
Hamill, who is a member of the United Methodist Church, holds a master’s degree in divinity as well as a law degree. Her analyses of the states’ budgets are included in her 2007 book called “As Certain as Death.”
She said tax codes are one of the best ways to measure “the authenticity of a community claiming to be people of God.”
She said she is trying to address a problem of “hypocritical believers.”
She quotes Old Testament Law in support of her position. From Deuteronomy comes:
“Be careful that you do not forget the Lord our God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees … Otherwise … when you build fine houses and settle down … and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud. You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ But remember the Lord your God … gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant … If you ever forget the Lord your God … you will surely be destroyed.”
She wondered in her writings, “Given that nearly 80 percent of Americans claim to adhere to Christianity or Judaism in some form, why is our tax policy at both the national and state levels continuing to move further away form reflecting genuine Judeo-Christian values?”
She said it appears Christianity now is a “low-sacrifice operation.”
“What passes for faith-based ethics, beyond matters of personal piety, has become centered on a few highly emotional and theologically divisive issues that for most people involve little or no direct personal sacrifice,” she said. She cited public representations of Christianity such as Ten Commandments monuments, issues of homosexual marriage, stem cell research and abortion.
“While recognizing the monumental dilemma raised by the enormously complex and emotional issue of abortion, the narrowing of the major moral and technological concerns raised by the tragedy of abortion as only involving the question of its legality is an especially insidious and hypocritical form of using a low-sacrifice position to masquerade one’s beliefs as genuine faith-based ethics,” she said. “This is because the moral issue of abortion cannot be separated from the general moral imperative that society, through its public policy, must guard the well-being of its most vulnerable citizens. A community cannot claim to be truly pro-life unless it embraces the high degree of sacrifice required by Judeo-Christian based tax policy.”
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