Advocates for Utah's poor blasted President Bush's proposed federal budget Monday, calling it immoral and un-Christian.

The Utah Poverty Partnership, a network of local faith and community groups, criticized the president's proposed cuts to programs such as Medicaid, low-income housing and food stamps. The $2.57 trillion budget, which Bush sent to Congress Monday morning, would eliminate or cut back funding for 150 government programs, some of which would affect the poor.

The cuts are proposed by "the same people who say this is a Christian nation," said the Rev. Daniel Webster of the Episcopal Diocese of Utah at a press conference at Crossroads Urban Center. "Yet their actions belie their words. . . . Nowhere in the Bible does it say 'God helps those who help themselves,' yet we further marginalize and demonize" the poor.

"I think it's foolishness that we spend money overseas when we can't take care of people here at home," said Pat Harman of the Utah HUD Tenant Association. "It's an outrage that good, healthy, wealthy people can take such little interest in their brethren." Harman had a message for Bush: "I voted for you because I thought you were a good Christian man, but I have my doubts now."

The Utah Poverty Partnership hopes its outrage will persuade Utah's congressmen to vote against the budget cuts.

Crossroads Urban Center's Bill Tibbitts said the proposed budget will increase the number of Utahns without health insurance, will increase health care costs for Utahns with private insurance, will worsen Utah's housing crisis and will increase hunger.

Yes, the country needs to reduce the $427 billion national deficit, but that deficit is due in part to Bush's "radical tax agenda," Tibbitts charged, quoting from an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that says 45 percent of the current deficit is caused by tax cuts and only 6 percent is due to increased spending on social programs.

"It seems to be a war on the poor and a war on people with disabilities," said Jerry Costley, executive director of the Disabled Rights Action Committee. Cutting $10 out of the budget of a person on disability, he said, doesn't mean cutting out a trip to the movies but cutting out something like bus fare to dialysis treatment — items that "are so critical not to a quality of life but a life at all."

Proposed cuts to Community Development Block Grants would affect programs that provide curb cuts and home modifications for the disabled, provide funds for disabled persons trying to move out of nursing homes and Section 8 housing funds for low-income housing, he said. Utahns are slated to lose 600 low-income housing units this year, even without the budget cuts.

The anti-poverty advocates said they are encouraged by the Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s proposed restoration of dental and vision programs to Utah's Medicaid program but said that the programs rely on 75 percent federal matching funds. "If federal matching funds are reduced or eliminated, then everything we're working on in the Legislature . . . will be out the window," Costley said.

---

E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com