Church leaders tell Hatch budget worries

Utah church leaders are hoping to put a religious face on the proposed federal budget and told Sen. Orrin Hatch so this past week.

"Ultimately our budget is where we give voice to our values," said Rabbi Tracee Rosen with the congregation Kol Ami in Salt Lake City. "And when we decide that what we're doing is, we're going to put more money in the hands of those people who already have plenty and take away from those that have nothing . . . we're saying that these are our values as a society, and I think it is pretty intolerable."

Rosen, the Rt. Rev. Carolyn Tanner Irish, Episcopal bishop of Utah, and Dee Rowland, government liaison for the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, met with Hatch for about 45 minutes and afterward held a news conference. Although final decisions on the budget will not be made until September, the Jewish, Protestant and Roman Catholic leaders said they wanted to give voice to issues apparently not being heard in Washington.

"We were trying to express the fears and problems . . . here in our communities of faith," Rowland said. "We also wanted to bring the religious perspective that there's a need for our country to remember the common good."

The three women are mainly concerned that the poor are being unduly harmed by proposed cuts to housing, health care and education.

"They are leaders in the community, and their concerns are my concerns," said Hatch, the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Finance. "I agreed with much of their concerns."

The religious leaders said too much money is being spent on the Iraq war and not enough money is being allocated to the poor.

"I did spend a little time explaining how important it is that we fight this battle in Iraq and Afghanistan," he said.

Although he said changing the budget is difficult without breaking the 60-vote point of order, Hatch said he would address each concern with the Finance Committee and most of the other committees he sits on.

Hatch said the religious leaders raised issues he had never heard before, including a statistic the religious leaders said puts Utah at No. 1 in the nation with regards to the amount of people who do not have enough to eat.

Hatch also sits on the Judiciary Committee, Health, Education, the Labor and Pensions Committee, the Intelligence Committee and the Taxation Committee.

"I felt he listened to us very carefully," Irish said. "In particular issues, he was as concerned as we are."

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