Now, don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying anything against the federal government providing unemployment insurance, in and of itself. Since my days as a starving graduate student, I've never been unemployed, Deo gratias, but were I to find myself so, I would be very grateful for this kind of support.
However, this "action alert" was very frustrating for two critical areas of inadequate information.
1) The name/number of the bill was not noted. Without that, I need more time than I can spare right now to find it, and find out what else it says, before I know whether I want to urge my Senators to vote for it, or against it. Congress has a nasty habit of hiding all kinds of bogus items in legislation for totally other purposes. This bill on extending unemployment insurance might have anything hiding in it: military spending, a ban on sled dogs, federal funding for abortion... anything. The only way this kind of garbage will stop, is if we the voters make it stop, by terminating the political careers of those who insist on this kind of corruption. And to do that, we need to know where to find it. We need to read the bills ourselves.
2) the urge to support the bill was followed by a summary of Catholic social teaching, as it might be applied to the issue of supporting the poor who are poor because unemployed. It gave the unmistakable implication that Catholic social teaching equates to federal government expansion of power. Here the deficiency seems to be an ideological one. Yes, support for the poor as a moral obligation rooted in solidarity. But, to imply that the only way to do so is for the federal gov't to pay out unemployment benefits, is simply false. As I said, I think the federal gov't should do this; but I also think that subsidiarity is relevant here. The federal gov't ought not be the only monopolizer of our charity for the unemployed (or any of our charity, for that matter). What about private charities? What about parish-based support, especially for those parishioners who are "transitionally" unemployed? What about Catholic-owned businesses hiring some of those unemployed? I could think of half a dozen other options, without breaking a sweat. All of these kinds of solutions also need to be on the table, no?
If the USCCB staff really want to be helpful to those of us in the trenches, then pay attention: give us adequate information to respond to, both about theory and about the particulars of an individual situation.
