I am a local Wisconsin minister who was contacted by Walker's campaign prior to his election to see if I wanted to hear about his Christian faith. I was happy to take a pass on that opportunity. But since this brainchild of his was unleashed on Wisconsin, prominent faith leaders have spoken out in support of the unions. Please understand that I have no intention of trying to push religion on anyone. I just thought it would be interesting to look at the Bible since Walker claims it for his own moral guidance. I've also highlighted some of the real causes for our state's financial straits. As you might guess, no one in the media has even mentioned this tidbit lately.
Feel free to pass it along. For what it's worth.
Dear Friends,
As I write this article, thousands of protesters have flocked to our state capitol to voice their opinions regarding a bill which has been proposed by our governor and which our legislature seems poised to approve. This bill, as most of you know, will eliminate the ability of state employee unions to bargain with the state government for benefits to state employees. Police and Firefighters will be exempted from this ban. Employees will be required to double their contribution to their health insurance and increase their contribution to their pensions.
Certainly there are strong feelings on both sides of this issue. State employees generally have better benefits than their private sector counterparts, though most surveys show their pay is slightly less than comparable workers in the private sector (this claim is not undisputed). Faith leaders around the state have weighed in on this issue. Archbishop Listeki of the Milwaukee Diocese reminded state leaders that employee rights are partly a measure of the comunnity's holiness in the Bible (see Leviticus 19), and that church teaching supports the role of unions in bargaining for employee compensation. Rabbi Jonathan Biatch of Madison also pointed out the Pentateuch demands for workers to be treated fairly.
There is room for debate as to what constitutes good faith between an employer and labor. But I think the larger picture is being missed here, and that touches on another issue to which the bible speaks. It borders on dishonesty to attribute these sudden massive government deficits to runaway spending by elected officials who play fast and loose with taxpayer dollars. More accurately, we are seeing these massive deficits because the mortgage securities scandal and the credit default swap debacle gutted our nation's financial system and forced us to borrow even greater amount of money from the Chinese and other lending countries to prop up our banks. One of the devastating effects of that financial meltdown is a serious loss of value to the state pension system funds that were invested in the stock market. The state employee pensions are paid from the Wisconsin Retirement System, which has two trust funds. One of those funds lost a value of around 40% in 2008. The other lost 26%. Both funds took a sharp turn up and recovered most of their value the next year, but the damage to the state's finances was devastating. Despite that loss of value (in the funds from which pensions are paid), state employee pensions still must be paid. So the state was forced to borrow money to pay those pensions. That's one of the biggest contributors to our state's debt, and the debt of so many other states (and the federal government).
Leviticus 19 also forbids those who are entrusted with investment money from squandering or stealing the money, lying about it, and taking an oath to return it (especially if you have no intention of doing so). But that is exactly what happened with Wisconsin's pension fund. Those actions are illegal, and yet almost no one in the financial industry has been prosecuted for purposefully stealing pension money through dishonest use of mortgage backed securities. For us in Wisconsin to turn around and take out our financial frustrations on our teachers and snowplow drivers and park rangers and social workers and others who serve our state in necessary ways is both shortsighted and ineffective. We should instead be calling up the House and Senate Finance commitee members and reminding them of what holiness involves in Leviticus 19. Justice in the Bible is not governed by market forces. It is an extention of God's own holiness, one we try (sometimes feebly so) to reflect in our own state.