The Special Session of our New Mexico Legislature is scheduled to begin June 18 to address the suffering of our people for the next fiscal year. While the phrase budget crisis is on the lips of many in the law-making body of our government, wisdom speaks just the opposite – not a budget crisis, but a revenue crisis.
At stake is a trinity of essential services: Education, Health Care, Public Safety. Slashing these services will only leave deep wounds that cannot be bandaged. The Legislature is not gathered to act with a cruel closed-fist, but to be compassionate with an open hand.
Behind the debate of a budget is an obligation and a responsibility. Both are to be found within the awesome words of our State Constitution, specifically:
"All persons are born equally free, and have certain natural, inherent and inalienable rights, among which are the rights of enjoying and defending life and liberty, of acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and of seeking and obtaining safety and happiness." (Article II – Bill of Rights, Sec. 4 [Inherent rights])
In other words, Education, Health Care and Public Safety.
The responsibility for generating revenue in order to make certain those three entities are given to "all persons" in our State is the first duty of the individuals who make up our State Legislature. It is why they are elected, it is why they are installed, it is why they are convened – and in this Special Session, it is why they are summoned.
To engage in trauma budgeting is to forget promises that were made – not to special interests, not to political wariness or weariness, not to personal satisfaction or goal or motive – but promises made to the very Constitution of our State, and the people of New Mexico.
As a person of faith and from my tradition, I hear words and warnings spoken some 2,700 years ago. It was (and is) the prophet Amos. I especially like the translation of the Hebrew by the late Presbyterian minister, scholar, theologian, author and poet Eugene H. Peterson. Here is how he translates the warnings of the prophet Amos (chapter 8, verses 4-6):
Listen to this, you who walk all over the weak.
you who treat poor people as less than nothing,
Who say, "When's my next paycheck coming
so I can go out and live it up?
How long till the weekend
when I can go out and have a good time?"
Who give little and take much,
and never do an honest day's work.
You exploit the poor, using them –
and then, when they're used up, you discard them.
None of the prophets were popular celebrity figures, including Amos. They were not very reasonable, nor always diplomatic. They shattered fantasies and lies, purging assumptions of how things should be in the world, how life should be lived, and what was most important – assumptions that is of "people in charge." They challenged and then ignited hope in a better, more caring and compassionate way of justice.
Wounding the budget on June 18 will wound deeply the people to whom that budget brings learning, health and safety: children, youth, adults, our neighbors, you, me. That would be the closed-fist.
An open hand would suggest using federal stimulus money and our own reserves AND tax reform and fairness. That is the way of wisdom that ignites hope.
I can hear the voice of Amos, the prophet.
The Rev. Benjamin Larzelere III
Retired, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)