Editorials
Facing south Over the last eight years the Reagan administration pursued a deadly and misguided course in Central America. Its policy, which analyzed every development in terms of East-West...
...Most experts calculate that for every 1-cent-per-gallon federal tax increase the U.S...
...It is hard to imagine any choice that would not be an, improvement on Mr...
...Deprived so far of accomplishing its goals of promoting reconciliation and democracy, given U.S...
...The Bush administration takes office with a remarkable and historic opportunity...
...The most recent attempt, to oust General Noriega of Panama, has proved a blunder of near comic proportions...
...Payment levels vary widely across the nation, based on the discretion of the presiding judge in each case...
...It doesn't mean that pretty soon everything is going to come out all right...
...White, educated, employed women who have TAPPING THE WELLS Responding to President Bush's plan to lower the deficit without benefit of increased taxes, a member of the House Budget Committee commented recently that the plan sounds like "deja voodoo [economics]" all over again...
...For those on whom it would-families with household incomes under $10,000-she and others have called for an exemption...
...Congress...
...CONFLICT IN CONTEXT History is fragile...
...But more important than even the revenues generated by the tax would be a forward-looking, salutary change it might help to engineer in the national consciousness about the nature and use of energy...
...would hamper the growth of the economy, depressing tax revenues from other sources...
...They point out that greater mileage efficiency would be stimulated, which translates into a more efficient economy in general and increased government revenues...
...It should be a significant tax, gradually implemented, and with a dual purpose: to raise both revenue and consciousness...
...We need a strong conservationist energy policy simply for reasons of national security...
...Often, child-support payments are never collected or fall off within six months (the national average...
...Abrams...
...so we announced in the last issue...
...Families not on welfare may request this review as well...
...In exchange for cooperation in other areas, the U.S...
...Instead of sticking to a schedule of higher quotas each year for fuel- efficient cars, we have come to a standstill...
...The people of the United States and Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Panama deserve a policy that guarantees self-determination for Central America, respect for human rights, an effort to control drug lords, and the means for the region to begin a sustained form of economic development and cooperation...
...Initial consultation with other leaders in the region might have produced a significantly different resolution of the problem...
...Welfare families will have this provision implemented by 1990...
...They claim the tax would be inflationary...
...Its signatories are often more divided among themselves than they are in agreement...
...And, indeed, Bernard Haring, a gentle man, does get tough about the use by curial officials of secret disciplinary techniques (e.g., the gathering of anonymous denunciations of theologians and bishops), and about Pope John Paul II's apparent endorsement not only of these tactics but of the simplistic theology on which they are based...
...The present federal tax on gasoline is 9.1 cents per gallon...
...policy objectives...
...As Mikhail Gorbachev understood about Afghanistan: in the face of a proven policy failure, there is but one legitimate course-change...
...That agreement, signed a year and a half ago, has a less-than-perfect record of accomplishment...
...They should not, in addition, be deprived of their basic material needs...
...By 1991 we will import 9 million barrels a day, surpassing our peak in the 1970s...
...Some of them are itemized in Philip Kaufman's review of the story...
...Finally, the Bush administration must read the lips of the American people: "No War in Central America...
...With its clandestine baa-contra operation, the Reagan administration abused the American public's confidence and put to rest whatever trust the people once had for the Reagan- Abrams scheme...
...The Cologne statement is still harsher, so that a spokesman for the German bishops may have had a point (a small one, in our view) when he accused the drafters of addressing issues "in the style of a poster...
...The Bush administration must develop a strategy of bipartisan cooperation with the U.S...
...support, it could yet live up to its significant promise...
...As a result of such missed opportunities, we have insured our need to drink from others' wells and further weakened our balance of payments...
...Initial awards .are seldom adjusted either to later changes in a parent's salary or to the increases in the custodial parent's child-care costs...
...They are reflected also-somewhat bewildering-ly-in some of the most important pronouncements of John Paul II: on racism, on work and workers, on the superpowers' disregard for the rights of poor peoples...
...Some 13 million children live below the federal poverty line...
...No further examples of unilateral adventurism from Washington, no more solitary policy initiatives of a coercive nature...
...Newly passed federal legislation will test that assumption by requiring mothers and fathers to contribute fairly and adequately to their children's financial well-being...
...An easily administered gasoline tax, gradually increased over the next decade, will not only raise needed revenue...
...Moreover, the "earthquake" he describes is still producing destructive tremors...
...enforcement of the improved child support laws could eventually lift many out of poverty...
...But the long view of history does remind us that there are other traditions in the church besides those that promote autocracy...
...Jessica Tuchman Mathews of the World Resources Institute, for example, points out that car-use rises steeply with income, so the tax would not fall disproportionally on most drivers...
...It is a tax on gasoline...
...The law applies to divorced, separated, and never-married parents...
...James R. Schlesinger has put it bluntly...
...Such an awareness began to emerge with the oil crises of the Nixon and Carter years but fell back into somnolence in the Reagan decade...
...as many bishops came to know during Vatican II, Bernard Haring has earned that kind of respect...
...For too long, it has been assumed that the noncustodial or absent parent could not, or could not be made to, provide support...
...All children deserve to be supported by two parents whether those parents are divorced, separated, or have never been married...
...Even those who have done well up to this point reading the new president's lips-Minority Leader Robert Michel comes to mind-even they recognize that not all talk of new taxes ought to be banished from the land...
...Treasury would net $1 billion...
...And instead of diminishing our reliance on individual automobiles (average occupancy, 1.17 per car)- which would significantly curtail the pollution produced by 132 million of them-or promoting mass transit, we have pedaled backward on these scores...
...The nomination of Bernard W. Aronson, formerly a director of policy for the Democratic National Committee, to replace Elliott Abrams, while mystifying in many respects-he has little familiarity with the region and does not speak Spanish-may be a signal to the Democratic-controlled Congress of a desire to mend some fences...
...drivers shell out less than one-seventh of what motorists in Europe and Japan pay in taxes at the pump...
...Its policy, which analyzed every development in terms of East-West confrontation, inflicted terrible suffering and devastation on the people of the region while achieving little in terms of enhancing long-term U.S...
...Every three years, states are required to review and adjust child-support awards for welfare families-based upon changes in income and cost of living...
...The sooner we extend a hand in that direction, the better...
...One could hope now for a response in kind from a bishop or two, or a group of bishops, or some of the national hierarchies...
...Instead of building a sense of hemispheric solidarity, the Reagan policy deepened Latin suspicions and enlarged the distance that already separated us...
...Passed as part of last September's welfare reform, the new law will be phased in over the next decade and administered by the states...
...But the Bush grace period won't last long, and the people of Central America can hardly be asked to wait longer still...
...Even when state gasoline taxes are added, bringing the total to about 25 cents per gallon, U.S...
...Only by the agreement of both parents can a family opt out of the withholding plan...
...should pressure Moscow and Cuba to leave Central America to work out its own future...
...states must use standard formulas based upon percentages of a parent's income...
...It is important that they know soon whether or not Washington intends to offer them a hand, one that honors their concerns as well as our own...
...Could this be the yellow brick road...
...Bernard Haring's essay (February 10, p. 69), and John A. Coleman's "Who Are the Catholic 'Fundamentalists...
...Last year, the Department of Transportation even lowered the requirements, and this year the Environmental Protection Agency lists forty-five vehicles as gas guzzlers, compared to twenty-five for 1988...
...This means direct negotiations with the government of Nicaragua and belated genuine support for the Arias Accords...
...Divorce, separation, and growing up in a single-parent family often deprive children of a needed measure of security and love...
...The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that a 12-cent increase, all other factors taken into account, would net $59.9 billion over five years...
...sometimes it takes centuries for the church to get out of the snares it sets for itself--or for us to rid ourselves of the webs we weave for our Catholic selves...
...Philip S. Kaufman's discussion of democracy in the Catholic church (p...
...As for the regressive nature of the tax, proponents say that argument has been inflated...
...Now, even when Noriega inevitably departs, the reconstruction of the Panamanian economy will be a long and painful one, sure to prolong resentment of the U.S...
...We are just beginning to appreciate that our future is linked with that of our neighbors to the south...
...Opponents argue no...
...They are very much in evidence in the very logic and spirit of the Haring proposal to enlist the whole church in assaying the weight and centrality of papal teaching on birth control...
...The CBO reports that "for all but the highest and lowest income classes, the tax on gasoline would have the same effect on all income classes...
...Fewer than one-third of custodial parents are ever awarded child support...
...The war to be won there is not a low-intensity struggle meant to bleed all opposition into submission, but a high-priority strategy to create more equitable societies through democratic principles...
...The U.S...
...Instead of curbing our appetite for imported oil, we have increased it...
...Studies have shown that the earnings of young, unwed, unemployed, absentee fathers tend to increase as they age, so that such fathers are better able to contribute to their children's financial welfare over time...
...It will challenge our attitudes and help foster a critical change in behavior...
...History gives context...
...110...
...In real dollars, according to Nobel economist Kenneth Arrow of Stanford, gasoline taxes are currently lower then they were fifteen years ago...
...and, as a regressive tax, would fall harder on the poor than the middle and upper classes...
...For Catholics who don't readily recall how many struggles and scandals the church has survived, the two that focus on the present-the theologians' statement and the Har-ing essay-sound pretty fierce...
...The Arias Accords would be given a further, significant lift...
...January 27, p. 42...
...But the accord has a moral power unique in Central American peace attempts...
...It will help many of the 1 million children affected each year by divorce and will relieve at least some of the money worries faced by the parent with custody (the mother in 95 percent of cases...
...Following a successful Wisconsin program, the new federal child-support law mandates automatic deductions from the wages of non-custodial parents, as soon as awards are determined by the court...
...must begin to see Central America for what it is-not the southern front of Moscow's attempt to penetrate our borders, but the lively home of neighbors severely tried by internal difficulties of a deep-seated social, political, and economic nature...
...The place for the Bush administration to begin is to become an engaged, respectful, and disciplined negotiator with all the countries of the region...
...While the economy of the country is devastated, Noriega holds fast by fanning traditional nationalistic and anti-American sentiments, not only in Panama but in the entire Caribbean basin...
...Enter John Coleman and Philip Kaufman, bearing context...
...Knowing that isn't exactly heartening...
...The present pope is not the first to inflate the power of his office, to foster heresy-hunting, or to identify Catholic fidelity with deference to his own views...
...This time we proclaim that history is, or can be, supportively strong...
...The administration must develop a Central American strategy premised on mutual avenues of cooperation with all six countries of the region...
...Obviously, we think each of these is worth reading...
...without context, ideas go limp, understanding flounders, and good movements lose their bearings...
...Furthermore, discretion has been taken from judges in determining the amount of child support...
...We also believe that, read together, they both reinforce and qualify one another...
...Failing such response, the rest of us will have to fill in...
...Studies have shown that after divorce, fathers' incomes rise by a wide margin, while mothers with custody face a significant decline in income...
...Responding, proponents claim that a 10-cent increase each year over the next ten years would create significant revenues and allow the economy to adjust gradually without unleashing inflation...
...We feel one tax in particular deserves a serious hearing...
...Relieved of that burden, the Bush administration can start anew to develop a reasonable Central American policy...
...Under the new law, states must establish paternity and obtain the Social Security numbers of both parents at a child's birth, a move that will expedite future collection of support, if the need arises...
...The thought comes to mind out of reflections on a happily coincidental flowing together of documents and articles in this and the two previous issues of Commonweal: "The Cologne Declaration" of European theologians (see p. 102...
...all families, by 1994...
...Yet the economies of the latter have not been unduly hampered by gasoline costs of more than $2 a gallon...
...IT TAKES TWO been divorced are more likely to get awards than minority' women or those who are separated or have never married...
Vol. 116 • February 1989 • No. 4
