I don’t personally know Colorado State Senator Ken Gordon, the new Democratic majority leader of the senate, but like most Unitarian Universalist ministers I do know he has taken to reading books by Berkeley linguistics Professor George Lakoff, whose works include Don’t Think of an Elephant, Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, and Moral Politics. Among other things, Lakoff credits the conservatives with picking good names for their campaigns while the liberal left has failed to do so. In a recent legislative update letter, Senator Gordon
describes how this has happened on the national level and then moves on to the state level.

Gordon writes:
“Political thinkers are beginning to feel that in recent years the Republicans have done a better job with their framing language than the Democrats, and that it is not just an amusing sideline to their success but is actually integral.
We (Democrats) have criticized the cynical attitude encapsulated in the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind program, because the under-funded mandate actually leaves most children behind, how the “Healthy Forest Initiative”
allows clear-cutting of forests, how the “Help America Vote Act” makes it harder to vote, and how the Clear Skies Initiative allows for more air pollution. Yet I’m not sure we understand the importance of the approach.”

Gordon goes on to say that in Colorado we now have TABOR, which stands for
the Tax Payers Bill of Rights, which puts our tax laws, with its language “bill of rights” on the same level as the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution,
such as freedom of speech and the press and freedom of assembly and having a trial by jury, and now it’s almost impossible to imagine how we would ever do away with this right. He points out, with Lakoff’s analytical help, that every time you even say “TABOR,” whether you favor it or not, you are reinforcing the idea that it is a right. So Gordon starts calling it “T” in his letter and then finally renames it altogether -- The Revenue Neutral Restrictive Constitutional Knot -- Acronym: TRNRCK or Train Wreck. This new name, of course, hasn’t stuck yet.

And it’s not just TABOR that has caused Colorado to go into a budget tailspin, but it’s other laws, too. When TABOR passed, no one envisioned the serious
economic decline we would have later and how, with each decline,
state spending would be proportionally cut, so that now, although the state’s population is greater and its needs are greater, there have been across-the-board
cuts for the past three years and more anticipated, up to 6 million in the next year and a half, if something isn’t done, which in Colorado will require voter approval.
and along with those cuts, and because of TABOR and, despite the serious shape
of so many of the state’s programs, taxpayers are actually scheduled to receive back another 8 million, something many of my religious friends consider
unconscionable, and I‘ll tell you why in a minute.

In last year’s presidential election, the so-called red states won the day, which included how Coloradoans voted at the national level. But then our voters did something peculiar on the state level -- they voted in a new Democratic majority
in both the state house and senate, where the Republicans have held sway for many years. Colorado hasn’t turned blue, or even purple -- I don’t think.
Instead, I think the voters have learned enough about our budget mess to discern that the gobbledygook of Tabor and our laws needs action, and that the former prevailing majority had failed to do so.

About now, some of you may be wondering if your minister woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, and I‘m not talking about my politics, but why we are talking about the state’s budget during worship. Well, another predictable thing has happened with Colorado’s state budget crisis -- the cuts have begun to cause so much harm to the poor and vulnerable who live among us, that it has reached, in a prophetic sense, at least, nearly biblical proportions, which is why my religious friends are opposed to receiving any more tax refunds before some of these programs are refunded.

For the past three years, before the cuts even became so serious, I have worked with a statewide, faith-based coalition called Housing Justice! Which is concerned about homelessness and affordable housing for the poor and even affordable housing for middle-income wage earners like teachers and firefighters
in Douglas or Boulder counties, where they can‘t afford a home if they work there.
After having a very minimal budget from the start, there is virtually now no money for affordable housing in Colorado. And in other programs that especially effect the poor:

* The state has stopped funding for the school breakfast Program,
* 19,000 poor women lost Medicaid coverage for prenatal care, These were immigrant women whom the state felt it could exclude from “presumptive eligibility“,
* Public libraries have been cut 79 percent, which has especially affected books and computers for our rural, poorer communities.
* State support for mental health services has dropped 23 percent, leaving nearly 30,000 uninsured children with serious emotional disturbances without care.
* And 29 percent of our low-income children lack health insurance, far worse than the national average of 19.7 percent. And we only have 40,000 children enrolled
in the state and federal Children‘s Basic Health Plan, because of a spending cap,
when 85,000 children qualify.

Almost anywhere you look in Colorado there have been significant cuts.
Some of this has led to backlogs in the courts, long lines and waiting periods for court documents; some of it has caused huge caseloads for probation officers,
with both adult and juvenile caseloads being about 75 percent higher than the national standard (probation officers, on average, have only 11 minutes a week for each adult offender), which has at least indirectly caused our recidivism rates to increase, which means more people sent back to expensive jails and prisons. There have been deep cuts in higher education, where state funding dropped from 7 million in 2001 to 8 million in 2005; this has led to commensurate increases in student tuition, which most dramatically effects the poor, where Colorado is already 45th in the nation in providing opportunities to low-income children to attend college, and while it is 47th in the country for postsecondary enrollment for minority young adults.

It’s hard to imagine in all these numbers what the impact must be on individuals.
Buried in the reports I received from our own Bill Hanna, who represents non-profit organizations at the Legislature, and from Terri McMaster, a Lutheran lobbyist
who serves with me on the Justice Commission of the Colorado Council of Churches, there was a description from the Southwest Colorado Mental Health Center, which serves five counties, and has had 5,000 in cuts, 14 percent of its
operational budget. They had to close their Hillhaven Program, an alternative long-term care facility for seriously mentally ill adults, and 10 patients, who had lived at the facility for seven or eight years, were relocated to nursing homes or other long-term facilities, with some forced to move to different counties.

Now, that is just downright mean.

As most of you know, I’m from Texas, and when I was a newspaper reporter
covering these kinds of issues there, I could always count on one state in the south, to make every other state in the south look better. That, of course, was Mississippi -- one of the poorest states in the country. Reading these figures, in health, children’s services, mentally ill services, housing, senior services,
Colorado often comes up in the bottom five nationwide -- it’s starting to look like the Mississippi of the west. We did score near the top recently at something --
Coloradoans are among the highest drug and alcohol abusers in the country and, not surprisingly, from what I’ve told you so far today, we are dead last in providing prevention, treatment and research programs for substance abuse.

I’m not here this morning to debate budget measures from a Democrat vs. Republican vs. Libertarian perspective. I know that some of you may be glad
that we have the most restrictive tax laws in the nation, sometimes that’s an economic selling point for our state.

Where some of you may disagree with me is my deeply held belief that how you treat the poor is an indicator of your society and culture and a yardstick for your humanity. This comes straight from the Bible, something not often quoted in our Unitarian Universalist Churches, but it’s where I think our religious cultural heritage is right. Take care of the poor, the widows and the orphans, we are instructed in the Hebrew scriptures and what you do to the least of these, you do unto me, Jesus says in the New Testament.

But you don’t need theological underpinnings to care about poor children, already at a disadvantage, being hungry as they go through their school day, or to care about the mentally ill being moved to facilities that probably can do no more than warehouse them. I can certainly agree that many state and federal programs
over the years have been ineffective or top-heavy with administrative personnel.
But there’s something askew when less than half of the poor and qualifying children in our state can be enrolled in the health insurance program, and so, 45,000 children are at risk.

What’s happened is that our state budget crisis has pushed us to a place where our morals and values need to be questioned -- We’re no longer talking about rich universities looking for more monies, or health care agencies trying to add more programs -- We’re talking about not meeting the fundamental needs of our most vulnerable citizens -- pregnant women not receiving prenatal care and elderly citizens who no longer have transportation to their doctors, 802 infants and toddlers with disabilities on a waiting list for early intervention services because of a 35 percent cut in services for children with disabilities.

All of this in the richest nation on earth -- and, according to research done
by a coalition of non-profits in the state, Coloradoans actually bring home 8 percent more in pay than the national average, but give 8 percent less than the national average to non-profit causes, Which include everything from the Girl Scouts to The Adoption Exchange, to the Seniors Resource Center, to Colorado UpLift, a program for urban youth, to Servicos de la Raza. I can’t believe we are so stingy. My guess is that many of us give less to non-profit causes because we are all directly affected by the state budget cuts. As a parent, for example, I know that my schools have been begging me for money and time since my children were in kindergarten and that there are many programs now in our schools that depend upon parent volunteers. It’s human nature that we will take care of our own first.

But what our faith and our religion calls us to do is to be concerned for the whole.
That’s why it’s more than appropriate this morning to take time to think about our state and its financial mess. In this church, we state clearly that we believe
and practice the democratic process -- which, I think, means being concerned
about our democratic government, as well. We believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all people and we recognize the interdependent web of which we are all apart.

We are called, therefore, to get involved. Not only should we vote -- which I know most of us did -- but we need to learn who our senators and representatives are
and let them know what we think. You can agree with me, or disagree with me, this morning, but this is not a time for silent acquiescence -- this is a time for action.
Learn more, talk more, make phone calls, write more letters, even email letters,
send FAXes -- Let your representatives know where you stand. I believe our budget crisis is not just a mess, but it is calling us to stand for justice and fairness
and compassion. I don’t want to live in a state that is mean and uncaring to the mentally ill and its poor citizens, that doesn’t care about poor women who are pregnant or children who are hungry or babies with disabilities or the elderly who need rides to their doctors. We can do much better.

I am more known for my spiritual sermons, which often do not have a particular call to action, but do not be mistaken this morning --- This is a spiritual sermon.
Not only do many, many vulnerable people need to know you care and that you will do something, but I believe our very hearts and souls are at stake. Taking a stand for justice or for compassion, depending upon your particular spiritual bent, is to work on your spirit -- Caring about others, giving to others, taking a stand for others, making time for someone else grows our own heart -- We receive back meaning, real meaning, in our own lives. This is our chance to make a difference-- we can take a positive stand, and reframe the budget debate for compassion and care for all Coloradoans. AMEN