Taxes and Loving the Poor

I'd venture to say that no one who happens upon this blog is unaware of the "fiscal cliff" debate that stumbles on in Washington, D.C.  Republicans are accused of wanting to keep taxes low to help the rich, at the expense of the poor and middle class.  Democrats are accused of reducing the opportunity for economic growth for all (by raising taxes) and sentencing our children to a future of crippling debt and a diminished safety net (by continuing to spend at record rates).

We often get caught up in the battle between these two men, choosing sides or demanding compromise:

Fair enough.  Government policy matters on multiple levels.  But does that distract us from our personal obligations to the poor?

Anthony Esolen, a professor at Providence College, does a great job of laying out Pope Leo XIII's views on the state, taxation, and our personal obligations to the poor in a recent article in Crisis Magazine:

.... But love is also our duty, so the Church “lays the rich under strict command to give of their superfluity to the poor, impressing them with fear of the divine judgment which will exact the penalty of eternal punishment unless they succor the wants of the needy.”

May that be done by confiscatory taxes?  Not even by modest taxes.  The obligation is personal.  I am not saying, nor is Leo saying, that taxes may never be levied for the alleviation of need.  But such taxation is neither necessary nor sufficient.  And here we touch upon the great error of the modern state, which Leo sees quite clearly.  It is that “governments have been organized without God and the order established by Him being taken at all into account,” something even the pagans never did.  The Church has been forced to withdraw from “the scheme of studies at universities, colleges, and high schools, as well as from all the practical working of public life.”  That severs our public life from the life to come, and removes at a stroke the profound and personal obligations, God-given along with our rights, which the rich and poor owe to one another.  A Scrooge can thus say that he “gives” to the poor because he is taxed to support poorhouses and orphanages; and our modern statists can say that because they tax others to support a wholly dysfunctional way of life, they therefore have given to the poor.

(Emphasis mine.)

Who can doubt that many libertarians and conservatives are tempted to say that they already do more than enough "giving" by paying more taxes than they think they should have to in the first place?  Or that many liberals feel satisfied by not only paying all their taxes, but supporting the assessment of even more?

Leo is right on target, I think.  Conservative, liberal, or somewhere in between, what Christian can doubt that the modern Western welfare state has drawn us away from our personal obligations, or at least tempted us to do so?

In the midst of Obama vs. Boehner (Round 2 of ??), let's not forget Leo.