Pete Buttigieg, the most vocally religious of the Democratic 2020 candidates, continues to use his faith as a political cudgel.
Ironically, he told NBC this spring that God doesn’t want to become a “cudgel” to advance an agenda against either Republicans or Democrats. Then, undermining what he had just said, he added that if God had a political party, “I can’t imagine it would be the one that sent the current president into the White House.”
On Tuesday night on the Democratic debate stage, the South Bend, Indiana mayor persisted in his Biblical moralizing.
“The minimum wage is too low. So-called conservative Christian senators right now in the Senate are blocking a bill to raise the minimum wage, when scripture says, ‘Whoever oppresses the poor taunts their maker,’” he said.
He was quoting Proverbs 14:31, which reads, “Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.” Of course, someone might want to tell him that the book of Proverbs wasn’t directed toward governments, but individuals, encouraging personal generosity.
Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office has pointed out that raising the minimum wage could shut down businesses or prevent their formation and destroy millions of net jobs. Perhaps Christians and others of good will can draw different conclusions about what it means to “oppress the poor.” And perhaps that’s why there’s no passage in the Bible about raising the minimum wage.
Despite expressing disdain for religiously charged political arguments, Buttigieg pulled a similar stunt during the last debate.
“For a party that associates itself with Christianity to say that it is OK to suggest that God would smile on the division of families at the hands of federal agents, that God would condone putting children in cages, has lost all claim to ever use religious language again,” he said.
