The Catholic Spirit: MCC urges lawmakers to move from compromise to collaboration

Jason Adkins, executive director and general counsel of the Minnesota Catholic Conference (MCC) and Maggee Hangge, policy associate at MCC, invited The Catholic Spirit into the conference’s offices in St. Paul to talk about Minnesota’s 2025-2026 legislative session, which opened Jan. 14. The conference is the public policy arm of Minnesota’s Catholic bishops, which includes Archbishop Bernard Hebda and Bishops Michael Izen and Kevin Kenney of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q Jason and Maggee, thank you for inviting us to the MCC. As the conference defends core moral principles and fundamental rights in the public arena, it recently produced an Advocacy Report on the 93rd Minnesota Legislature. It can be read on your website, mncatholic.org and includes more than two dozen initiatives and their progress.

Recently shared with me are five issues that have risen to a certain level of notice for the conference as the 94th legislative session begins. One is expanding a nation-leading child tax credit that the conference championed, the Legislature passed in 2022, and that took effect in the 2023 tax year. The current tax credit is worth up to $1,750 per child, depending on income, with no cap on the number of dependent children who qualify. What might an expansion look like and why is it important?

Adkins: We’re excited to share that a number of other states are taking this issue up. Our friends at the New York State Catholic Conference are supporting a proposal there. Other states are looking at expanding their child tax credit as well. And it really is rooted in the fundamental principle that budget and tax policy should be ordered toward making family life easier. And the reality is the cost of everything is going up.

The tax credit really helps low- and middle-income families. And there’s no cap on that credit. That’s really, really important. (The fact that) there’s no cap on the number of kids who can qualify in a family for that credit really helps them afford gas, groceries, pay the bills, allows them to put their child on a sports team, do whatever they need to do with that money. And the fundamental principle of that is that we trust families to use that money effectively. So rather than having to go to a preferred vendor that the government chooses for you for childcare or whatever, we’re empowering families to make the decisions they need –– putting more money back in their pocket to be able to afford families and do the work that they need to do to raise their children.

Q You’re looking to expand it. How might that work?

Hangge: There’s a number of ways we could look to expand the child tax credit. The phaseout (cap) starts at about $35,000 of income for a joint (tax) filer. Maybe we could raise that to $45,000. For a family, if you’re starting that phase out at $45,000, we’re going to be able to reach even more families in our state with that. There are other, different levers you can pull in the tax code to expand that. But that’s one we’re looking at right now.

Q Your office has been instrumental in stopping the legalization of online sports gambling in Minnesota. Why is this effort important to Catholics and other people of goodwill, and what might happen in this legislative session?

Adkins: We’re hoping that work can continue in 2025, as legislators are considering legalization and joining 39 other states and the District of Columbia that have already legalized sports betting in some form. What we’re really concerned about is putting a sportsbook –– or a bookie, basically –– in everyone’s pocket through their cell phone. We’re concerned about the ways in which it fosters family fragmentation, creates serious economic hardship for families, and snares people with addiction, particularly our young people and our young men especially. We’re very concerned about its impact on them and their ability to form their own families in the future. Because of financial hardship we’re seeing already so many troubling statistics as this experiment in other states plays out.


REJECTING ONLINE SPORTS GAMBLING

Concerned about the harmful effects of online sports gambling on young people, families and the broader society, Minnesota’s Catholic bishops wrote an open letter to Gov. Tim Walz and legislative leaders Jan. 14, urging them to reject proposals that would legalize the practice in the state.


Q The conference has partnered with the Minnesota Family Council to stop the creation of a legal framework for commercial surrogacy contracts. More or less, the practice of women bearing children for other people to raise. Why might some advocate for commercial surrogacy?

Hangge: Commercial surrogacy has been a topic at the Capitol for a number of years. It heated up last year when it passed in the Minnesota House. What it really is, is the buying and selling of children, and that’s what we’re opposed to. You shouldn’t put a price tag on what a child costs. Nor should you hire someone to carry a child and then strip them from that child when they’re born. They’ve only known their mother, the woman carrying them for those nine months. And they’re going to be stripped from them right away and sold to someone else who may or may not have the best interest of that child in mind. We have a lot of concerns about this, concerns about putting the interests of adults above the best interests of those children.

Adkins: At the end of the day, women are not for rent and children are not for sale.

This is an issue that Catholics really need to be paying attention to, as issues around assisted reproduction have gathered a lot of steam and public interest as of late. But people need to realize that these often involve in vitro fertilization (IVF) and IVF cycles, eugenics in many forms, and at the end of the day, IVF and assisted reproduction often result in killing more human embryos than abortion does in a given year. This is a very strong pro-life issue that we need to be concerned about.

Q Your office has pointed out the legislation to legalize physician-assisted suicide has been introduced every year in Minnesota for more than a decade. The conference has worked with the Minnesota Alliance for Ethical Health Care to oppose the practice. What dangers would physician-assisted suicide pose to health care, and the Catholic commitment to the dignity and sanctity of all human life?

Adkins: We’re called as Catholics to steward the gift of life. That’s why we defend the right of access to health care, basic health care that’s preventative and restorative. We have to be stewards of that gift. That’s why the Catholic Church and its ministries have always been leaders in that field. Creating the first hospitals, for example. It’s very important that we steward the gift of life, and we have to steward the gift of life at the end of life.

And there are right ways to do that, and there are wrong ways to do that. So how do we steward the gift of life, recognizing that we’re not the author of our lives, that our lives are, in fact, a gift to be stewarded? We don’t get to choose when we come into the world, and we don’t get to choose when we go out.

Now we can make reasonable decisions about care, and that’s where we get into distinctions about accepting what’s called ordinary care, proportionate care, and declining care that’s disproportionate in terms of the benefits that it offers compared to the burden. So, we can make choices. We can offer compassionate alternatives to assisted suicide. At the end of life, we have things like palliative care. In fact, pain management is not one of the top reasons why people in states where physician-assisted suicide is legal actually choose physician-assisted suicide. They’re concerned that they’re going to be a burden. They’re going to be a burden to their families. They’re going to lose their independence. Our solution is bringing better care at the end of life.

It’s not simply about rights or autonomy or anything else. It’s about conscripting medical professionals into this decision to prematurely end your life. And we think that’s wrong. We think it’s going to be harmful. We think vulnerable populations are going to be affected by these decisions. When care is expensive and killing is cheap, which do we think will ultimately prevail? It’s something we all need to be concerned about, because protecting the so-called choices of a few is going to end up endangering the health care choices of everybody else.

Q You mentioned the cost. That is something that anyone faced with a long-term health care issue knows about. Is one of the solutions to better fund palliative care, to make that a priority even in our funding, in our budgets?

Adkins: Yes, absolutely. That’s why the Minnesota Alliance for Ethical Health Care was supportive of the creation of a palliative care committee within the Minnesota Department of Health, to find better ways to fund palliative care, to provide training and access to palliative care in Minnesota. We need to make sure that our long-term care personnel are properly funded and that we have a good business model in place for long-term care, because if people don’t feel like they have good access to long-term care, they’re going to feel like their choices are constricted.

Q One proposal under the MCC’s Families First Project is eliminating the state sales tax on necessary baby items, such as cribs and car seats, and you’ve provided some terrific information about the potential impact. Any parent spending $200 on a car seat could save nearly $14 in the state sales tax; $200 on a crib, another $14; $150 on a baby swing would keep about $10 in that parent’s pocket. How are lawmakers responding to this proposal?

Hangge: 2025 is another budget year. The legislators do have to pass a balanced budget. We’re hoping that this policy is again in the mix, because it would help people start their family or expand their family. And it may not seem like a lot of money, but it really does add up when you add up all the expenses that a family’s going to face when they’re looking at the costs for having children.

Adkins: If I may just add that the Families First project was really an invitation to the broader Catholic community to work in their communities and in their parishes to enact pieces of legislation. The website familiesfirstproject.com encourages parishes to identify particular pieces of legislation and then work in their communities and with their legislators to get those passed. We have a small staff here serving the bishops of Minnesota. We can’t possibly enact all these bills.

We maybe have four or five priorities every session that we’re working on. We really need the support of the people in the pew to jump on board around those policies. And one of the reasons is we think that should be a real thing that can bring parishes together.

Hangge: And if people have questions about how to do that or actually see something that they want to do, we’re happy to help guide them or offer those first few steps for them and be that resource. If they see something, if they want to talk to their legislator, reach out to us. We’ll help make that connection.

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