This month, Congress is debating FY2000 funding for the federal Labor, HHS and Education Departments - nearly $88 billion in resources crucial to the health, education and welfare of this nation's people.

In making decisions about the social welfare of America, the suburban and rural backgrounds of most Republicans offer them little insight into the world in which I live. Most of them have never attempted to support a family on minimum wage, never attended a school with outdated books, and never been forced to live without medical care.

The Republican Majority Whip, Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX), for example, has proposed delaying Earned Income Tax Credit payments to eligible low-wage earners as a way of saving $8.7 billion in federal spending, attempting to "balance the budget on the backs of the poor."

What do leaders who never have struggled themselves know about the need which poor Americans have for these federal funds?

I wish my Republican colleagues could spend a week learning from Sister Charmaine Krohe at the St. Ambrose Family Outreach Center on Baltimore's Park Heights Avenue. They would gain a more intimate and personal experience with the consequences of their ideology.

Just a few days' immersion in the good Sister's vision and work might help them understand what "family values" really mean to young people of color who are poor.

Last Saturday, I was honored to join NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, Archbishop William D. Borders, St. Vincent de Paul Society Board President Barbara H. Medcalf, Maryland Senator Ralph Hughes, Baltimore City's Housing Commissioner Daniel Henson, and other religious and community leaders at the Family Outreach Center which Sister Charmaine has led for nearly three decades.

Her 27 year commitment to the people of her Park Heights neighborhood offers a compelling insight into what it really takes to uplift the lives of poor people in America.

As we dedicated a newly-expanded building and broke ground for the renovation of nearby vacant houses into transitional housing for 16 local families, an overflowing crowd from nearby streets and throughout Maryland stood on Park Heights Avenue, our hands raised as one, applauding the woman whose faith had brought us together.

If Sister Charmaine could talk to the Republicans in Congress, she would be inclined to place most of the credit for the Center's success in St. Ambrose Catholic Church, in the people of the neighborhood, in the many others who volunteer their time and donate their money and in the crucial support of Baltimore's St. Vincent de Paul Society.

The Sister would assert that people of faith, people of all traditions and racial backgrounds who value others, are the essential ingredient in the Center's longevity and neighborhood support. She also would explain to my Republican colleagues, however, that federal funds play a major role in supporting the Center's Head Start, after-school, nutrition, adult literacy and housing programs.

Without the very programs we are debating this month in the Congress, Sister Charmaine would argue, Ms. Jessie Snead from the neighborhood might never have been led to the Center by her daughter, never have become involved because of the youth programs, never have found a place to learn and grow right in her own neighborhood, never have dared to dream about college.

Indeed, there is much for the Congress to learn at St. Ambrose. Because of Sister Charmaine Krohe's faith in us, the love which was at the center of Dr. King's vision of humanity - the love which holds the universe together - is at work there on Baltimore's Park Heights Avenue.

If Charmaine Krohe, School Sister of Notre Dame, could teach the Congress, she might well quote Thomas Merton to us: "Love, to be held," she would instruct us, "must be given away."

As we debate the health, education and general welfare of America, hers is a lesson which the Congress would do well to hear and follow.