Both men agreed waste must be cut from spending. Wallis called out the Pentagon as “the biggest waste” when it comes to spending, while Land challenged all government departments to examine and reduce their budgets

Richard Land and Jim Wallis discuss the national debt and possible solutions in a new online video tackling military spending, taxes, welfare programs and entitlements.

Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, and Wallis, president and CEO of Sojourners, agreed in the video on Bloggingheads.tv that the national debt, which has reached more than $14 trillion, is a moral issue. But they differed on how to solve it.

Bloggingheads.tv is a website filled with split-screen video entries of two people from remote locations dialoguing about the issues of the day — also known as “diavlogs.”

Wallis, who is part of an effort called the Circle of Protection that aims to preserve government programs for the poor, called for cuts in military spending and higher taxes for the rich.

“Half the deficit is because of tax cuts for the wealthy and two wars financed off the books,” Wallis said.

Land said entitlements are one of the major reasons for the deficit, stating that $700 billion was spent in 2010 on welfare and aid programs. Absent fathers and single parenthood, he said, are the main cause of poverty. Getting rid of no-fault divorce laws, he said, “would help.”

“Single parenthood is the largest cause of poverty in the United States,” Land said. “Children who grow up with two parents have enormous advantages in our culture and unfortunately they are now a minority.”

Wallis interrupted to remind Land, “You and I are both for marriage.”

Land continued to speak on the importance of parenthood: “It’s a moral and an economic issue, Jim — $700 billion dollars a year in means-tested welfare services mainly to replace absent fathers and what they would provide for their families.”

Land said entitlements “are at an unsustainable level” and are another large part of the reason for the deficit.

[Editor’s note: This article is incomplete. The source for this document was originally published on Baptist Press—however, the link (URL) to the original article is unavailable and has been removed.]