“Forgetting What Religion Is About”: When Did ‘Dependence’ Become A Dirty Word?
Too many Americans—including Christians—are afraid that helping the poor will create ‘dependency.’ They’re forgetting that’s what religion is all about.
Not long ago, I preached a Lenten sermon in which I made a lone reference to food stamps as being one of the ways we “love our neighbors as ourselves.” Judging from the reactions of a few congregants, you might have thought it was all I preached about. They went out of their way to tell me how such programs “breed” complacency, laziness, and—wait for it—dependency.
It reminded me of Rep. Paul Ryan, who’s always carrying on about America’s “culture of dependency,” and just realized a major budget proposal that would slash food stamps and other government measures that relieve the misery of the poorest Americans.
When did “dependence” become such a dirty word? We list our children on our income tax forms as “dependents” without stigmatizing them by such a designation. So why does “dependent” become an accusation when applied to other people’s children when they are in need of food stamp (SNAP) assistance, a free-school-lunch program, or housing assistance to rescue them from being homeless? Why is it wrong for someone blind, disabled, or elderly and frail to be “dependent” upon the society in which he or she lives for the basic necessities, when it is impossible for that person to provide for themselves?
And besides, it’s far from clear that a “culture of dependency” is what America has—in fact, we have something like the opposite. Independence may well be the modern day Golden Calf to which far too many of us bow down and worship. Independence is bound up in our national identity, both personal and corporate. After all, next to our Constitution, it is the Declaration of Independence to which we most often appeal. The rugged individualism which in many ways helped make our nation what it is may also be what is causing us to lose our sense of the common good.
The establishment of a social safety net is the most profoundly religious action a government can take. An underlying principle of the Judeo-Christian faith—indeed of most faith communities—is that God will judge humankind by the way we care for the most vulnerable in our midst. Think of all the people in the world we generally revere: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Clara Barton, Nelson Mandela, Dorothy Day, Albert Schweitzer, Dag Hammarskjold, Mother Teresa. All of them, in one way or another, reached out to the poor, the disenfranchised, and the marginalized, seeking to ease their pain and help bear their burdens.
When a government sets out to seek the common good, it realizes that there will be some among us who are less able to meet all their needs, chief among them housing, food and safety. And it’s not just a few of us who find ourselves in need at some point: as Mark Rank wrote on the New York Times’ Opinionator, “nearly 40 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 60 will experience at least one year below the official poverty line during that period ($23,492 for a family of four), and 54 percent will spend a year in poverty or near poverty (below 150 percent of the poverty line).”
Are there undeserving, even fraudulent people receiving welfare/food/housing assistance? Undoubtedly. But as a citizen of this great nation, I am willing to fund the undeserving few who slip by unnoticed and game the system, in order to provide for the many who are truly in need. Many of our national and state legislators seem to want to use the excuse of the undeserving few to gut the social safety net altogether, and by so doing, punish the many who are in real need.
In fact, most of the people who avail themselves of the government’s (in other words, our) social safety net are indeed dependent. Some of them will remain so: children (45 percent), the disabled, and the elderly (20 percent). Many more will remain so until we get serious about offering them the kind of assistance which might lift them out of poverty, like raising the minimum wage.
In 2012, 47 percent of people who received food stamp assistance were in families where at least one person was working. These so-called “working poor” are not lying around in Paul Ryan’s imagined hammock of ease, living off others’ hard work and generally having a grand time of it. They are working one or more jobs, and because of part-time work or low wages and extreme needs, are still not able to provide adequate food and shelter for themselves and their families. Politicians who claim to be “helping” poor people by depriving them of aid are either ignorant or cruel.
For Christians are called to care for our neighbors. Telling the Good Samaritan story, Jesus teaches that all people are our neighbors. And as for a few “getting away with murder,” Jesus reminds his followers that it rains on the just and the unjust alike, and that God will sort it all out in the end. Jews, Muslims, Christians, and followers of nearly every religion believe in helping those in need. So do most humanists and atheists. We are called to respect the dignity of every human being. And yet, we witness professed Christians like Paul Ryan putting forward budgets that would eviscerate our common safety net.
It’s time religious people stood up and laid claim to their desire and responsibility to care for the poor. It’s time to withdraw the stigma and condemnation from those who by necessity must be “dependent” on the rest of us. It should be our joy to serve them.
By: V. Gene Robinson, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Washington, DC, and the Retired IX Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire; Published in The Daily Beast, April 4, 2014
“Not Much Of A Deal”: The Trouble With The Minimum-Wage “Compromise”
Senate Democrats had originally planned to move forward this week on legislation to increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10, but it was delayed in part so the chamber could tackle extended unemployment benefits, which may pass later today.
The delay, however, also carried an unintended consequence: the prospect of a “compromise” on the issue, spearheaded by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).
Democratic leaders so far are sticking to the $10.10-an-hour wage they’re proposing, while many Republicans, including more moderate lawmakers, say they are likely to filibuster the bill.
But the moderate Maine Republican says she’s leading a bipartisan group of senators hoping to strike a deal.
Collins hasn’t released the details of her proposal, which makes sense given that the talks are still ongoing, but Roll Call’s piece suggests she’s open to a minimum-wage increase, so long as it’s smaller. By some accounts, the Maine Republican is eyeing a $9/hour minimum wage, up from the current $7.25/hour, which would be phased in slowly over three years.
But Collins also hopes to trade this modest minimum-wage increase for a partial rollback of the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act and some small business tax cuts.
The senator is calling her plan “a work in progress.”
One might also call it “something that won’t happen.”
Greg Sargent had a good piece on this yesterday, noting that Dems don’t seem to have much of an incentive to drop their target minimum-wage threshold.
For one thing, Democratic aides point out, the idea of such a compromise may be fanciful. Even if it were possible to win over a few Republicans for a lower raise, you’d probably risk losing at least a few Democrats on the left, putting 60 out of reach (Republicans would still filibuster the proposal).
Indeed, the office of Senator Tom Harkin – the chief proponent of a hike to $10.10 – tells me he’ll oppose any hike short of that…. Labor is already putting Dems on notice that supporting a smaller hike is unacceptable.
Even the balance of the so-called “compromise” is off. As Collins sees it, Republicans would get quite a bit in exchange for Democrats making important concessions on their popular, election-year idea.
That’s not much of a “deal.”
Complicating matters, even if Dems went along with Collins’ offer, there’s no reason to believe House Republicans would accept any proposal to increase the minimum wage by any amount.
It sets Senate Democrats up with a choice: fight for the $10.10 minimum-wage increase they want (and watch Senate Republicans kill it) or pursue a $9 minimum-wage increase they don’t want (and watch House Republicans kill it).
Don’t be too surprised if the party sees this as an easy call.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 3, 2014
“In Florida, Anything Can Happen”: Vampires, RINOs And Things That Go Bump In The Night
From the state that gave us Katherine Harris and Mark Foley came news this week that a vampire is running for Congress.
This particular bloodsucker — actually, he does role-playing as a vampire after dark — is trying to defeat Rep. Ted Yoho in a Republican primary in central Florida. The fanged contender believes Yoho — a tea party conservative — is a liberal who has “embarrassed” his constituents.
Speaking of embarrassing, the SaintPetersBlog Web site reported that this challenger, 35-year-old attorney Jake Rush, has moonlighted as a participant in a Gothic troupe engaged in “night-to-night struggles ‘against their own bestial natures.’ ” Rush, a former sheriff’s deputy, issued a news release.
“I’ve been blessed with a vivid imagination from playing George Washington in elementary school to dressing up as a super hero last Halloween for trick-or-treaters,” Rush’s statement said, adding that he also is a “practicing Christian” who “played Jesus” in a church play.
Running for office in the Sunshine State poses some unique problems for vampires, not least their difficulty of campaigning in daylight hours. Yoho will probably keep his seat, particularly if he remembers to wear garlic.
But the Rush candidacy reminds us of an important truism in politics: In Florida, anything can happen.
For more evidence of this, consider what is happening next weekend on Amelia Island, not far from where Jake Rush and the other undead play. There, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy will speak at a fundraiser for Republican moderates. In today’s Republican Party, moderates are less popular than vampires, so it is extraordinary that these two young leaders, who have assiduously courted the tea party the past five years, are willing to associate themselves with those the tea partiers deride as RINOs, Republicans in Name Only.
“It’s great news,” says Steve LaTourette, who runs the Republican Main Street Partnership and is a board member of its offshoot political action committee, which is hosting the gathering at the Ritz-Carlton. “The fact that they want to come is very encouraging as a centrist Republican. . . . That they at least want to break bread with us I give them credit for, because they’re certainly getting attacked for it.”
That they are, in the blogosphere, on talk radio and even in fundraising pitches from tea party candidates. “Next weekend, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, and 25 other members of Congress are flying to Amelia Island to collaborate with a group dedicated to defeating conservatives in Congress,” conservative pundit Erick Erickson harrumphed.
Actually, House Speaker Boehner has addressed the group before but will be on foreign travel this time. More significant is the first-ever attendance of Cantor, who has been seen as a potential threat to Boehner from the right.
The presence of Cantor and McCarthy shows their increased confidence in defying the purity demands of organizations such as the Club for Growth, Heritage Action and FreedomWorks. You can’t get much more defiant than siding with LaTourette, who, in a Post op-ed in September, likened 30 to 40 conservative Republicans in the House to trained monkeys, writing that “the monkeys are running the zoo.”
LaTourette, a former (moderate) Republican congressman, thinks it’s a sign of things to come. He noted that of the 10 Republican House members targeted for primaries by the Club for Growth’s “primarymycongressman.com” project, nine belong to his organization. “We’re not going to lose anything,” LaTourette predicted. He noted that conservative groups have gone from saying “they’re going to kick our ass” to saying “we’re going to win one.”
It’ll be a long time before the 52 House Republican members of the Main Street group gain any real power, but from Florida anything seems possible. Florida has given us everything from former representative Allen West, the most militant of conservatives, to Rep. Alan Grayson, the most strident of liberals. Charlie Crist, the former Republican governor who lost a Senate bid as a Republican and then as an independent, is running for governor again — as a Democrat — and just might win.
Florida, too, gave us Republican Rep. Trey Radel, who recently resigned after a cocaine arrest, and Democratic Rep. Tim Mahoney, who succeeded Foley after the congressional-page scandal by promising to restore family values; he lost the seat after it was reported that he paid a staffer $121,000 to keep their affair quiet.
Now Florida is giving us vampires, RINOs and other things that go bump in the night. It is fun to believe they might be real.
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, April 4, 2014
“The Politics Of Losing Sorely”: How McCutcheon, Citizens United And Voting Restrictions Are Hurting Our Democracy
So let’s get right down to it: when you really think about it, what makes America different from other countries? Yes, there are lots of good answers, but if you ask me, it has something to do with this: one person, one vote.
It’s a pretty simple phrase, but in it lies the promise that no matter who you are, or where you come from, when the rubber hits the road your voice is worth just as much as anyone else’s. You have a say. And no one else’s say is more important than yours.
But for that to work, every citizen in good standing has to have a meaningful opportunity to participate in the process. And the question before us today is: Is that getting easier or harder, and which option is more consistent with our concept of American democracy?
Take a look at cases like Citizens United and, this week, McCutcheon, for example. They do one thing: give the very wealthy more influence over elections in the United States. It’s like saying: instead of an electoral process where everyone’s voice is given the same weight, some people, by virtue of their wealth, are going to get megaphones. Yes, that’s been true, in one way or another, for years, but in its recent rulings the Supreme Court’s been busy making those megaphones even louder.
Something similar is happening on the state level, if only from a different direction. You can see it in the tougher voter ID requirements, the diminution of early voting, law after law aimed at making it harder for some people to vote – in this case, people who just happen to be more likely to vote Democratic. The end result is an electorate with an artificially higher concentration of conservative voters. Terrific for Republicans. Less good for democracy.
Take the federal and state efforts together and it’s a kind of a pincer movement aimed at producing a “representative” government that’s actually a lot more conservative than its constituents, a representative government that’s not really all that, you know, representative.
This is what happens when one segment of the population says: We’ve been losing too much and we’re sick of it. But instead of retooling our arguments to better match where the American electorate is, or trusting in the traditional American way of persuading a skeptical audience, we’re instead going to lift the hood on the democratic process itself and see if we can change the system so that outcomes we prefer become more likely – not because they are more representative of the American people but because we’ve figured out how to get a few more of our fingers on the electoral scale.
But here’s the thing: being a good loser is, actually, an essential part of the American system. Every few years, we expect our politics to spit out a government that roughly reflects the priorities and interests of a majority of its citizens, because we all get to participate in the process equally. We may not like what that government looks like, but we don’t go storming across the Rubicon, angry pitchforks in hand because the inclusiveness of the process gives it a kind of legitimacy that you don’t find in a lot of other places. We live with it because we know it basically reflects the views of our peers (as opposed to: some remote cabal) and because we’ll have a meaningful opportunity to change it next time around.
And the fact of the matter is: its good for the process when someone loses on the merits. Because losing fair and square encourages the loser to stop regurgitating the same losing arguments over and over again, and instead to come up with something better. Isn’t that what we want the competition of ideas that plays out in every election to produce? Or are we instead going to stand by and let the sorest of the losers say: If I can’t win the game as its supposed to be played I’m going to change the game, and I don’t much care if doing so undermines one of the very things that makes America a beacon of liberty in an increasingly Putinized world.
Of course, it isn’t entirely up to us, but that’s what happens when the Supreme Court steps in. For me, that only increases the urgency of the following question: is there a point at which changing the nature of electoral inputs, either by giving some outsized influence over the process or making it harder for others to participate at all, gets so out of whack that it begins to undermine the legitimacy of electoral outcomes? If you really love America qua America, you know that’s a place we should never be.
No we’re not there yet.
But it’s sure not getting any easier.
By: Anson Kaye, U. S. News and World Report, April 4, 2014
“An Endless Battle”: The Next GOP Scheme To Manufacture Obamacare “Horror Stories”
After the administration met a target of seven million new private insurance signups under the Affordable Care Act, and after pretty much every Obamacare “horror story” featured in a Koch-funded attack ad has turned out to be either completely false or extremely misleading at best, and after even some conservatives are telling their brethren to stop fooling themselves into thinking the ACA will inevitably implode, you might think that we could now start having a reasonable, factually grounded discussion about how we might improve the ACA going forward.
No such luck. In fact, there’s a new misleading “horror story” on its way: the worker whose hours are being cut back so their boss won’t have to comply with the ACA’s employer mandate. Watch out for it, because it’s coming.
Just as before, the decisions of private companies to attempt to screw over ordinary people are going to be blamed not on those companies, but on Obamacare. Before it was insurance companies, who tried to shunt their customers into overpriced policies when cheaper options were available on the exchanges. How many news stories did we see that featured someone’s anger at an insurer’s letter telling them they should sign up for a new, more costly plan, without even asking what other options the person had?
This time, the “horror story” will feature workers whose employers are trimming their hours back to avoid having to give them health insurance. Yesterday the House passed a bill, with every Republican voting in favor (along with 18 conservative Democrats) changing the law’s definition of full-time work from 30 hours a week to 40 hours a week. The purpose is to allow an employer to cut a full-time worker down to 39 hours and claim they’re “part time,” to avoid giving them health coverage (as it stands now, they’d have to cut them down to 29 hours).
President Obama would veto any such bill if it actually passed both houses. But still: this is the opening of a new front in the endless battle over the ACA.
So some context is in order. The ACA mandated that all companies with 50 or more workers offer health coverage. It’s vital to understand that this mandate actually affects only a small portion of workers, because most companies of that size already offer coverage. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 91 percent of firms with between 50 and 199 employees offer coverage today, before any mandate has taken effect. For companies with 200 or more employees, it’s virtually all of them (over 99 percent). Even most companies with fewer workers — 85 percent of those with between 25 and 49 employees — offer coverage.
So if, in the coming days, you see a story about an employer that’s trying to find ways not to cover their employees, the first thing to remember is that this an employer who is not giving their workers the benefits most people get. The second thing to remember is that the mandate has already been delayed. Companies with between 50 and 99 workers now have until 2016 to get their workers insured.
To be clear, there’s an argument for restructuring the employer mandate completely; there are other ways you could make sure that employees are covered. And as we learned in the Hobby Lobby case, the mandate isn’t truly a mandate; if a firm wants, it can decline to cover its workers, and pay a tax (which will cost a lot less than health coverage) to help defray the cost of them getting insurance through the exchanges.
I don’t even believe that people should be getting insurance through their employers at all; the fact that we do is an artifact of history that doesn’t have much practical rationale, particularly now (it started during World War II, when wage controls meant employers couldn’t give raises, so they began offering health benefits instead). But once coverage is required from all mid-size and large firms, it will be part of the cost of doing business for all of them — just as it is today for nearly all of them.
And by the way, this is true of lots of regulations: minimum wage laws, worker safety laws, laws against dumping toxic waste in the creek behind your factory, and a whole host of other laws that may increase a company’s expenses but get worked into the prices they charge for their goods and services.
As long as this is the system we have and there’s a mandate scheduled to take effect in 2016, we should be honest about what it means. If the claims about people getting dropped from individual coverage have taught us anything, it’s that whenever we see a new “Obamacare horror story,” it’s probably bogus. And this one will be no exception.
By: Paul Waldman, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, April 4, 2014
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