“It’s Every Man For Himself”: How To Stick It To The Poor, A Congressional Strategy
The 113th Congress has stuck it to the poor at pretty much every opportunity. In fact, if you take all their past and future plans into account, it looks like they have accomplished that rare feat: To close in on enacting an overarching, radical agenda without control of the Senate or the presidency. How did they do it? Probably by escaping scrutiny through a piecemeal approach to legislation, a president who is willing to meet them halfway, and one diabolic word: Sequester.
Let’s drill down into each piece:
1. Kick ’em to the curb
Congress will basically start kicking poor people out of their homes early next year. The idea is, if you can’t pay for your home without government assistance, you don’t deserve to live in one. In this spirit, budget cuts due to sequestration will take rental assistance vouchers away from 140,000 low-income families by the beginning of next year, making housing more expensive as agencies raise costs to offset the budget cuts. All in all, about 3 million disabled seniors and families will be affected. The savings?: $2 billion, which is pretty much what the government shutdown cost in back pay to federal workers.
If you’re lucky enough to keep your home, don’t expect to heat it. Sequester cuts to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) meant that 300,000 low-income families in 2013 were denied government support for energy costs.
2. Take the food out of their mouths. Literally.
The recent reduction in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits has affected more than 47 million Americans and is the largest wholesale cut in the program since Congress passed the first Food Stamps Act in 1964.
The cuts to Food Stamps were implemented on November 1. Yet, Congress won’t let the program rest there — House Republicans are pushing to take $39 billion from SNAP over the next decade. If their plan succeeds, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 3.8 million low-income individuals would lose their benefits in 2014 with 2.8 million more getting kicked off the program each year. SNAP is one of the three most effective anti-poverty programs the government has, keeping 4 million people out of poverty last year alone. So the initial and further cuts make a lot of sense — if you despise the poor.
And don’t worry, other cuts to food programs ensure both the oldest and youngest among us won’t be spared. Cuts to Meals on Wheels will cost poor seniors 4 to 18 million meals next year. Meanwhile, the Women, Infants, and Children program (WIC), which provides health-care referrals and nutrition to poor pregnant and postpartum women and children up to age 5, has grappled with $500 million in cuts this year and faces even deeper ones next. Fair’s fair, though.
3. Dim their kids’ future
There’s nothing that will make our economic future brighter than under-educating our children, right? That’s why, again as a result of sequestration, Head Start literally had to kick preschoolers out of their classrooms this March and removed 57,000 children from the program this September (70,000 kids total will be affected). If this weren’t enough, more than half of public schools have fired personnel due to the ominous cuts — and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said sequestration “has been one of the good things that has happened.” Given that 40 percent of children who don’t receive early childhood education are more likely to become a parent as a teenager, 25 percent are more likely to drop out of school, and 70 percent are more likely to be arrested for a violent crime, this is definitely the definition of a “good thing.”
4. Erase the road map for employment
The United States has one of the stingiest unemployment programs in the developed world and it is getting even stingier. People who have been out of work for 27 weeks or more — 40 percent of the unemployed — have already begun and will continue to lose a large portion of their benefits between January and March. Eight percent of this year’s sequestration cuts are coming from unemployment insurance. The logic here is that the program discourages people from looking for work, so why fund something that just makes the unemployed lazier? The evidence, however, proves that government assistance fuels the job searches of these 4.4 million Americans. Yet by the end of December, about 1.3 million will lose their extended jobless benefits if Congress doesn’t renew the program. And cuts to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (TANF, or welfare) means there will be even less of a safety net to fall back on.
5. Make ’em work till they drop
President Obama put Social Security cuts in his budget for fiscal year 2014, and Republicans are thrilled. Switching to a new formula called Chained CPI would lead to benefit cuts of $230 billion in the next 10 years. Apparently, it’s Social Security that’s driving up the debt, as Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said. The irony here, according to The New York Times’s Paul Krugman, is that while debt can indirectly make us poor if deficits drive up interest rates and discourage productive investment (they haven’t), investment is low because the economy is so weak, partly from cutbacks in public spending and investment — the cuts, such as this one, that supposedly protect Americans from a future of excessive debt. Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Tom Harkin (Iowa) have been fighting an uphill battle to boost Social Security benefits. But carry on, Congress. What you’re doing really makes sense here.
In just a few short decades, we’ve gone from LBJ’s Great Society, where many of these ideas originated, to this Congress’s attacks on the poor. According to the Census Bureau, safety net programs keep tens of millions of Americans out of poverty each year. But that’s just not the federal government’s priority anymore. This Congress’s message: It’s every man for himself.
By: Samantha Paige Rosen, The Week December 9, 2013
“A Sordid Approach To The Uninsured”: Republican’s Increasingly Appear Eager To Punish The Poor Because They’re Poor
Even if the Affordable Care Act is implemented perfectly, and the system works exactly as planned, millions of Americans will go without access to affordable health care. Is it due to a flaw in the law? Not exactly.
The problem is Republican opposition to Medicaid expansion at the state level. If your income is between 100% and 138% of the poverty line, you can qualify for Medicaid and get covered – unless you live in a “red” state where GOP officials have rejected Medicaid expansion. If so, you can (a) move; (b) figure out a way to make more money; or (c) go without.
Just in recent days, we’ve seen reports reinforcing how inexplicable these states’ policies really are. Refusing Medicaid expansion will not only cost states billions, but it will also severely undermine state hospitals, all while hurting struggling families.
Kevin Drum today called it “one of the most sordid acts in recent American history.”
The cost to the states is tiny, and the help it would bring to the poor is immense. It’s paid for by taxes that residents of these states are going to pay regardless of whether they receive any of the benefits. And yet, merely because it has Obama’s name attached to it, they’ve decided that immiserating millions of poor people is worth it. It is hard to imagine a decision more depraved.
Alternatively, Republicans in Congress could agree to fix this problem and allow people without access to Medicaid to qualify for exchange subsidies. But of course they won’t do that either for the same reason.
Conservatives hate it when you accuse them of simply not caring about the poor. Sometimes they have a point. This is not one of those times.
I strongly agree, though I’d just add that it’s amazing to hear Republican governors who reject Medicaid expansion try to present their approach as sensible.
Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead (R) recently said he refused the policy because he doesn’t like exchange marketplaces, which doesn’t make any sense. Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell (R) justified his opposition by saying the health care law is a “mess,” which is shallow even by GOP standards. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) appeared on MSNBC and said he rejected Medicaid expansion because, someday, federal officials may “renege on their promise” to reimburse states.
Has that ever happened? No. Is there any reason to believe it might happen? No. Could Wisconsin bring coverage to struggling families in the meantime, and then drop the policy in the event Washington refused to meet its obligations? Yes, but Walker doesn’t want to.
The larger takeaway here is that Republican officials increasingly appear eager to punish the poor because they’re poor. Indeed, it’s become a common theme in GOP policymaking just in recent weeks: no extension of unemployment benefits, no extension of the status quo on food stamps, no increase in the minimum wage, and wherever possible, no Medicaid expansion, either.
Republicans better hope low-income Americans vote in low numbers in the near future.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 9, 2013
“Pope Vs. Rush”: Pope Francis Threw A Rock Into A Bunch Of Dogs And The One It Hit Is Now Hollering
I like capitalism.
Specifically, I like the idea that if I write a better book, have a better idea, build a better mousetrap, I will be rewarded accordingly. A system where everyone gets the same reward regardless of quality or quantity of work is inconsistent with excellence and innovation, as the mediocrity and inefficiency that beset the Soviet Union readily proves.
The woman who is successful under capitalism gets to eat steak and lobster whenever she wants. That’s never bothered me. What does bother me is the notion that the unsuccessful man who lacks that woman’s talent, resources, opportunities or luck should not get to eat at all. There is something obscene in the notion that a person can work full-time for a multinational corporation and not earn enough to keep a roof over his head or food on his table. The so-called safety net by which we supposedly protect the poor ought to be a solid floor, a level of basic sustenance through which we, as moral people, allow no one to fall — particularly if their penury is through no fault of their own.
Maybe you regard that opinion as radical and extremist. Maybe it is. But if so, I am in excellent company.
Martin Luther King, for instance, mused that “there must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”
The Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 8:13-15, that it’s wrong for some to live lives of ease while others struggle. “The goal is equality, as it is written: ‘The one who gathered much did not have too much and the one who gathered little did not have too little.’” In Acts 4:32, Luke writes approvingly of the early church that: “No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.”
Which brings us to the Pope — and Rush Limbaugh. As you may have heard, the former has issued his first Apostolic Exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel, in which, among other things, he attacks the free market and what he calls an “economics of exclusion.” This had the latter up in arms last week on his radio show.
Pope Francis writes that poverty must be “radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality…”
“This is astounding … and it’s sad,” says Limbaugh. “It’s actually unbelievable.”
“How can it be that it is not a news item,” writes the Pope, “when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?”
“This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope,” fumes Limbaugh.
Trickle-down economics, writes the pontiff, “expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power…”
Maybe, says Limbaugh, his words were deliberately mistranslated by “the left.” No, seriously, he said that.
But then, some of us are fine with faith so long as it speaks in platitudinous generalities or offers a weapon to clobber gay people with, but scream bloody murder when it imposes specific demands on our personal conscience — or wallet.
It is perfect that all this unfolds in the season of thanksgiving, faith and joy, as people punch, stun-gun and shoot one another over HDTVs and iPads and protesters demand what ought to be the bare minimum of any full-time job: wages sufficient to live on.
This is thanksgiving, faith and joy? No. It is fresh, albeit redundant evidence of our greed — and of how wholeheartedly we have bought into the lie that fulfillment is found in the things we own.
Some of us disagree. Some us feel that until the hungry one is fed and the naked one clothed, the best of us is unfulfilled, no matter how many HDTVs and iPads he owns. This is the radical, extremist ideal embraced by the human rights icon, the Gospel writers, the Bishop of Rome — and me.
By: Leonard Pitts, J., Featured Post, The National Memo, November 4, 2013
“Oh Ye Of Little Intelligence”: Rick Santorum Wins The Prize For The Worst Nelson Mandela Tribute
ObamaCare is a great injustice, much like the institutionalized racism and segregation of post-colonial South Africa, according to former Pennsylvania senator and failed presidential candidate Rick Santorum (R).
In an appearance on Fox News with Bill O’Reilly Thursday, Santorum likened Mandela’s anti-apartheid crusade to Republicans’ continued efforts to dismantle the president’s health care law.
“He was fighting against some great injustice,” Santorum said, “and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people’s lives. And ObamaCare is front and center in that.”
Leaving aside the fact that shanghaiing a world leader’s death to peddle your political beliefs is gross opportunism at its worst, Santorum’s comparison is flawed for another simple reason: Mandela was a prominent proponent of expanding access to health care, especially for the poor and disadvantaged.
From a South African department of health report on the nation’s health care system:
On the 24th of May 1994, President Nelson Mandela announced in his State of the Nation address that all health care for pregnant women and children under the age of 6 years would be provided free to users of public health facilities. The free care policy at primary care level was extended to all users from 1 April 2006. [DOH]
Free public health care? Sounds like socialism to me.
There’s more.
South Africa’s constitution enshrines a “right” to health care in the same subsection that it guarantees the rights to “sufficient food and water.” The Kaiser Family Foundation named an award after Mandela honoring “the efforts of individuals who make extraordinary contributions to improving the health and health care of the most disadvantaged sectors of the population in South Africa and internationally.” And Mandela’s work, both in office and after, laid the groundwork for South Africa’s new universal health care system.
We’re sure Rick Santorum will be issuing a retraction any moment now.
By: Jon Terbush, The Week, December 6, 2013
“Inequality And Self-Righteousness”: President Obama Challenges The Emotional Heart Of Conservative Politics
Here’s a passage from the president’s speech at CAP yesterday, which was a bit of a watershed, consolidating his varying perspectives on inequality and government’s role in the economy:
[W]e need to set aside the belief that government cannot do anything about reducing inequality. It’s true that government cannot prevent all the downsides of the technological change and global competition that are out there right now — and some of those forces are also some of the things that are helping us grow. And it’s also true that some programs in the past, like welfare before it was reformed, were sometimes poorly designed, created disincentives to work, but we’ve also seen how government action time and again can make an enormous difference in increasing opportunity and bolstering ladders into the middle class. Investments in education, laws establishing collective bargaining and a minimum wage — (applause) — these all contributed to rising standards of living for massive numbers of Americans.
Likewise, when previous generations declared that every citizen of this country deserved a basic measure of security, a floor through which they could not fall, we helped millions of Americans live in dignity and gave millions more the confidence to aspire to something better by taking a risk on a great idea. Without Social Security nearly half of seniors would be living in poverty — half. Today fewer than 1 in 10 do. Before Medicare, only half of all seniors had some form of health insurance. Today virtually all do. And because we’ve strengthened that safety net and expanded pro-work and pro- family tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit, a recent study found that the poverty rate has fallen by 40 percent since the 1960s.
What he’s doing here is challenging the idea that you can defend the “good” government interventions in the economy that are now part of the national landscape while opposing contemporary efforts to expand opportunity and reduce inequality. This strikes directly at the politics of selfishness and self-righteousness that is at the emotional heart of conservative politics at present.
The opportunity gap in America is now as much about class as it is about race. And that gap is growing. So if we’re going to take on growing inequality and try to improve upward mobility for all people, we’ve got to move beyond the false notion that this is an issue exclusively of minority concern. And we have to reject a politics that suggests any effort to address it in a meaningful way somehow pits the interests of a deserving middle class against those of an undeserving poor in search of handouts.
This can’t be said too often.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 5, 2013
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