Welfare for Some (Donors for Some Dang Reason)

Jeff Bull

A front page article in this morning's Oregonian ponders the "what ifs?" that will arise from the cuts to the federal food stamp program if the U.S. House's budget reconciliation bill becomes law. The most effective illustration of the possiblities comes with a look at the lives of two Oregon women. I'll leave it to y'all to read the details, but the upshot of both tales turns on the question of limited options.

It's this notion of limited options that quickly differentiates the reality of these womens' lives as they think about coping with the House's budget cutting proposals from the almost irrationally narrow and cold-hearted calculus that led the slimmest majority of the House (217-215 - somewhere Tom DeLay is smiling) to disregard a fair number of better options when they voted to cut food stamps, along with a host of other programs for the needy.

As you think about all this, it's vital to consider how many among the tens of thousands of Oregonians, not to mention the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of Americans, share their problem.

You can find good stuff on the food stamp question on the Oregon Center for Public Policy's (OCPP) site (LINK), but The Oregonian's piece also provides some useful numbers, specifically where the proposed cut-off for food stamp comes in:

"The House wants to tighten eligibility -- eliminating food stamps for anyone whose gross income is more than 130 percent of the poverty level, or $21,152 a year for a family of four."

If you set aside, for the moment, the idea that the poverty level is a very sick joke, just think of that dollar figure and apply that to your experience: how far does that amount of cash go? Speaking for myself, my wife and I earn more, but not by much; between student loans and that thing called life, we scramble often as not.

The subject of student loans provides an instructive segue into the breadth and scope of the House's puzzling assault on our nation's needy. The classic response to the question of, "what are these people supposed to do?" would be "get a better job." Fine idea…except that the same package of cuts will also raise the cost of getting student loans. From an article out of Portland State University's Daily Vanguard:

"The budget bill would reverse a previous law capping the interest rates for student loans at 6.8 percent, increasing the cap to 8.25 percent. It would also increase the cap on parent loans from 7.9 percent to 9 percent. For a graduating college student with the average debt load of $17,500, the changes would increase the cost of paying off loans by $5,800 in interest and fees."

The whole tale gets really strange when one starts to poke around at what the House didn't consider when figuring out how to bring the budget into balance. A long news release from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has a field day contrasting the House's budget bill with the one that passed the Senate. There's far too much in there to usefully excerpt, but, suffice to say that there's fodder galore, especially on the dubious decisions regarding who pays to rein in Medicaid's cost (hint: it's neither the managed-care facilities, nor Big Pharma). As for student loans, a Washington Post editorial from October 21st both grumbles about the federal governments long-standing support of a practice called "recyling" (again, can't explain here, but suggest you read it), as well as noting a really obvious solution that would save a hell of a lot of bread:

"House members should put pressure on Mr. Boehner to release the Government Accountability Office report on student loan costs that he commissioned in January. That report reexamined figures from the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget, both of which showed that federal subsidies for banks that lend to students cost taxpayers 10 times more than direct loans to students."

Of course, the GOPs' serial tax cuts are the elephant and 800-pound gorilla in the room as we discuss the House's options. The CBPP's report continues its field day on that subject; the quickest and dirtiest excerpt I can pull from that contrasts who's getting what between the House's budget and tax cuts:

"In 2009, according to data from the Tax Policy Center, millionaires will receive average tax cuts of $32,000 just from the extension of the capital gains and dividend tax cut. The size of these tax cuts dwarf the effects that the House budget cuts would have on people in this income stratum. By contrast, over the next five years, the average total tax cut received by households with incomes of less than $30,000 would be only about $30 under the House bill. The tax cuts these households would secure would be dwarfed by the budget cuts imposed upon them."[emphasis removed - tee hee]

While it's bad enough that the House, and the GOP as a whole, ignores the impact and, to be blunt about it, the injustice of their serial and ongoing tax cuts, the profoundly disturbing – and, well, disgusting – mystery in this case surrounds the House GOP's rejection of better policy options. Sure, the questions of class warfare apply: e.g. does a millionaire really need an additional $32,000 per year when someone else is deciding whether to seek preventative care, or whether to pay the bill or to eat? Still, even if one accepts their near-total worship of tax cuts – and here, even Laffer admitted a bottom-point to his famous Curve – there's the no less dubious fixation on corporate welfare; is there a point at which we wean the "free market" from its own culture of dependency?

As a nation, we are currently enduring some very serious economic shifts; between competing in a global economy, the sky-rocketing costs of healthcare and higher education, what are we doing to help American citizens and workers make this transition? I don't know about the rest of us, but the leaders of the GOP revolution are not only doing very little, they seem determined to make that transition even harder.

By Jeff Bull Dec. 13, 2005