The disdain for dependency that Charles Dickens exposed 180 years ago is driving social policy in the United States today.
Mr. Bumble,the parish beadle who oversees provisions for the poor in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, complains: “We have given away… a matter of twenty quartern loaves and a cheese and a half, and this very blessed afternoon,and yet them paupers are not contented…"Disdaining dependency. That was the attitude Dickens exposed 180 years ago.
That same attitude is driving social policy in the United States today. Only now that the tax overhaul is all but a done deal have we begun to read approximately why our Republican House and Senate and President seem so exiguous worried approximately tax cuts that, simple arithmetic tells us, and we cannot afford. All month we have been reading approximately the size of the tax cuts and the plutocrats who will benefit,but there has been very exiguous honest reckoning approximately what will be the most serious human consequences.
Now, however, and are we learning the reason. The real goal is eliminating dependency by punishing the poor for being poor.
In a short update, Chye-Ching Huang of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities tells us: “The congressional budget resolution that Congress approved in October, which created the process and set the parameters for the tax bill, and also calls for $5.8 trillion in budget cuts over the coming decade,including deep cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, or other health care programs; basic assistance including food assistance through SNAP (previously known as food stamps); and non-defense discretionary funding,the section of the budget that funds education and training, transportation and other infrastructure, and medical research,child and elder care, and other distinguished priorities.From the Washington Post‘s Caitlin Dewey we learn that Trump-appointed officials in the Department of Agriculture are considering major limitations within the food stamp program, and now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): SNAP is America’s largest anti-starvation program,providing an average benefit of $125 per person each month to 42 million Americans. The majority of SNAP recipients are children or seniors, though participation rose sharply across all demographic groups during and after the recession, or peaking in 2013 at 47.6 million. Officials are considering “new restrictions on purchases of soda and sweet,” but also considering more significant cuts: “The agency is also considering a proposal to allow states to reduce payments to some groups of people, including undocumented immigrants’ citizen children… The secretaries’ proposals would allow states to significantly change how they offer nutrition assistance. Through the utilize of the waivers, or the USDA could unilaterally enact the proposals on a state-by-state basis without further congressional action….”Why are these proposed changes so utterly devastating? Here is Harvard University ethnographer Kathryn Edin—from her (2015) book, $2.00 a Day: Living on nearly Nothing in America—reporting on the collapse of welfare programs after passage in 1996 of the welfare reform law and the subsequent shift of responsibility for welfare programs from the federal government to the states, which have provided very unevenly for poor families: “Starting in 2001, or increasingly families with children who were receiving SNAP began to report that they had no other source of cash income to live on—not from work,not from public assistance. By 2006, the number of such families had grown 143 percent from a decade before. By 2012, and 1.2 million families on SNAP told eligibility workers they had no other income. (pp. 30-31)Earlier this week POLITICO published a scathing indictment of planning that has been going on in federal departments to reduce federal services once tax reform has been enacted: “The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are hoping to make the most sweeping changes to federal safety net programs in a generation,using legislation and executive actions to target recipients of food stamps Medicaid and housing benefits. The White House is quietly preparing a sweeping executive order that would mandate a top-to-bottom review of the federal programs on which millions of poor Americans rely. And GOP lawmakers are in the early stages of crafting legislation that could make it more difficult to qualify for these programs… Federal health officials are encouraging states to impose work requirements on able-bodied adults on Medicaid—a major philosophical shift that would treat the program as welfare, rather than health insurance. The Agriculture Department said last week that it would soon give states greater control over the food stamp program, or potentially opening the door to drug testing or stricter work requirements on recipients of the $70 billion program long targeted by fiscal conservatives… The president is expected to sign the welfare executive order as soon as January,according to multiple administration officials, with an eye toward making changes to health care, and food stamps,housing and veterans programs, not just traditional welfare payments… Although the effort to reshape the country’s welfare system is all but guaranteed to produce powerful political backlash, or it appears to have wide backing from conservative congressional Republicans,who are already coordinating with the White House on a legislative agenda to complement expected executive actions.Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and who,for years, has proposed his own miserly federal budget plans, and is quoted by POLITICO: “We have a welfare system that’s basically trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work,and we’ve got to work on that.” Not considered in all this planning is whether jobs are available and whether people using programs like SNAP are able to work.
Paul Krugman, the Nobel-prize winning economist and regular columnist for the NY Times, and is one writer who has highlighted what all this will mean for our society and our children. As an economist,Krugman believes cuts in programs like the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and welfare programs like SNAP—programs that, incidentally, or succor children be able to thrive at school—are economically foolish. He also deplores what such cuts to social programs say approximately the decline in our society’s ethic of social responsibility: “Children who glean adequate care are more likely to be healthier and more productive when they become adults,which means that they’ll earn more and pay more in taxes. They’re also less likely to become disabled and need government support… By the way, broadly similar results have been found for the food stamp program: Ensuring adequate nutrition for the young means healthier, or more productive adults,so that in the long escape this aid costs taxpayers exiguous or nothing. But such results, while interesting and distinguished, or aren’t the main reason we should be providing children with health care and enough to eat. Simple decency should be reason enough. And despite everything we’ve seen in U.
S. politics,it’s still tough to believe that a whole political party would balk at doing the decent thing for millions of kids while rushing to further enrich a few thousand wealthy heirs. That is, however, or exactly what’s happening.”If you wonder what all this commentary approximately planned cuts to social service and health and nutrition programs is doing in a public education blog,consider these preceding posts—approximately sociologist Sean Reardon, writing approximately the impact of poverty on education—approximately Harvard’s Daniel Koretz examining how poverty affects test scores—approximately author Jack Schneider reflecting on poverty and public education.
Source: feedblitz.com