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Speaking of Our “Pro-Life” GOP…

Jill

Republicans began targeting key programs for budget cuts yesterday, from student loans and health care to food stamps and foster care.

(…)

The House Ways and Means Committee today will begin drafting legislation that would save about $8 billion over five years, eight times the $1 billion target the panel was given in the spring. To do it, Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) would cut back federal aid to state child-support enforcement programs, limit federal payments to some foster care families, and cut welfare payments to the disabled.

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24 thoughts on Speaking of Our “Pro-Life” GOP…

  2. Well hey, if they were good, morally deserving people, they wouldn’t be in shitty situations in the first place, am I right?

  4. Well hey, if they were good, morally deserving people, they wouldn’t be in shitty situations in the first place, am I right?

    In any case, if they pray hard enough, Jesus will save them.

  5. Well, this is why it’s politically difficult to balance the budget. Everyone complains about how it needs to be done, but then, once in a blue moon when Congress grows a spine and starts to make the tough decisions about slowing the rate of growth of federal programs, liberals and the MSM scream bloody murder.

    By the way, you do realize that slowing the growth of federal spending, not budget “cuts”, is what we’re talking about, right? You have to read 11 paragraphs into the above-linked story before you get to this:

    Ways and Means officials said the child-support proposal would change the federal matching rate for child-support enforcement from a 66 percent share to a 50 percent share that would be more in line with other federal and state partnerships, saving $3.8 billion through 2010.

    So those heartless Republicans are proposing that the federal government kick in a mere 16% less (spread out over a five-year period) for this program than it currently does now. And then you have to get another four paragraphs down for this:

    …even with [the proposed budget changes], Medicaid spending will grow 7 percent through the end of the decade, rather than the 7.3 percent currently expected.

    For proposing a -0.3% change in the growth of a federal program that is already speeding dangerously toward insolvency, Republicans can look forward to being called cruel hatemongers, and having their pro-life bona fides questioned.

  7. Also, benefits for the poor generally are among the first to get cut – no powerful lobby or voting bloc to fight it…

    Sometimes tough choices have to be made, but should sacrifice fall on the backs of the people who have the hardest time in our country? As the industrialized country with the greatest inequality gap, should we make that (dubious) distinction even more pronounced?

    It’s sad, disgusting, and dare I say, immoral.

  8. Sometimes tough choices have to be made, but should sacrifice fall on the backs of the people who have the hardest time in our country? As the industrialized country with the greatest inequality gap, should we make that (dubious) distinction even more pronounced?

    The question is, does giving poor people a check really help them to get our of poverty? I’m Canadian, so I won’t speak on the American system, but 10 years ago I had a day job in a video store. It involved renting a few movies but mostly entertaining the welfare recipients who would stop by to chit-chat. Most rentals happened at night. After a couple of years, I got to know most of them quite well, I even became friends with some of them. Not a single one of them was looking for a job that would endanger their welfare checks. They were might work under the table but never in a real job.

    A lot of government handouts are necessary to help people temporarily down on their luck. But it should be only be enough to keep them from starving. I am completely in favor of giving them money for education and we should spoil their kids in terms of schooling to prevent the generational effect. But, I have never personally seen a case where handing out a check helped decrease the “inequality gap”.

  9. Not a single one of them was looking for a job that would endanger their welfare checks.

    In part because getting a job endangers their chance of getting the welfare chick, in addition to being able to maintain child care and medicaid. If getting a job means less personal security, doesn’t it make sense that you would be jobless until having a job wouldn’t endanger the health and welfare of your children?

  10. KnifeGhost:
    I think it was Barney Frank who said that for conservatives, life begins at conception and ends at birth.
    For me, a bit of an overstatement, because there are some pro-lifers (even pro-life politicians) who also care about the poor and health care, but when it comes to some of these people …

    Jon C.:
    If Republicans care so much about keeping the budget small, why did they produce those pork-stuffed monstrosities that are the Energy and Highway Bill? (A few Republicans opposed them, but most, including the ones who are screaming the loudest about the health care programs, voted for them.)

    I’ve posted this at this site before, but pro-life senators opposed an amendment that would have banned testing pesticides on humans, such as EPA experiments that targeted children in low-income neighborhoods.
    (http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=1&vote=00162#position)
    Virtually all of the 36 in opposition are pro-life, Stevens is the only one who is pro-choice. I’ll give credit where it’s due – there were a dozen pro-lifers who were consistent and voted for this amendment. But I don’t understand why the people who are pro-life voted for this: they don’t support the right of the parent to abort their unborn child but they do support the right of the parent to expose their born child to potentially life-threatening chemicals?

  11. “But I don’t understand why the people who are pro-life voted for this”
    should be
    “But I don’t understand why the people who are pro-life didn’t vote for this”

  12. Kate, you’re mischaracterizing that proposed experiment.

    They weren’t saying “let’s take some kids and put chemicals on them and see what happens.” They were saying “let’s give observation tools to some families whose kids – like pretty most of the kids in the country – are being environmentally exposed to these chemicals and see if the chemicals are doing anything bad to them”. They “targeted” low-income households because low-income households are the ones where the stipend they could provide would be enough of an incentive to actually do the (somewhat tedious) data collection, and because low-income households are the households with more chemical exposure generally.

    The study was killed, largely due to mischaracterizations and attempts – like this one – to turn the study into a partisan attack on Republicans.

    So the kids are still being exposed to the chemicals; that was never in question. It’s just now we’re not studying it to see if it’s something that ought to be changed. Oh, and some poor people aren’t getting money.

    Nice work.

  13. does giving poor people a check really help them to get our of poverty?

    I don’t believe that any of the programs mentioned qualify simply as ‘giving poor people a check:’ “student loans and health care to food stamps and foster care.”

    However, they are generally means-tested programs that are (mostly) targeted at the poor. Funding these programs would not only assist poor people currently, but would help children (re: foster care, health care, and student loans) achieve educational and financial goals that would enable them to be less dependent on the state in the future.

  14. Jon, have you ever been dependent on a government program? It sucks. And for most of us, there are few ways out.

    Well, let’s stop talking about the need to balance the budget then. Every federal program is “essential” to somebody who benefits from it. Let’s decide that we’re going to fund every single one lavishly, and the fiscal consequences be damned, or let’s get serious and make some adult decisions about where we can tighten our belts.

    EricP above has already raised good points about whether welfare actually helps anyone to get of poverty.

    Kate: Sadly, you’re entirely right that the Congress GOP has passed some disgustingly pork-laden bills recently. I cannot defend that, nor can I defend Bush’s failure to veto them. However, now that there are some (admittedly faint) signals that Congress is willing to make some spending reductions, I’m inclined to view that as a step in the right direction.

  15. That should be “Congressional GOP” above. Although let it also be noted for the record that Democrats are just as protective of their pork as Republicans.

  16. In part because getting a job endangers their chance of getting the welfare chick, in addition to being able to maintain child care and medicaid. If getting a job means less personal security, doesn’t it make sense that you would be jobless until having a job wouldn’t endanger the health and welfare of your children?

    For the record, with very few exceptions, the people I was talking about were actually single men and some women in their twenties without kids. As I stated, paying to give poor people’s kids a great educations (even better than middle class if possible) is a worthwhile thing to break the generational issue of kids of welfare parents. That is an investment in the future. That would certainly include enough to feed the children. As for medicaid, as I stated I’m Canadian and that is something we don’t worry about. Everyone is covered under Medicare. That is one of the reasons that I may be conservative as a Canadian but I would never be considered one in the US, single payer medicine is a good thing. Aside from the social issues, it means the cost for a business to add a good job is far less because there is no health insurance which is a good conservative reason for it.

    The disabled or single moms without the education to get a good enough job to make ends meet, sure help them out. However for a healthy person without children who could work and chooses not to, I say give them enough to keep them from starving to death and that is it. If they want retraining, give to them but no cash.

    The ultimate goal has to be to get people off of welfare. It used to be something people were ashamed of and they worked to get rid of the stigma. Now it is a way of life for too many people. It is too late for some people but giving their kids a hope for a better life is something we can do.

  17. Robert: That begs the question about why the chemicals are there in the first place. Granted, I’m no EPA expert, but if they are proved to be harmful (through either human trial-and-error in the past or animal testing) those kids need medical attention and those communities need to get cleaned up. It strikes me as ridiculous that the same people who burned the midnight oil to save Terri Schiavo in the name of “human life” are so cavalier with toxic chemicals. Also if it was a partisan attack, then why did 16 Republicans (including Tom “abortion doctors should get the death penalty” Coburn and other very conservative Republicans) vote for it?

    Jon – Priorities. $200 million bridges to nowhere and discretionary museums and parks are worth much less than health care for the poor. To cut the latter, while preserving the former, is to me indefensible. Even if the Democrats are pork-barrel spenders at least they don’t wrap themselves in the flag of small government and cutting federal programs that the GOP does.

  18. Now it is a way of life for too many people.

    Actually, that’s inaccurate. Most people cycle in and out of ‘welfare’ just as they cycle in and out of poverty. Most people do not spend their lives receiving benefits from the state.

  19. That begs the question about why the chemicals are there in the first place.

    Because people use bleach to clean, mostly. Do you even know what the study was about?

  20. I don’t know about Canada but generally in the US, you don’t get a check if you are under 65, able bodied, and have no minor children. There may be some states that have welfare programs for them but most don’t other than unemployment and that is only a temporary benefit and you have to have worked a certain amount of time to even be eligible for it.

    I agree that welfare usually doesn’t get people out of poverty but frequently it keeps them from being homeless, hungry, or dying of a treatable medical condition.

  21. I might be less disgusted with this Republican attempt to “cut spending” (a euphemism if I ever saw one) if they weren’t refusing to give up billions of dollars annually in tax cuts for middle- and upper-class Americans. That’s unjustifiable.

  22. Robert, I haven’t read that link but reminds me of the lead abatement experiment done through Johns Hopkins. (I believe all research at the university was temporarily shut down due to this study; a definite breach of ethics).

    http://www.courts.state.md.us/opinions/coa/2001/128a00.pdf

    I don’t trust researchers who plan to do such studies with ONLY indigent families and children, when it’s PAID research; those are the folks unethical researchers are most likely take advantage of.

    I should know; I’ve worked in the field for 15 years and have seen my share (luckily never had to work with or for) of unethical researchers.

  23. >>I agree that welfare usually doesn’t get people out of poverty but frequently it keeps them from being homeless, hungry, or dying of a treatable medical condition.>>

    Yes, exactly. Welfare doesn’t pull people out of poverty, it keeps people off the street.

    And it annoys me when the type of conservative who believe in rational self-interest vilifies people who choose to stay on welfare. As Lauren said, getting a job can leave you worse off than staying on welfare. A possible solution: rewrite welfare laws to allow _some_ assistance to the working poor.

  24. Actually billions of dollars go uncollected and those monies no one seems to know where it goes. This proposal is just to remove unused monies… no biggie.

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