Fail:
When President Barack Obama increased unemployment benefits as part of his economic stimulus, he also made some Americans ineligible for hundreds of dollars a month in food stamps.
Under the economic recovery plan, laid-off workers have seen a $25 weekly bump in their unemployment checks as part of a broad expansion of benefits for the poor. But the law did not raise the income cap for food stamp eligibility, so the extra money has pushed some people over the limit.
Laid-off workers and state officials are only now realizing the quirk, a consequence of pushing a $787 billion, 400-page bill through Congress and into law in three weeks.
And for people hurt by the change, there’s no way around it.
“Everybody tells you, ‘Yeah, I can understand why you’re frustrated. It doesn’t sound right.’ But nobody knows where to go,” said Mark Milota, 47, of Marietta, Ga., who was laid off in November from his job at a medical billing company.
The Georgia Department of Human Resources explained in a letter to him last month that, because of the stimulus, he was ineligible for food stamps. He now makes $1,538 a month — $21 too much for a family of two to qualify.
Something to think about while everyone is screaming for health care reform RIGHT NOW. I’d rather they take their time and get it right than rush it to just get something done. Obviously the stimulus package was a unique situation, but it is still worth keeping in mind the unintended consequences of everything the government does.
Cyrus
This is OT, but wow, Andrew Sullivan is just a teeny-tiny bit full of himself:
low-tech cyclist
OK, but why aren’t the food stamp benefits scaled by income? Surely, in this day and age, you don’t get full benefits until you make one dollar too much to qualify, and then you get nothing.
Surely a family’s benefits are scaled so that if you earn less than X% of the poverty line, you get full benefits, but if you make X+25% of the poverty line, you get a bit less, and if X+50%, a bit less than if you were making X+25%, and so on until you hit the point where you’re making enough that you get no food stamps.
If things are NOT done that way, then THAT is the stupidity.
JenJen
I agree that it was rushed, but as someone who has been only part-time employed and on unemployment since October 2008, I can’t tell you how much that little $25 a week extra has meant to me.
I’ve never been on food stamps and, since it’s just me, unemployment is certainly enough for me to pay the mortgage and keep my belly full. But aren’t those income qualification limits set by the individual states?
Also, when I work, I claim my income when I file for my weekly unemployment benefits, and that amount is deducted from what I receive. So it would seem to me that there’s a simple fix to this for that particular family; claim part-time income of $25/week.
John Cole
@Cyrus: And the very next post after that was a blogger triumphalism post.
This is the sort of nonsense I was getting at this morning when I talked about the coverage of it by American bloggers. I get the same frenetic warblogger vibe from 2003, and I remember how that worked out.
John Cole
@JenJen: Yes.
TenguPhule
I call bullshit. This means the state governments were asleep at the switch if they couldn’t see this coming.
JenJen
@John Cole: This sentence from Sully was the one that made me close the window today:
Good gawd, please, Sully. Love what you’ve been doing, but get over yourself.
Zifnab
Health Care isn’t a new idea. We’ve got a dozen or so other countries to use as models with varying degrees of success. Health Care has been on the agenda every decade or so since the 40s. If we “rush” the legislation any less than we’ve been doing, we’ll be forced to grapple with the realities of health care for those living in near-earth orbits. And that’ll just complicate things further.
The only thing that will bring down a well-thought out, intelligently constructed, affordable, easily accessible universal health care coverage system will be a band of Senators or House Reps who come in at the 11th hour to fuck it up in a “bipartisan” “compromise”. Sooner or later a bill is going to have to come up for a vote. Sooner or later it’s going to have to go through the Congressional meat grinder. All the waiting and thinking and planning isn’t going to change that.
Brachiator
Good post and good points.
JenJen
@Zifnab:
And, sadly, that’s exactly what I think is going to happen.
@John Cole: By the way, another unfortunate consequence to being laid off is losing your health insurance! COBRA is an unaffordable joke, and I lasted two months. I’ve been on the “Don’t Get Sick” plan for six months now. Wish me luck!
cleek
what low-tech cyclist said. the FAIL is that there’s a hard cut-off, not a gradual taper.
@JenJen: ditto. the green was an eye-roller. but the “bring them down” was over the top.
i’m waiting for him to do a “we’re all Iranians now” post.
gbear
@Cyrus:
Don’t you wish Sully had comments when he does something like that? Maybe he can throw a party for them too. It’ll be like St. Patrick’s Day without the shamrocks!
Back on topic: How come every time there’s some sort of federal ‘oversight’, the county governments get hit with the huge bill and have to scramble to keep people off the streets? Are the feds doing anything about this other than saying ‘Oops, my bad’?
Adrienne
Let’s also remember that unemployment bennies AND food stamp bennies are calculated and administered by the STATE govt. This is NOT Obama’s fault or the federal gov’ts fault in any way shape or form. Unemployment income is still INCOME and if someone’s income goes up, even if it is only $100 per month, they may become ineligible for certain gov’t programs. That gets a big fucking DUH! from me.
Also, it would be worth it to discuss how much in food stamps would that couple be eligible for if they had just made the cut off vs. that extra $100 cash. If the would have only gotten $50 in food stamps per month, they are making out better with the stimulus.
Adrienne
Most states have a gradual taper but they live in backwards ass Georgia – you know, the same state who locked up and convicted a 17 year old high school senior on charges of child molestation and had him labeled as a sex offender for having consensual sex with a 15 with whom he attended school. Who freakin knows why they do the things they do.
Shygetz
I’m with cyclist and cleek; the fail is in any hard cut-off, not the stimulus package. Even absent a stimulus package, a hard food stamp cut-off still screws a part-time laborer who is able to wrangle a couple of extra hours. As someone who has had the fortune of not yet requiring our safety net, I had just assumed that it was designed smarter than that.
EDIT: Ah, I see it’s my current home state of Georgia…that explains a lot.
Kirk Spencer
@Adrienne: Ah, Georgia.
Where the cap for unemployment payments, regardless of how much you earned or how long you were earning it, is $330 per month (before they take out the income and other tax withholdings).
AhabTRuler
To be fair, IIRC there was a racial element to that case, so Georgia was being racist, not ignorant and prudish.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@JenJen:
Jesus Christ. How did Sully manage to type this when clearly he was using one hand to tie on a red bandanna and the other for fapping?
Amazing that a communications medium limited to bursts of 140 characters has managed to outstrip the blogosphere in self-important doucebaggery.
Jon H
To be fair, the main problem wasn’t so much the rush, but the bullshit haggling with people like Ben Nelson and other twits who were less concerned with a good bill than with cutting down whatever was there, no matter what the consequences, in order to look ‘moderate’.
David
If they don’t strike while the health care iron is hot, it will not get done. There is a long history of legislation delayed = legislation denied.
And there are a lot of players hoping to delay this stuff yet again.
Congress is good a tweaking legislation to fix small problems.
They are really bad at changing the status quo.
So, as far as I am concerned, let them round up the horses that get out of the burning barn later. There may wind up being small problems on a relative basis, but at least Americans will be free of the for-profit insurance racket if they choose.
JenJen
@Kirk Spencer: Another nice stimulus benefit for those of us who are still unemployed is that the first $2,400 received in 2009 was tax-free. Every little bit helps!
Adrienne
That may very well be true, but it was only possible because of the law itself. Racist and ignorant/prudish or NOT mutually exclusive.
And whatever, it’s still GEORGIA. So like I said, who knows why they do some of the shit they do?
Face
Food stamp recipients are just stoopid. Who needs to mail food, anyways?
Zifnab
@JenJen:
I’d rather have a “meh” health care option we can make better than a fantastic plan that never makes it off paper.
The GOP – and a fair number of corporationist Dems – either don’t care for or strongly oppose this legislation. There’s going to be some blood letting. The important thing is that Obama hangs on to the foundation of the program – public option, universal coverage, affordable cost – and then we can see about massaging it into something better over the following years.
cleek
meaningful Health Care Reform is dead. you heard it hear first.
the moderates are going to water it down and direct the cash that runs off into the maw of the current insurance system. the resulting gift to the insurance industry will make W’s Medicare benefit look positively frugal. Obama better have the good sense to veto it.
JenJen
@Zifnab: I agree with that. And I certainly agree with the President’s sentiment that it’s 2009 or never.
I was pretty dismayed an hour or so ago, watching Ed Schultz on MSNBC, telling David Schuster that he’s hearing the White House doesn’t have the Democratic votes, let alone the GOP’s. Color me oh-so-shocked.
Maybe Andrew Sullivan could come up with a garment color we could Wear For Health Care! ;-)
slag
OT: Why is it that so many of the comments today are off-topic?
Also,
I agree with this in theory. But part of me feels that in order to get anything done these days, it has to be under the auspices of urgency. It just seems that so few of our representatives are actually interested in doing meaningful good that they’re more likely to hold things up for reasons of pure political advantage–not quality work.
Kirk Spencer
@JenJen: Yeah, I know that’s what they said. But they still took the withholding from my unemployment check.
12 months and approaching the end of savings. Soon the choices will be variations of ‘lose the house to the bank’.
JenJen
@Kirk Spencer: Very sorry to hear that! I used to have them withhold taxes from my check, but in Ohio you had the choice. So, as soon as The Stim was announced, I switched it back to No Withholding, and figure I’ll just sort it out when I file my taxes in 2010.
I feel for you. It’s rough out here.
InflatableCommenter
Everybody who has ever used Microsoft Windows Vista knows that only private corporations can be counted on to always get everything right, to handle implementation on a massive scale and get all the details right the first time.
The free market is perfect, and the government is shit.
That’s just the way it is, so get over it.
Maus
No kidding, what the fuck, TWITTER of all protect mediums?!
Legalize
Meaningful health care reform gets done if Obama threatens to ex-communicate any Dem who does not stick to his program. The end. Would it be a dick move? Yup. But W rolled this way and got what he wanted from Congress with far fewer GOP numbers AND a Dem Congress at the end.
Maus
Er, protest.
InflatableCommenter
DougJ and his merry band of inspirational elves continues their drumbeat. America is doomed. Voters are all stupid. The government sucks. The American Experiment is massive fail. The media control public opinion.
Back in the Fifties, there was a popular all purpose joke that used to show up everywhere. Just a sign that said “People are no damned good.”
That’s what is is really all about, isn’t it? People are just no damned good, and the more people are involved, the more sure it is that whatever it is we are talking about is Just Fucked.
As I said to Dougie the other day, I picture him there 230-240 years ago. “We will never be free of the king. The revolution will fail. America was just a cruel dream.”
I think we should have a day a week, probably Thursday, when every top post and every comment is just the darkest, gloomiest, most disheartening long slow groan of despair that everyone can muster. We can have some clinically depressed people come in and tell us their tales of woe. Just a total gloomfest.
Thoughts?
“Terribly Thursdays” we should call them.
Zifnab
@JenJen:
We finally get to find out how much political capital our new President actually has to his name. I’m really not sure what’s more frustrating – watching a Senator turn on his loyal constituency for the fickle fancy of a K-Street Lobbyist or knowing said constituency will still be loyal while their Senator signs the bill that sells them all down the river.
Lols.
*sigh*
*cries a little*
Laura W
@JenJen: I was just very dismayed hearing David Schuster say that watching how Obama approaches the ordering of a hamburger could just be a good indication of how he approaches foreign policy.
I’m pretty sure he and David Gregory are brain sharing these days.
Souvik
Not sure I understand the “fail” tag, but then I don’t know the laws around Food stamps and unemployment. I am assuming that like any other bell curve a lot of people would have been over the food-stamp threshold by a few dollars even before the stimulus bill. It seems you are saying that the idea failed because a very small percentage of people got penalized compared to the vast number of people who benefitted from the $25 check. If there is a question about the effectiveness of a $25 check then, raising the limits of the food-stamp eligibility would not have improved the effectiveness or helped anyone.
P.S. Within the same comment I have admitted that I do not know enough about the topic being discussed, I have made assumptions and guesstimates. Does this feeling of guilt go away after a few similar comments? Do you have trouble sleeping….
JenJen
Via GOS, Norm Coleman isn’t going anywhere:
Hey, Norm? DIAF.
@Laura W: David Gregory? I was gonna go with Norah O’Donnell. Maybe it’s a Tri-Brain situation?
Punchy
I wuz on this plan fer 2 years. You’ll quickly realize–after only one unisured trip to the doc and the resultant bill–that the plan quickly morphs into “Dont Befall a Catastrophic injury that absolutely, necessarily demands livesaving measures (but sickness is fine cuz I wont die and therefore dont absolutely need a doc) plan”
Really, sickness is your least worry. You need to sweat a torn ACL playing softball or an appendix bursting. Any hospital surgery will crush you.
Zifnab
Socialist Socialist Socialist Stalin Lenin Trotsky Marx
I hate you, Mr. Filter. I hate you with the hate of a bazillion burning testicular suns.
Zifnab
@InflatableCommenter:
And Linux proves the sublime bliss of the Scoialist Utopia.
No offense, but I wouldn’t use software as a metaphor for anything that was intended to work more than some of the time.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@InflatableCommenter:
I think we should have a day of the week when we blame things on DougJ, even when he didn’t write the comment we object to or the original post the comment refers to. That bastard.
InflatableCommenter
@InflatableCommenter:
Pretty sure this is the original cartoon, captioned “People are no damn good,” by Steig, that started the PANDG theme.
Now known as the Balloon Juice Doctrine.
InflatableCommenter
@tripletee (formerly tBone):
I know who wrote the article. But the rules permit me to speak of DougJ even if he did not write the fucking article.
Knowhadimean? I know you do. It’s all part of the PANDG Service Level Agreement.
InflatableCommenter
Please feel free to use your own favorite metaphor for large scale implementations that are perfect and prove that government is futile.
JenJen
@Punchy: I’m aware of that, and yes, it’s a terrifying and precarious situation to be uninsured. Forget preventive health care, forget dental visits, get used to wearing contacts weeks after they’ve expired. That’s just the beginning of it; it really is the catastrophic event that is always sitting in the bottom of my stomach like a stone.
One thing I don’t think the President is doing a good job of is selling universal health care to the people. I just think that so many people are insured, and they just don’t think about what life is like without it. Stories like yours need to be told more often. And people need to understand, tomorrow, it could be you. Time to get that “fierce urgency of now” thing going, Mr. President.
drillfork
Oh they’ll take their time and make sure the insurance robber-barons remain profitable…
jake 4 that 1
A) I’ve updated my list of reasons I’m glad my family gtfo of the south. Again.
B)
Booyah! 101st Chairborne!
TenguPhule
Apple G3: An expensive failure waiting to happen.
InflatableCommenter
@Punchy:
My neighbor 26 years ago was a truck driver for a large firm. He made city deliveries in a shortie tractor-trailer rig.
At the rear door of the trailer was a roll up door, held up, when open, by a torsion spring. One day, he was standing in the rear opening of the trailer when the spring broke.
The door rolled down and struck him on the shoulder. In that sense, he was lucky, since it did not hit him in the head and kill him.
But anyway, long story short, he was in the hospital for two months, and never worked again. After two years of surgeries and therapy, he was basically a cripple. And he had racked up medical invoices in the high six figures.
Just another day at work. That’s how fast the Best Healthcare System in the world can turn you into a bankrupt. He was lucky, he had loads of insurance and disability coverage through his employer.
Lucky in the sense that he could sit home and gulp painkillers and watch tv all day and not worry about the bills, I mean.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@InflatableCommenter:
Sure. I’m also allowed to note when I think you’re being kind of a dick. Personally I blame DougJ.
R-Jud
@tripletee (formerly tBone):
A GREEN bandanna– don’t you CARE?!
/Sully
@ JenJen: While on the “Don’t get sick” plan in 2002 I wound up with an acute kidney infection. 2 days in hospital took 2 solid years to pay off.
Seriously, don’t get sick. And I hope things improve for you soon.
InflatableCommenter
Which would be fine, if you weren’t wrong, as you generally are. I’m not being a dick. I am being funny, and absolutely right. The gloom and doom shit in here has become sort of an ensemble joke. DougJ is the ringleader. I point it out when it’s obvious. That’s my job.
Your job, apparently, is to be the dick. Which is good, since you obviously have the head for it.
Try to pay attention and get the roles right. You are just pissed off that an obvious straight line passed you by for about a year and I made the most of it. Better luck next time.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@InflatableCommenter:
Do tell. (I’m the dick – humor often flies right over my, ahem, head.)
InflatableCommenter
Well, awareness is the first step to recovery, so I have been told.
Heh.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
I have been looking for a new handle. This is downright providential. The PANDG Gloom and Doom Society is open for business!
Yee haw, goddammit.
Bondo
@Zifnab:
I agree that waiting for perfection (bills lacking any oversights or unintended consequences) is a silly dream. No amount of time would allow these things to be fixed ahead of time. It takes the experience of things not happening quite right to know that there is a problem. The real problem is that we call on the legislature to fix these things rather than allowing sufficient bureaucratic discretion to realize what happened and make the fix within the administrative chain of command.
I did want to comment on the “corporatist” comment. The most corporatist countries in the developed world are Norway, Sweden, et al. Corporatism is a style of interest group incorporation into the political system. Corporate interests may dominate American politics, but they do so within a pluralistic interest group system. It is a pet peeve that people use corporatist incorrectly, which sadly is the more popular usage.
slag
@JenJen: I stopped doing all kinds of sports when I was uninsured. Rollerblading was the hardest to give up because it was also a transportation mechanism. I swear, being uninsured for a couple of years made me less healthy overall because I was wary of any exercise that may induce injury (ie, all of them).
JenJen
@slag: Hey! I used to be an avid rollerblader too, but actually gave that up while still insured, after an especially nasty spill and the worst case of road-rash imaginable.
You’re certainly right; not that I could afford it, but no way am I going skiing while uninsured, for example. Right now, my exercise routine is limited to yoga and vigorous dog-walking.
LD50
Dude, not smart. Yoga-related fatalities have been through the roof the last 10 years.
Brian J
That’s not a bad way to look at the situation involving health care. I will say, however, that part of the rush to get moving, as opposed to getting something done, is to not pass up the moment. Who knows for sure what the 2010 elections will bring? Who knows for sure if Obama will remain as popular, and thus more likely to use his personality to help pass reform, in a year or two as he is now?
As for food stamps, that’s pretty scandalous. But isn’t the solution relatively easy to implement? Can’t we just change the caps?
YellowJournalism
I was on this plan for three years while a student and substitute teaching. I was lucky that I never got sick enough to need to see a doctor, except for my pesky psoriasis. My medicine cost me anywhere from 60-120 dollars a tube, which I learned to make me last for months longer than it was supposed to.
The hardest time during those three years was when I was student teaching. I had terrible flare-ups due to the weather and the stress of the job. I was squeezing as much as I could from the last of a tube. It’s terrible to have to decide whether to use medicine on your face or your itchy, cracked hands. Face always won out, and I was lucky that most of the students were understanding about my condition, save for a few who tried to use it against me. I always will love the kids who would tell them off, especially one tough guy whose mom also had the same condition.
Tax Analyst
Ah, The Great Dickhead Debate Of ’09 is building up a solid head of steam. I’m standing back so as to avoid suffering any collaterol damage.