Newt says that the road to victory for the GOP is based on food stamp demagoguery:
[…] Gingrich more than most people knows that Washington tends to lock itself in intensely wonkish policy squabbles–need one say more than “budget reconciliation”?–that simply don’t resonate with the rest of the country. So to make it simple, Gingrich and his political action committee are sending a“close the deal” memo to Republican candidates, spelling it out in über-simple terms. What do you want more of: paychecks or food stamps?
In addition to the obviously inhumanity of making the poor the scapegoats in every election, this stupid demagoguery is actually contributing to long-term poverty.
I mentioned the McDonald’s $2,000 health “insurance” plan that ED wrote about last week to a friend of mine who works with poor inner-city single moms. My friend noted that it really does suck to transition from being poor enough to receive social services to being a member of the working poor, and many of her clients avoid the transition by working under-the-table jobs.
She pointed out that the unemployed poor mom can stay home and take care of her kids, and she and her kids will have a relatively good health insurance program (Medicaid), as well as food stamps and other programs. If she gets a job, she’ll either go without insurance, or pay a good percentage of her salary to buy an almost useless “mini-med” policy. She’ll also need to find daycare for the kids, and subsidized daycare is the always getting cut (as it was this week in Rochester). She might lose her food stamps, and depending on her income, she might have to pay a co-pay for her kid’s S-CHIP, since that’s also income-based.
I don’t know if there’s any research on this, but I have to assume seeing their mom hold down a job will create an expectation in her children that they should get a job. My friend is convinced that most of her client’s kids would be better off in a decent daycare, where they’ll get away from the TV for a while, be exposed to reading, and have a nutritious meal. We’re probably better off as a society paying more to have a poor mom work than to have her remain unemployed. Of course, great conservative thinkers like Newt don’t buy this, so they’ll continue to support a system that gives poor single moms an incentive not to work.
gene108
I have a friend, who was on SSI for a long time. She got better and wanted to get off. She ran into the same problem about losing her Medicaid, the second she starting making more than $600/month and her SSI income, that it made it hard for her to get off. She eventually got off SSI, but the system we’ve set up really does discourage people from working, since we won’t extend Medicaid for the working poor.
I think you’d actually encourage more people to get off welfare, if we extended a few benefits, such as housing subsidies, Medicaid, and I guess daycare vouchers to people who need them because minimum wage in this country just doesn’t pay enough to afford these things on your own.
jon
Not to mention that even if those single moms have children of school age, there’s still the social anachronism of the school day being completely out of sync with the work day, the two-month-plus Summer Vacation, and the newly-added nonsense that’s taken over (at least here in Arizona): the half-day on Wednesday that is used for teacher training.
The daycare industry thrives in a world that creates this gap in the ability of single parents to pay, but do governments and school districts really need to subsidize this industry that seems to exist solely to justify the existence of ugly carpeting, Disney videos, juice boxes, and so forth? Aren’t the roads crowded enough without having another set of buses go to and from schools to privately-run inferior pseudo-schools each day? Where’s the accountability for the people running those places? Or does it not matter as long as the daycare people don’t unionize?
Maude
IT’s the economy, first of all. The wages have been going down for a long time, the cost of expenses has gone up and the loss of jobs has hurt this country a lot.
The cost of housing is high in a lot of areas. The utilities factor in, transportation, medical care, clothing and we haven’t even gotten to food.
The Republicans and Clinton who was Reagan, Part 2, have gotten this country into economic trouble.
The class warfare is cheap politics.
Someone ask Newtie what paycheck from what job.
While they are at it, ask Newtie if he has read Dickens.
beltane
Decent daycare is expensive without subsidies: very, very expensive. “Affordable” childcare usually consists of the kids being left in front of the TV in the home of another woman trapped in poverty.
For many years, until I succumbed to burnout, I worked as the administrator of a non-profit that provided high-quality childcare and other services to the low-income residents of our rural community. One story that always stood out for me was of a staff member (all made under $10 an hour at the time) who broke down in tears shortly after she was given a $.25 an hour raise because it turned out that it caused her to lose her Medicaid benefits.
If Newt objects to food stamps he ought to be pushing for substantial increases in the minimum wage.
beltane
@gene108: Housing subsidies are right up there with daycare subsidies in the category of being first in line on the chopping block. Remember, it is most important that people like Meg Whitman get more tax cuts so they can save a few hundred million to blow on running vanity campaigns.
Maybe the working poor should just do the American thing and form militias.
Kermit
I have to disagree with your assessment. Their goal of is to get rid of safety nets like medicaid as well for exactly the reasons you just mentioned. If you get rid of all such programs, then people will have no incentive not to work. What makes me sick is that people (and I’m using the term “people” quite loosely here) like Newt see the situation you describe and as an indictment of the people who make the same calculation you write about rather than an indictment of the system that makes such a calculation necessary. When faced with the choice of improving the base conditions of the working poor and removing what little safety net they have, they’ll pull the net every time.
R. Porrofatto
But, to Newt and his con buds, food stamps, Medicaid, and so on are exactly what you say they are — disincentives to work meager jobs where those benefits are reduced or cut. The winger solution isn’t to make work better paying or allow programs to continue benefits to employed people, it’s to get rid of minimum wages and dismantle the programs. Not that this argument doesn’t need to be made, but in some ways, it’s self-defeating, because it plays right into their hands. Remember, in winger land the main reason we have unemployment is unemployment insurance.
John S.
You hit the nail right on the head, mistermix.
My wife has been unemployed for two years now. During this time, she has been taking care of our 3 year-old autistic son and our 3 month-old daughter. Yesterday, she FINALLY got hired as a middle school science teacher (YAY!), but the only way we could have afforded for her to take the job is with the help of my mother coming to watch our daughter every day.
Our son started attending a special school program for children with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) in August, so his schedule is roughly similar to my wife’s. But in Newt’s world, not only would there NOT be a special program for my son, but there would also be no way for my wife to go back to work without the aid of my mother due to the cost of child care.
And even more horrifying is that even with just my income, we aren’t even close to the poverty level (actually closer to the median household income). But between trying to do all the right things, like providing health insurance (individual coverage is still expensive), college funds (thank heavens for Florida prepaid), life insurance (heaven forbid something happens to my wife and I) and the usual expenses like mortgage and living expenses, we can barely keep our heads above water.
Some American dream, and I STILL have it better than a lot of people. Yikes.
R. Porrofatto
@Kermit: Great minds etc.
debbie
Wow. Who’s the real elitist class-warfare monger?
SapphireCate
Granted I’m in the UK so the problems and situations are a little different, but we have a NEW TORY GOVERNMENT and they’re really into the big cuts, pretend we care, f–k the poor thing.
The thing I always find hair-ripping-out annoying in these discussions of ‘encouraging the poor back to work’ is that no one seems to care if some of the population is so rich they can’t work. Hell the Tory’s have a whole campaign stance built around letting middle class mothers stop working and be good mommies.
I can’t help but think (and maybe this makes me a marxist) that all the pressure on the poor ‘to work’ is just another way of keeping people who are facing structural disadvantages from having the free time to agitate in their own favour. In other words: extra poverty faced by the working poor is a feature not a bug.
steviez314
There is nothing that would help that mother more to transition from stay-at-home to work than a cut in the capital gains tax rate.
Unless it’s a war with Iran.
Nick
The common response is “Then she shouldn’t have had kids. If she can’t afford them, then why have them?”
You make the mistake of thinking people actually CARE about people like this.
Nick
The common response is “Then she shouldn’t have had kids. If she can’t afford them, then why have them?”
You make the mistake of thinking people actually CARE about people like this.
Jron
Kermit nails it. The only problem the GOP sees in this scenario is that benefits make it harder to find employees desperate to work for next to nothing.
Nick
@SapphireCate
oh, duh lol
satby
I was that mom, never on welfare or foodstamps but working poor and without insurance for years, as were my kids; who were supposed to be covered by their dad’s health insurance but weren’t because he only paid the policy before court appearances. It’s a horribly stressful, inhumane way to treat families. And though I always worked, I can’t escape the reality that I cheated my kids of food, health care, and a bit less stress in our lives by working instead of just going on aid. It’s a really fucked up system when you get penalized for working.
beltane
@R. Porrofatto: Newt must not understand what happens in societies without a safety net. It’s nice that rich people can walk the streets in peace in this country. It’s nice that, with the exception of a few people at the top, the rich don’t need to have bodyguards accompany their kids to school. Maybe Newt is a secret Marxist who really wants to see the emergence of an American Chavez or Castro. That would suck for his buddies, though. Oh well.
Kermit
@R. Porrofatto synchronicity
Nick
@John S.:Dear John, Why did you go and have another child when your wife was unemployed and you could barely survive as it is?, Sincerely, Proud American Newt Gingrich.
Sly
Let’s be honest: They don’t want to pay them regardless of what situation they’re in, as poverty-induced desperation has a downward ratcheting effect on the price of labor. Scare people with visions of homelessness, and theoretically they’ll work harder for less. This is a problem for political and social theorists of most stripes. For conservatives, it is a solution.
beltane
@Nick: No people DON’T care because they have so far been shielded from reality by this invisible safety net. Hungry people are desperate people. Food stamps and other programs are a hell of a lot cheaper than prison. Poverty tends to breed terrorism, American exceptionalism notwithstanding. The well-off tend to not care about such things until it’s too late for them, at which point they will be treated with the same amount of compassion they have shown others.
gmf
I think the AFA’s Brian Fischer is working off this memo this week – yesterday he took a break from his typical Islamo-Homo-bashing & started in on poor-thumping (like the good christian he is).
Not that it was un-characteristic, but it WAS unusual – this explains it.
El Cid
Don’t forget the particular way Gingrich phrased this for electoral purposes:
The “party of food stamps” — you know, the one head by that lazy, shiftless, untrustworthy Negro, giving out all that welfare to his people who won’t get jobs.
Taxed Enough Already!
kommrade reproductive vigor
Food Stamps = WELFARE QUEENS = Meet the New Dog Whistle, Same as the Old Dog Whistle.
Kermit
Shorter Newt: “I’ve got mine but they’ve got yours”
Emma
A friend who has been a close observer of American society, both as a teacher in public schools and a professor of history once told me that the American economic system was set up to give people just enough to keep them cogs in the production machine and anything that could improve their economic servitude would be fought tooth and nail. I used to tease her about her “Marxist” interpretation.
I think I’ll go write her a long, grovelling apology…
r€nato
bingo.
same goes for middle class.
El Cid
@kommrade reproductive vigor: Obama, slinking around in his Zoot Suit, giving out your and my hard-earned money to his Cadillac driving lazy shiftless bums.
El Cid
@Emma: Conservatives, TeaTards, and the super-rich (and their hired flunkies such as think tanks and kiss-ass pundits) are the most Marxist people in the American system.
They just reverse the oppressed and the oppressors.
In right wing Marxism, the capitalist class must come together to overthrow its oppression at the hands of the proletariat.
NonyNony
@Nick:
And, I think it is important to point out, this response often comes from people who have “It’s a child not a choice” bumper stickers on the back of their cars.
vtr
For Pete’s sake, Newt, just cook us and eat us and get it over with.
Xenos
@SapphireCate: Do you know how hard it is to find good help these days? By ‘good’ I mean desperately poor and without hope or ambition, tugging-the-forelock debased people who will clean your toilets for a pittance and try to make you feel good about it?
That is the social reality that the conservatives want to create. They want to poor to worship them.
debbie
I’m picturing Charlie Chaplin and “Modern Times.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.
SapphireCate
@Xenos: Actually been thinking a lot about these themes watching a new ITV show called “Downton Abbey” (by the people who brought you Gosford Park) which, on the surface, is a costume drama about servents and masters; but, underneath, is a startlingly forthright discussion of power, priviledge, structural oppression (not just class but gender as well) all set on the cusp of WWI when, at least in Britain, everything changes.
Superluminar
Adding to what someone said upthread about the situation here in the UK – our conservative overlords have a review of public pensions out today (surprisingly suggesting a raise in the retirement age…) – and i saw one of our charming homegrown wingnut blogs arguing that it was disgraceful public employees had “risk free” pensions. I mean if I get to 70 i’d love to live every day without knowing if my savings were actually worth anything… Don’t matter what country you’re from, they’re all sociopathic assholes.
Nick
@beltane:
I think the general idea is “I made it, how hard can it be? If you’re poor, it’s because you didn’t work as hard”
they’re big on personal responsibility, which is ironic considering they have none and are often bailed out by the rich mommies and daddies and banks.
John S.
@Nick:
LOL
Well, unlike our first child, the second was an unexpected, but happy, surprise. I guess after being together for 15 years, we were bound to run afoul of the odds on condom failure. And since we’re that strange breed of liberal that doesn’t believe in abortion (although we would never seek to have the government strip anyone else of their right to choose), we pretty much did what we had to do.
But I wouldn’t change a thing. My daughter is the awesomest thing since sliced bread.
Mike in NC
Did the Newtster mention strapping young bucks buying t-bone steaks with those food stamps?
keestadoll
@Nick:
To that notion of having kids when you cannot afford them: I know so many women that could afford them, had them, went through a divorce, then couldn’t afford them anymore. Oh wait, yeah, then you just put them up for adoption right? I mean obviously, because the foster system is so awesome and the kids are so well cared for…then. God, where’s my good poetry? Ah screw it.
Fuck you Newt.
Non-Existent Patricia
@El Cid: The party of job creation? Did he say that with a straight face?
Since Reagan a total of 19.8 million jobs have been created under Republican presidents while 19.6 million jobs have been created under Democratic Presidents (the 19.6 million number includes the 3.1 million lost under Obama). It took 5 Republican presidential terms to create 19.8 million jobs and only 2.5 Democratic ones to create roughly the same number of jobs.
(I got the numbers from Wikipedia, but I’m an idiot and don’t know how to link)
RSA
@Kermit:
__
When thinking about poverty issues and considering the difference between the carrot and the stick, Republicans generally will pick up the machete instead.
The carrot-and-stick metaphor isn’t quite right; here’s a slightly different take on the Republican perspective. We all agree that people generally value having a job: being self-sufficient, being able to care for one’s family, possibly taking pride in one’s ability to do the work. This is built into American culture. Republicans seem to believe that an American work ethic isn’t enough to keep unemployed people looking for a job. The alternatives should be as horrible as possible. Further, if someone can’t find a job and ends up in some horrible alternative, it must be their own fault, morally, which makes them undeserving of any help. What a twisted world view.
Kermit
@RSA
Sadly fununy but also quite succinct. The first part,” carrot and stick”, is everything in a nutshell. My world view is “work and ye shall receive” but their worldview is “Work… or else.”
Ahhh, the “American Dream”TM
satby
@keestadoll:
Add to that the continued reluctance to enforce child support orders and the double standard that good mothers stay home with the kids (yeah still, even if you’re divorced; but then if you were a good person you wouldn’t have been divorced).
They live in a dog-eat-dog world where bad things never happen to good people. If your circumstances aren’t perfect right now it’s because you aren’t worthy in some way.
cleek
the story of my childhood is a long and depressing one, but the short version is: i would not be here without food stamps, WIC and Medicaid.
and i honestly don’t mean to brag, but i now make more than anyone in my family – maybe even more than all of them combined (and yes, i surely know that salary isn’t the ultimate measure of a life). but, given that income, i’m more than willing to pay my share of taxes because i know there are plenty of families out there who have it even worse than i did; and there are kids out there who can grow up to make something of themselves, if they can just get through the rough parts; and my tax dollars can help them do it.
and if only i could prevent my taxes from going to build more bombs and killing machines, i’d feel even better about it.
so, FUCK YOU, Newt.
low-tech cyclist
@NonyNony:
And they want to discourage contraceptive use as much as possible, too, without taking the political hit for it of course.
Their position – and this really IS how they feel, I’ve talked to people like this and I’m not making it up – is that if you can’t afford kids, then you have no business having sex, even if you’re married.
Crazy and hateful at the same time. Speaking of which:
@keestadoll:
That is in fact their position as well. Just break up families because some bad shit happened, and give the kids to more ‘worthy’ families. That’s from the ‘pro-family’ crowd, needless to say.
kay
Conservatives aren’t going to do anything about food stamps.
They’re a voucher-style subsidy to agriculture and the industries that employ low wage workers.
They keep the wheels of commerce turning. There would be a lot more pressure to raise wages if people were working and starving.
My county is 94% white and rural. All of the low wage workers receive food stamps. That’s how they’re surviving on those low wages. They don’t pay for food. No one wants to upset that delicate balance, least of all conservatives, who are beholden to both agriculture and low wage industry leaders.
Shalimar
@John S.: I think there are far more liberals than you think who would never consider abortion as a personal option. Just because you wouldn’t do it doesn’t mean you think the decision is always wrong and that others aren’t competent to make their own choice.
kay
130% of poverty is about 29,000, for a family of four. Lots and lots and lots of working people in this country make less than 29,000, and get food stamps.
Conservatives lie about food stamps like they lie about everything else.
They’re a food voucher that feed a low-wage US workforce as much as they’re a “welfare” program, and Newt doesn’t have any intention of getting in the way of that. It’s a win/win!
Erik Vanderhoff
The Welfare Reform Act originally included generous child-care subsidies to encourage single mothers to find work.
The Republicans stripped them out.
Bill Section 147
Newt is only interested in the words and what they trigger.
Getting himself in power is the only goal the body count is not an issue.
Blue Neponset
@Emma: I had a history professor in college who said similar things. I used to think he was a drunken know nothing. Now, I think he was a fairly well informed drunk.
kay
@Bill Section 147:
It’s always interesting to me, living in a rural, politically conservative area with a shit-load of food stamp recipients.
There’s some kind of amazing near-delusional denial going on among conservative voters. They listen to this endless demonizing horseshit, and vote for conservatives, while receiving food stamps.
I don’t know how you pull that trick off, in your own mind.
dcdl
@Shalimar: Hey, that’s how my fourth child came about. It’s all about personal choices. My cousin asked me if I was going to get an abortion. She knew I was pro-choice, but for me the answer was no.
@kay: I live in a same kind of place. The only thing I can figure is not only do they live in a alternate reality, but their brain chemistry must be completely different. Otherwise, I would be having a headache and eyestrain all the time for thumping my head on the wall and for rolling my eyes at the crap that spews out of their mouths.
4jkb4ia
@Blue Neponset:
The counter to this is that Americans have built high schools and colleges and expected everyone to go to high school and college when these things have been not available to everyone in similarly developed countries. The counter to THAT is that the people with less than high school or college education can be employed, if at all, in really terrible jobs so that those who did go get the average reward.
(When available, construction is a fairly good job if you are in a union)
satby
@kay:
Simple, they’ve told me. They work, so they deserve those benefits, but those other kinds of people don’t work and don’t deserve them. They’re voting for politicians who’ll be sure to keep the wrong kinds of people from getting benefits that should only go to Christian, conservative, white folks.
4jkb4ia
Alice Walker wrote a little bit about lobbying for food stamps, and how the policymakers could not believe that anyone could be hungry in America. The point was that there were no jobs for these people to get, even if they were hungry, and this was in the 1960s. Does Newt just assume that the jobs will magically be created where the hungry people are?
kay
@satby:
I just think conservatives have done a number on people, and they don’t know what they hell is up. They lie constantly, so there’s that, but it’s bigger. It’s a not seeing.
I once was in a parade line up with a younger conservative mother. She was ranting about federal spending “in DC”. We were assembling behind a (new) rural school that exists because of federal education grants to poor districts. That’s where her kids go. No clue how it got there. Just appeared, out of thin air.
wenchacha
In contrast, think of all the Richie Riches like JoeNotthePlumber who worry that if they make $250,001/yr it will make it too expensive for them to bother working. That extra-high tax rate on the additional buck makes them all want to go Galt.
But lazy-ass teat-suckers should be grateful to work a 39 hr week for minimum wage in order to get themselves off the dole. Screw child care and health benefits! We’re Americans, not some damn soshulist state!
Please tell me Newt will go Galt soon.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Just think of how much history you have to ignore to believe this is a desirable and sustainable state of affairs. Plus, worshipful attitudes must be created and maintained by large doses of fear.
I guess the fReichtard wet dream involves some of the poor schlubs joining their private armies and beating the rest of us over the head until we learn to grovel in an appropriately humble manner.
FlipYrWhig
@satby:
Yup. The idea is that they only get help when they really, really _need_ the help, and, dammit, they’re doing the best they can. But Those People out there just take and take and take because they’re lazy. The government needs to cut Those People off, because they’re making out like bandits. It actually has a nice internal coherence to it: you can be, like, I’m not doing well, and my brother isn’t doing well, and our neighbor isn’t doing well, and yet I keep hearing about all this money being spent. Where is it going? Probably right into the pockets of the kinds of people we never see, those bastards.
FlipYrWhig
@kay:
Even if she did know, she would probably think that school was the exception, and/or that it was finally their turn. But “DC” spends her money on all kinds of other nonsense, either waste or corruption or excessive generosity to undeserving people. That has to be how the conservative-leaning mind works.
satby
@FlipYrWhig: Exactly. And it pisses them off if you point out to them that those other people (insert racist slur du jour) also often work just as hard. Because being other people by definition is to be lazy and welfare hogging.
FlipYrWhig
@satby: Or you can just say, “Sure, that one guy works hard, and I have nothing against him, and, look, I’m not prejudiced or anything. There’s probably plenty of good people like him. But, admit it, you know what the rest of them are like.”
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Ding, ding, ding, ding, we have a winner…
I used to have a co-worker who was in an entry-level position in our small company. Single mother with kids who wanted to work full time but had to negotiate herself down to fewer hours because otherwise she made too much money to qualify for social services (day care was the biggest concern).
And of course, similar people will be making similar decisions even under the new exchange plan with its 4.3% premium + $2000 out of pocket (for example).
So really, we need to stop this idiotic circle-jerk about how fantastic we are as a society for offering the full-time working poor a little bit better health care option than the one offered by McFuckingDonald’s. Even this incremental improvement is a disgrace in the world’s richest society.
John S.
@shalimar:
I kind of meant it tongue-in-cheek. I think there are a LOT of liberals who are personally against abortion, yet still pro-choice. That’s because those of us on the left tend not to be authoritarian, sanctimonious pricks like our friends on the right.
Bill Section 147
@kay:
It is hard to even discuss these issues without using language that implies right and wrong or good and bad.
Historically the low rise to defend the overlord. They rarely challenge the Alpha until after the Alpha is defeated. Conservatives are usually Royals and Peasants because those are the groups who are comfortable with their lot as long as there is constancy.
The only time you will get much of a rise out of those under the thumb is if the overlord fits the category of “the other.”
If the overlord is:
From out of State or Country
A different color
A different creed
A different faith
Then there is a chance they will not maintain their place and support the status quo.
In the last election the Appalachian region voted strongly for McCain. Significantly, north to south, this is the region which has seen the lowest turnover in emigration/immigration. A lot of people there are long time residents and do not view change favorably. It isn’t just racism or ignorance but most importantly they are comfortable in their surroundings. Rich or poor they like “their way of life.” The only way you are going to get a big change accepted is if it is positive, immediate, and apparent.
When the Federal programs under FDR started a lot of these people were too proud to take “charity” but after a while the realization comes that Food Stamps and SSI allow you to stay put. A better education without local jobs means your kids will leave town.
One of the things that made the United States is the lower classes, the workers and the farmers were people who left the status quo in the old country. That willingness to exchange security and familiarity for opportunity is not normal.