Is anyone really surprised that last week the House Republicans released their debt limit response in the Limit Spend & Grow Act? And that the Wall Street Journal was cheering? ('Is Work For Welfare Whacko?', p. A18, April 21)
The WSJ editors cheered the Reeps' "solution" to the lack of workers in the country because it will also slow government spending's rate of growth to barely 1 percent per year (less than factoring in the existing population growth) for a decade.
They then went after the Dems for trying to "demagogue" the issue and proposal, simply because the GOP House demands "able bodied adults work in exchange for welfare as well as Medicaid." Thus attacking Joe Biden for saying the GOOPs want to "cut benefits for folks they don't much care about".
Of course the Journal carefully omits noting the states (e.g. Iowa, Arkansas, Ohio) which are already putting laws on the books including enabling child labor - as noted on ALL In Friday night. That includes working in industrial freezers, laundries and meat packing plants. But Arkansas cornpone guv Sara Huckabee-Sanders takes the top award. As noted in columnist Jim Hightower's latest piece ('The GOP's Big New Idea - Child Labor') she and her cornpone cohort just "eliminated a bothersome state law requiring employers to get a special permit to put any child under 16 to work." Now that protection is gone, and as Hightower notes, Huckabee-Sanders the bellowed;
"The meddling hand of big government creeping down from Washington DC will be stopped cold...We will get the over-regulating, micromanaging, bureaucratic tyrants off our backs."
Oh, I am sure you will, and also the WSJ will applaud your move as a needed "cure" for the labor shortage. (Imagine a 14 year old kid work for his food stamps!) Never realizing it could be solved with higher - livable- wages for the adults in your forlorn state.
The Journal, of course, has a stout justification for this return to austerity-mindedness and downright cruelty. That is:
"Voters may think food stamps and Medicaid are temporary backstops for Americans who fall on tough times, but that is no longer true. Both programs have become large and permanent entitlements reminiscent of the European dole."
But the Journal doesn't ask why these programs have become large and permanent backdrops? Failing once again to process or address the hidden parameters. Including the fact that during the pandemic and the program that delivered cash to parents via the child tax credit, child poverty actually diminished from its decades long high, i.e.
"The 2021 expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) led to a historic reduction in poverty in the United States, particularly for children. Research showed that child poverty fell immediately and substantially. On an annual basis, according to the US Census Bureau, child poverty fell to its lowest level on record in 2021: 5.2%."
See e.g. Brookings Institution
The antipoverty effects of the expanded Child Tax Credit
So true, some 40 million Americans are on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) at a cost of $100 billion a year because the other choice would be tolerating unacceptable child malnutrition. Can that be acceptable in a country that spends nearly eight times as much yearly on defense? The WSJ thinks so, but I do not.
The editorial also misfires on the extent of food insecurity in the military but which was covered in s weekend WSJ (normal news section) piece (p. A3), noting:
"Hunger, a pervasive problem in the U.S., is worse in the military than it is among the population at large. Nearly a quarter of active-duty troops report some level of food insecurity, according to a 2022 Defense Department report, compared with about 10% of the general population,"
So yeah, the Medicaid enrollment - according to the WSJ editors - has also soared, to 85 million, but again why? The WSJ's beef is because it has been "expanded by Obamacare to prime age men above the poverty line". The truth is that it has been expanded to cover not just men but whole families (including vets) who otherwise would have no little or no health care in their respective states - because he Medicaid enrollment or access criteria are too severe. (And as for men, see first link at bottom to see how their health issues have shortened life spans. So does the WSJ wish to shorten them even more?)
And yes, both SNAP and Medicaid were "turbocharged during the pandemic" because they needed to be. Because otherwise we'd be looking at likely over 2 million deaths instead of 1.2 million. Now, the GOP House intends to change all that using its debt ceiling hostage taking gambit. That is, either go their way or take the "highway" to credit default. And in the first instance their demand means no food stamps, and no Medicaid access, for any "able-bodied" adult (now up to age 55) who doesn't work at least 20 hours a week. Clean porto-potties in parks for 20 hours a weeks? Yeppers, if you want that dialysis for your partner!
Oh, I ought to add that the GOP House in their generosity and compassion - actually a concession to party moderates without whom they'd not have the votes - has allowed an exemption for parents. (Also they won't make any kids work for their food stamps at this stage). But as we are informed by the Journal:
"Republicans will get no political credit from Democrats for these concessions, even though the GOP is surrendering an important argument that a working parent who can support a family is good for child welfare."
You got that right! And why should the Reeps get any political credit, having now passed their economic atrocity when they were already warned that raising the debt ceiling must be "clean", i.e. done without demands or hostage taking? This despite the Journal's claim that "pairing work with welfare is popular" - citing a Wisconsin poll as an example. But that poll issued from a Reepo polling outfit so I take it with a grain of salt, like similar polls that forecast a GOP "red wave" in last year's midterms.
The good news is that the GOP House bill is effectively dead on arrival, because Biden already has his veto pen ready. Will the Reep cult stop shooting itself in the ass - as with the abortion issue - before next year? I doubt it because it's made up of one track mind ideologues. They can't change their nature, and theoretically that should translate into a rout in the general election next year- unless voters swallow the Reep lies and deranged efforts at misinformation.
See Also:
by Sonali Kolhatkar | May 9, 2023 - 6:21am | permalink
Two recent exposés about child labor in the United States highlight how prevalent the once-outlawed practice has become. In February, the New York Times published an extensive investigative report by Hannah Dreier about scores of undocumented Central American children who were found to be working in food processing plants, construction projects, big farms, garment factories, and other job sites in 20 states around the country. Some were working 12 hours a day and many were not attending school.
A second story, revealed in a press release in early May by the U.S. Department of Labor, found more than 300 children working for three McDonald’s franchises operating dozens of restaurants in Kentucky. The children were working longer hours than legally permitted and tasked with jobs that were prohibited. Some were as young as 10 years old.
And:
And:
And:
Excerpt:
“We used to think women were overutilizing health care, and men were doing it correctly. What we realized was that women were doing it better, mostly for preventive care, and men were actually underutilizing health care.”- Prof. Derek Griffith, Georgetown Univ. Center for Men's Health Equity
And:
by Thom Hartmann | April 21, 2023 - 6:46am | permalink
— from The Hartmann Report
Kevin McCarthy has a keen new idea about what he thinks he can get out of Democrats in Congress in exchange for Republicans authorizing the government to pay the trillions in debt that Donald Trump racked up in his four years in office.
In exchange for lifting the so-called debt ceiling, McCarthy wants Biden and congressional Democrats to throw millions of families off food stamps (SNAP) and end even the possibility of any help to low-income young people unable to pay off student loans.
And:
by Joan McCarter | April 21, 2023 - 7:22am | permalink
— from Daily Kos
Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced in a floor speech Wednesday afternoon that the long-promised House Republican debt ceiling/budget cuts bill was finally ready, a plan he knows will be rejected by the White House and Senate even if he does manage to cobble together 218 votes within his own fractious caucus to pass it. McCarthy also set a deadline to have a vote on that bill by the end of next week, which is just six work days away.
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