Sometimes They Get It Right
Occasionally, you read a story in one of the big dailies that speaks a bit of common sense. Unfortunately, it is usually because the editors have an agenda that is furthered by attacking something they would normally ignore. Still, you take what you can get. Such is the case with today’s USA Today editorial on the 10th anniversary of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act.
To bolster their argument that government shouldn’t be picking on poor, defenseless single mothers, they highlight some serious corporate and special interest welfare that usually doesn’t see a lot of ink in the big papers. The highlights of the piece are the over $144 billion paid out in the last ten years in agricultural subsidies and drought relief payments. They rightly point out that not all of the money, in fact hardly any, goes to the stereotypical family farm. Most go to agricultural corporations or individuals who have never farmed, but are paid not to, for example. Money also goes to relieve drought in areas that haven’t seen a dry year in ages. Thus it goes to show that once you open a money spigot, there’s almost no chance it will be turned back off.
Then it brings up one of my other favorites, corporate welfare, where the Congressional Research Service has noted 15,877 earmarks worth $47.4 billion in our money. Who pitched for that? Lobbyists and special interest groups, of course did most of the dirty work. Contrary to CNN and the Washington Post, the NRA is not the sole lobbying organization in Congress. Everyone from sugar growers to car manufacturers to airlines to service unions are vying for your money.
The USA Today editorial also decries money going to state and local governments as a way to pay for their woes and shore up federal mandates. What it doesn’t say and should is that most of that money could have and should have just stayed with the states and never been taxed by the feds. That would have solved much of that problem. Local and state governments have become as dependent as the legendary welfare moms on the feds for everything from highway money to midnight basketball (remember that one?). It is a situation of the federal government’s own making. As its bloated bureaucracy has expanded, it has required the smaller governments to bow to its requirements, something that has crippled their ability to provide basic services without federal aid. It’s easily akin to a pusher/junkie relationship. USA Today would have done well to explore that a little further.
Last and certainly not least, the largest welfare queens of them all receive a paragraph. Whole books have been written about the lamprey-like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and the spiraling costs they entail. These are perhaps the largest drain on our economy and the biggest recipients of federal largesse. As our population ages, higher taxes or fewer benefits (most likely both) will be the result, especially as Congress inevitably vacillates back and forth between tax and soak Democrats and spendthrift Republicans. Neither major party seems interested in solving that problem, but why should they? It makes for a better political football and these days that’s all such groups really care about…politics.
The editorial calls for restoring fiscal sanity through control of welfare payments at all levels. Elimination of most of them would likely be even better, although you usually won’t hear a liberal paper like USA Today call for that. Eliminating just the farm subsidies and corporate welfare would save almost $200 billion in a budget where we’re currently spending $300 billion over what we take in. It’s one small step, followed by looking at federal programs and departments that could easily disappear tomorrow with no ill effect to the rest of us (*COUGH*Department of Education *COUGH*).
It’s nice to see a paper like USA Today bring this up in one of their editorials, even if it was to just highlight that they thought welfare moms were receiving too harsh of treatment because of reform. Funny enough, even they had to admit in the first part of their editorial that Welfare Reform by and large not only worked. It exceeded most every expectation.
They wouldn’t be the liberal rag they were, though if they didn’t point out how unfair it was that these people who had children out of wedlock and didn’t get a good education can’t get the $14+ an hour jobs that are required to finally do better than just being on the dole. Amazing how unjust that is… To hear them tell it, those jobs should just be handed out or we should pay for these women (and some men) to be educated so they can make that much. No mention of course on not only why we should have to pay for the irresponsible behavior of others is made, but also there is the typical lefty naiveté of how not only would they be paid for, or what jobs would be created magically created that they could fill.
There’s also the small detail omitted of all the millions already spent on job training and “workforce development” at all levels of government. It doesn’t seem to do much good even when it is available and then any government bureaucracy allowed to handle it wraps it in so many layers of requirements as to make it unusable. Why I remember myself looking years ago into such things as there being federal money available for retraining for those of us laid off by companies that outsourced U.S. jobs to other countries. Take a guess at the loophole. If the job went to a NAFTA trading partner, the feds didn’t have to pay. And now guess where the jobs in question went? They drink Molson there, I can tell you that much.
It’s also not unique. Most of those programs don’t work. They just pay for bureaucracies that employ a few here and there without actually fulfilling much of their noble intended goals and I guarantee you we’d see more of the same if the left’s advocated “new job training” programs for the former welfare moms were expanded. Some would benefit, but most would still be where they are, safely still poor so that the likes of USA Today could yell and scream for even more of our taxpayer dollars to be spent.
So, chalk this one up as a partial victory for common sense in one of the newspapers of record, even if it was only to take another shot at the “cruel” Republicans in power. Now if we can get them to shout as loudly when a Democrat sits in the White House, we’ll be making real progress.
Occasionally, you read a story in one of the big dailies that speaks a bit of common sense. Unfortunately, it is usually because the editors have an agenda that is furthered by attacking something they would normally ignore. Still, you take what you can get. Such is the case with today’s USA Today editorial on the 10th anniversary of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act.
To bolster their argument that government shouldn’t be picking on poor, defenseless single mothers, they highlight some serious corporate and special interest welfare that usually doesn’t see a lot of ink in the big papers. The highlights of the piece are the over $144 billion paid out in the last ten years in agricultural subsidies and drought relief payments. They rightly point out that not all of the money, in fact hardly any, goes to the stereotypical family farm. Most go to agricultural corporations or individuals who have never farmed, but are paid not to, for example. Money also goes to relieve drought in areas that haven’t seen a dry year in ages. Thus it goes to show that once you open a money spigot, there’s almost no chance it will be turned back off.
Then it brings up one of my other favorites, corporate welfare, where the Congressional Research Service has noted 15,877 earmarks worth $47.4 billion in our money. Who pitched for that? Lobbyists and special interest groups, of course did most of the dirty work. Contrary to CNN and the Washington Post, the NRA is not the sole lobbying organization in Congress. Everyone from sugar growers to car manufacturers to airlines to service unions are vying for your money.
The USA Today editorial also decries money going to state and local governments as a way to pay for their woes and shore up federal mandates. What it doesn’t say and should is that most of that money could have and should have just stayed with the states and never been taxed by the feds. That would have solved much of that problem. Local and state governments have become as dependent as the legendary welfare moms on the feds for everything from highway money to midnight basketball (remember that one?). It is a situation of the federal government’s own making. As its bloated bureaucracy has expanded, it has required the smaller governments to bow to its requirements, something that has crippled their ability to provide basic services without federal aid. It’s easily akin to a pusher/junkie relationship. USA Today would have done well to explore that a little further.
Last and certainly not least, the largest welfare queens of them all receive a paragraph. Whole books have been written about the lamprey-like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and the spiraling costs they entail. These are perhaps the largest drain on our economy and the biggest recipients of federal largesse. As our population ages, higher taxes or fewer benefits (most likely both) will be the result, especially as Congress inevitably vacillates back and forth between tax and soak Democrats and spendthrift Republicans. Neither major party seems interested in solving that problem, but why should they? It makes for a better political football and these days that’s all such groups really care about…politics.
The editorial calls for restoring fiscal sanity through control of welfare payments at all levels. Elimination of most of them would likely be even better, although you usually won’t hear a liberal paper like USA Today call for that. Eliminating just the farm subsidies and corporate welfare would save almost $200 billion in a budget where we’re currently spending $300 billion over what we take in. It’s one small step, followed by looking at federal programs and departments that could easily disappear tomorrow with no ill effect to the rest of us (*COUGH*Department of Education *COUGH*).
It’s nice to see a paper like USA Today bring this up in one of their editorials, even if it was to just highlight that they thought welfare moms were receiving too harsh of treatment because of reform. Funny enough, even they had to admit in the first part of their editorial that Welfare Reform by and large not only worked. It exceeded most every expectation.
They wouldn’t be the liberal rag they were, though if they didn’t point out how unfair it was that these people who had children out of wedlock and didn’t get a good education can’t get the $14+ an hour jobs that are required to finally do better than just being on the dole. Amazing how unjust that is… To hear them tell it, those jobs should just be handed out or we should pay for these women (and some men) to be educated so they can make that much. No mention of course on not only why we should have to pay for the irresponsible behavior of others is made, but also there is the typical lefty naiveté of how not only would they be paid for, or what jobs would be created magically created that they could fill.
There’s also the small detail omitted of all the millions already spent on job training and “workforce development” at all levels of government. It doesn’t seem to do much good even when it is available and then any government bureaucracy allowed to handle it wraps it in so many layers of requirements as to make it unusable. Why I remember myself looking years ago into such things as there being federal money available for retraining for those of us laid off by companies that outsourced U.S. jobs to other countries. Take a guess at the loophole. If the job went to a NAFTA trading partner, the feds didn’t have to pay. And now guess where the jobs in question went? They drink Molson there, I can tell you that much.
It’s also not unique. Most of those programs don’t work. They just pay for bureaucracies that employ a few here and there without actually fulfilling much of their noble intended goals and I guarantee you we’d see more of the same if the left’s advocated “new job training” programs for the former welfare moms were expanded. Some would benefit, but most would still be where they are, safely still poor so that the likes of USA Today could yell and scream for even more of our taxpayer dollars to be spent.
So, chalk this one up as a partial victory for common sense in one of the newspapers of record, even if it was only to take another shot at the “cruel” Republicans in power. Now if we can get them to shout as loudly when a Democrat sits in the White House, we’ll be making real progress.
posted by Rob Beck | 6:45 AM
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