June 4, 2013 6:16 AM

Compassion is not weakness...it's good policy

Like many observers, I usually read reports about political goings-on with a sort of weary cynicism. Every once in a while, however, politicians do something so wrong, substantively and morally, that cynicism just won’t cut it; it’s time to get really angry instead. So it is with the ugly, destructive war against food stamps.

No reasonable person wants others to suffer. At least I used to believe that to be the case. The past few years have shown me that there really is a class of Americans perfectly willing to leave the least among us to fend for themselves. They see the social contract as being a luxury supported by losers and Liberals, a not so very good idea we can no longer afford and that only engenders dependence and sloth. What these advocates of an “every man for himself” world fail to realize is that some public assistance programs have benefits beyond merely looking out for the less fortunate. In some cases, there are actual, provable financial benefits to helping those in need of a hand up (NOTE: NOT the same as a “handout”). This is where my favorite Liberal wonk, Paul Krugman enters the picture.

Krugman makes the argument that not only are those Conservatives who oppose the food stamp program mean-spirited and shortsighted, they’re also missing the boat by denying the benefits that accrue to society from the program. It turns out that food stamps do have some very real benefits:

  1. They’ve helped millions of Americans get by. Food stamps aren’t a substitute for a living-wage job, but they can and do help alleviate suffering.

  2. They’ve helped mitigate the challenges for children living in extreme poverty.

  3. Food stamps help put money back into the economy, no small thing during a time of recession.

  4. Every dollar spent on food stamps returns $1.70 in increased GDP.

  5. Food stamps help relieve food insecurity for low-income children and their families.

When you look at food stamps in this light, it’s not hard to see how the program is not a “handout;” it’s an investment in our future. If you accept the premise that today’s children are tommorow’s adults (and taxpayers), we’re providing a bridge to adulthood for those children unfortunate enough to have lost the genetic lottery.

So what do Conservatives like Paul Ryan want to do with the food stamp program? If you guessed “shrink it and then kill it off,” you should probably just stop reading here and go the the head of the class.

The shrinking part comes from the latest farm bill released by the House Agriculture Committee (for historical reasons, the food stamp program is administered by the Agriculture Department). That bill would push about two million people off the program. You should bear in mind, by the way, that one effect of the sequester has been to pose a serious threat to a different but related program that provides nutritional aid to millions of pregnant mothers, infants, and children. Ensuring that the next generation grows up nutritionally deprived — now that’s what I call forward thinking.

And why must food stamps be cut? We can’t afford it, say politicians like Representative Stephen Fincher, a Republican of Tennessee, who backed his position with biblical quotations — and who also, it turns out, has personally received millions in farm subsidies over the years.

Let’s set aside the subject of the social contract for a moment. The mathematical reality is that the food stamp program WORKS. It provides much-needed nutrition to those caught in the food insecurity web AND every $1.00 spent on the program returns $1.70. A 70% return on investment is a good deal in anyone’s books. Combine that with the responsibilities inherent in the social contract, and it’s a “win-win” situation all the way around.

Of course, none of those things matter a damn to Republicans like Ryan and Fincher, who see the poor as “takers” who offer no benefit to society and indeed only drag down the rest of us. To their way of thinking, we bear no responsibility to our fellow human beings. Giving money to the poor and downtrodden only serves to cement their inertia, sloth, and dependence on others to do for them what they should be doing for themselves. It’s a harsh, self-absorbed, and just plain evil view of the world, but it seems to be what’s driving today’s Republican Party.

Compassion towards the less fortunate among us is not a sign of weakness, nor does it serve to perpetuate the dependence of “takers” on the munificence of Big Government. Compassion is simply a recognition that we’re a better society when we pull together to care for those among us who for whatever reason have drawn the short end of the stick. “Dog eat dog” may be an effective approach in the business world, but it makes for damn poor social policy.

WE DESERVE BETTER.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on June 4, 2013 6:16 AM.

Today's lesson: Why homophobes are little more than exercises in self-parody was the previous entry in this blog.

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