Back in the day, when I considered myself a Republican, lots of people in the GOP described themselves (as I did) as “fiscal conservatives and social liberals.” Those days, needless to say, are long gone; today’s GOP is exactly the opposite: fiscally promiscuous and socially illiberal.
The U-turn on social policy is hard to miss: Republicans today seem to delight in making life unbearable for trans people, dangerous for women with problem pregnancies, and uncomfortable for every American who isn’t a straight White Christian male. But too little attention has been paid to the other part of the party’s reversal, a total abandonment of fiscal restraint.
Republicans who used to advocate for a government that funded its expenditures with tax dollars–not necessarily “balancing the budget,” but exercising responsibility when it came to “tax and spend” policies– are long gone. The GOP is now the party of extravagant tax cuts for the rich, lavish subsidies for fossil fuel companies, and billions spent on a bloated military (costs that are metastasizing thanks to Trump’s illegal and dangerous war on Iran.)
But hey–they’re “saving” money by cutting services to the folks who rely on those “wasteful” social programs like Medicaid and SNAP.
Which brings me to one of my multiple hot button issues–the insanity of America’s approach to the social safety net. In fairness, the stupidity of that approach has been, and remains, essentially bipartisan.
As I explained in the speech I shared yesterday, American social policy differs from social policy in happier (and equally capitalist) countries. Yes, it is punitive and shortsighted–but it is also needlessly and enormously expensive. Not because we are generous to those in need–perish the thought!–but because in our zeal to make sure that no one receives a penny to which they are unentitled, we have erected a massive, costly and inefficient system to “weed out” suspected slackers–a system that just happens to enrich private enterprises.
A recent post from the “Can We Still Govern” Substack addressed those costs.
The post began by quoting the CEO of Equifax, who was celebrating passage of the budget reconciliation bill and cheering an expected windfall he described as “just massive”– new rules that will make it harder for millions of eligible Americans to receive healthcare and food benefits.
Those rules increase the frequency of eligibility redeterminations, added work requirements for Medicaid recipients, and tied federal funding for SNAP to error rates and work requirements. The CBO has estimated that these rules will strip Medicaid coverage from over 7 million people.
But for Equifax and other government contractors, this maze of new rules means profit.
Equifax extracts over $800 million worth of contracts from the federal government and state governments each year. Much of that total is for access to its Workforce Solutions product, the Work Number, which provides data on workers’ income and employment. The Work Number’s basic business model is to purchase exclusive rights to worker data from employers and payroll providers (often without a worker’s knowledge) and then sell that data to banks, creditors, and governments for a profit.
Since the United States, unlike many of our peer nations, has opted to means-test core government programs like healthcare, the government has become a huge buyer of this income data. In order to prove that a person is eligible for Medicaid, an Affordable Care Act Marketplace subsidy, or any number of safety net programs, state governments and federal agencies pay Equifax for data to verify that person’s income.
Worse, different federal and state agencies often pay half a dozen times for the same piece of income data about the same individuals. Money that might make life a little easier for struggling families goes instead to the bottom lines of very profitable corporations.
The President’s “beautiful bill” supercharged this process, doubling the number of times state Medicaid agencies need to verify many individuals’ income each year, and adding other new requirements. As the post says, “If you had tried to find the most efficient way to transfer taxpayer dollars from healthcare to a databroker, you could not have done much better.”
As the Indiana Business Journal recently reported, the new Medicaid work mandates were promoted as a means to save money, but states will have to spend millions to comply. Most states will have to update both their aging computer systems and their methods of verifying information through various databases–and the IBJ reports that “Most will have to turn to private contractors to meet the time crunch.”
It turns out that the real “welfare queens” are the companies profiting from money meant to provide health care and feed hungry children.
For those who’ve caught on, the entire neoliberal fiscal policy is to take from the middle class, reduce monies to the working poor, and donate to the donor class. This has been going on for forty years. #EXTRACTION
When you slash trillions in corporate and personal taxes, give hundreds of billions to build out AI data centers (that nobody wants), and increase military spending by half a trillion, in order to balance the budget, guess where the money is coming from?
For one, we now spend $1 trillion a year just in interest expense and $1.5 trillion in the War Department.
We’ve all overheard the Chamber calls about kicking out Hispanic workers from our country, and replacing them with welfare recipients. How much per person will that cost the food, leisure, construction, hospitality, warehouse, and dock companies, etc.? That will immediately add 200-300% to their costs. #brilliant
This is one of the reasons the Indiana Chamber doesn’t want the state to make smoking pot legal – “all their labor pool will be stoned.” Smart states like Michigan have legalized pot and lowered the cost of workers’ comp!!! LOL
p.s. I read an article this past week where a corporate exec said there is not a single job that won’t be replaceable very soon. I used Manus from Meta to build an entire website from scratch and am ready to upload with coding and all, yet I don’t hear ONE word from either party about Universal Basic Income. It built a seven-page website with pricing pages behind the scenes. Manus determined the pricing from local status and census data. Coding and software engineer jobs?
“The Cost Of Means Testing…”
“Definition
A means test is a formula that uses someone’s income to determine their eligibility for assistance or benefits.”
“But hey–they’re “saving” money by cutting services to the folks who rely on those “wasteful” social programs like Medicaid and SNAP.”
Let me get down to a personal level, the nitty-gritty, bare-bones deprival of medical care due to the loss of Medicaid and increase of Medicare payments for coverage in an assisted living facility. My friend Patti began showing signs of Dementia 2 years ago along with signs of physical weakening and changes; my son and daughter-in-law could no longer provide her needed care while living with them or living alone. The assisted living facility available for her income and Medicaid/Medicare coverage was nowhere near full care assistance. Problems cropped up from time to time even with family providing quality diapers in numbers she required and toilet paper also in short supply. In January Trump’s Medicare cost increase and vast Medicaid cut lowered Patti’s Social Security checks by 1/3rd each month. Her quality of care dropped lower than a 1/3rd loss and faster than the cuts; yesterday my daughter-in-law Anne received the call that her mother had been transferred by ambulance to a hospital ER. Covered in unexplained bruises, unable to walk or feed herself and with a raging UTI, she was admitted in-patient. Patti was NOT in this condition three weeks ago; Anne’s visits and overseeing shortcomings for her mother have been lax since my son was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer on October 13, 2024. Anne has been his full time helpmate while working in a manual labor job full time; on Friday we were notified Scott has 12 months to 18 months to live. There is a possibility of continued chemotherapy but little promise of more than a possibility of a few months. Then the call yesterday and she must seek answers to questions as to why her mother’s condition declined to the inability to walk or feed herself in only three weeks as well as questions regarding the multiple bruises covering her body.
This is but one example of the current federal governments total failure of a Means Test…IF anyone is using that system to provide health care and/or food for low income while the wealthy fill their coffers with untaxed profits they are reaping from working class and retired Americans who are keeping Trump and his MAGAs in luxury plane trips for personal entertainment.
“It turns out that the real “welfare queens” are the companies profiting from money meant to provide health care and feed hungry children.” To quote Linda Ellerbee; “And so it goes”…and goes…and goes!
Sheila has been providing vital information to us seven days a week for years now; each issue she researches and posts on this blog leads to the effect on our lives and the now lacking provision of “social programs” they paid for when they did work and pay taxes.
It should be noted that the Republican party hasn’t actually changed its position on the debt in years. If you look back at least to the Reagan years, it’s clear that they really only care about the deficit and the debt when we have a Democrat in the White House.
And, Peggy, if we look back to the Reagan years we can also see the beginnings of the GOP’s turn to Trumpism. As bad as Nixon was, he was not, to my knowledge, a traitor. Reagan was, going behind Carter’s back to, of all to places, now, Iran, to work a deal for them to not release the hostages while another person was the sitting president. He also brought the Xtian right much closer to the White House, and so on, and began what has become a long process of huge tax breaks for the wealthy.
In addition to corporate enrichment, this system just moves the fraud. Instead of a single/government provider that can be audited and evaluated and professionally staffed, what we have now is a free for all that is a sop to corporations as well as a opportunity for grifters.
These grifters can align on either side of the political spectrum. Provider fraud in the Somali community in Minnesota made national news, and WSJ today has an article on behavioral therapy fraud in the Autism community.
This fraud impoverishes the local community, prevents funds from reaching the needy, when when it is uncovered reduces the public’s appetite for assistance.