Tag Archives: corporate welfare

Return of the Welfare Queen

The Romney campaign has “gone there.”

A recent ad accuses the Obama Administration of “gutting the work requirement” that was part of welfare reform. The charge isn’t even remotely true–Politifact gave it a “Pants on Fire” rating, and reporters have noted the chutzpah of criticizing Obama for granting a request by Republican governors for more flexibility to try innovative job placement programs. Charles Blow of the New York Times noted that in 2005, Romney himself, and 8 other Republican governors, had signed a letter requesting even more flexibility than the administration has now granted.

So the ad is an outright lie, but that isn’t the point. The point is to play on white working-class resentment of the lazy, unproductive (black) moochers  who are living high at the expense of hardworking Americans. Those resentments, racial and economic, are closer to the surface in bad economic times, and let’s face it–the people who harbor them are much more likely to believe the charge that a black President  is enabling “those people.”

Resentments don’t respect facts, unfortunately. Most welfare recipients are white, and a majority are children. Another large subset are disabled. Of recipients who are working age, most work–and most of those work 40 hours a week. They simply work at jobs that don’t pay a living wage.

My biggest gripe with the folks who get bent out of shape about welfare, though, is different. It’s their definition and lack of consistency.

By far the largest recipients of welfare are corporations–the special interests whose lobbyists have successfully argued for favorable tax breaks and lucrative subsidies. Huge and highly profitable corporations like GE pay virtually no taxes. Obscenely profitable oil companies like Exxon continue to receive immense subsidies. (As E.J. Dionne wryly noted a few months back, evidently giving money to the rich gives them an incentive to produce, but giving money to the poor makes them dependent.)

We’ve only seen one year of tax returns from Mitt Romney, but in that one year, he took advantage of tax preferences–aka corporate welfare–that reduced his effective rate to 13%.

We have heard very little from Mitt Romney about his policy proposals. We are told we have no business seeing his tax returns. All we know is that he wants to be President so badly that he is willing to say or do anything–including flat-out lying and appeals to social and racial resentments.

References to Welfare Queens worked for Ronald Reagan, but Reagan had other things going for him. I do not think they will work for Mitt Romney.

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It All Depends on Your Definition of a Tax….

There was another item in the news this morning about Congressional Republicans’ efforts to “trim” food stamps. The stated reason is to reduce government expenditures without raising taxes.

My husband noted that calling something a “reduction in benefits” doesn’t change the fact that the target of the measure has less money to spend at the grocery. Substantively, the food stamp recipient has been taxed.

This willingness to “reduce benefits” to avoid calling something a tax raises an inconvenient question. Oil companies–which have been massively profitable of late–enjoy generous federal subsidies. If the GOP doesn’t want to tax those they have labeled “job creators,” why not simply reduce their benefits?

Evidently, in the reality occupied by these Congressmen, reducing corporate welfare for big oil is a “tax” to be avoided at all costs, but reducing social welfare for poor children is just budgetary prudence.

I guess it all depends on what your definition of a “tax” is.

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Rational Self-Interest

We are often told that it is human nature to act primarily in our own self-interest. I tend to think that’s true (although there is an argument to be made about the influence of  culture and socialization), and that efforts to construct altruistic or utopian societies that ignore human nature are doomed to go the way of the USSR.

That said, the old adage only takes us so far. We need to recognize that short and long-term self-interest aren’t necessarily the same; i.e., what policies and social structures are truly in our long-term self-interest? (It may be in my short-term interest to steal your money, but assuming a halfway decent police department, it probably is not in my long-term interest to do so, since a criminal record is rarely an asset.)

It may be that democracy just can’t work, since “long-term” in partisan politics generally means “the next election.” But leaving that particular argument for another day, recent events have reminded me of a conversation with a family member several years ago. This particular individual is wealthy; not only did he inherit quite a lot of money, but he himself has always done well. He has also always been a liberal Democrat and an advocate of a strong social safety net. During that conversation, I said something to him along the lines of “your politics seems contrary to your own self-interest,” and he immediately disagreed.

“Those who have a lot,” he said, “have an interest in keeping it–and security in one’s possessions depends upon the maintenance of a stable, law-abiding society. Stability, in turn, depends upon a general sense in society that everyone has opportunity, that the good fortune of the rich and powerful is a result of their efforts and abilities, and has not been achieved on the backs of the powerless. Resentment and too large a gap between the haves and have-nots more often than not leads to rioting and looting by those who have nothing to lose, and that is definitely not in my interest! Better to pay more taxes and work for a government that is concerned with social justice than to build high walls around my privileged neighborhood and hire personal security guards.”

As we watch the looting in London, as Washington continues to reward the rich with obscene amounts of corporate welfare while cutting services to the middle and working classes, it might be well to think about where self-interest really lies.

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