Drop that bread

Forcing poor people to work for food, health care is beneath us

During the recent flirtation with establishing America, the richest country on Earth, as a deadbeat nation, many members of the GOP insisted on certain standards. They said that any deal on the debt ceiling hinged on making those supposedly shiftless, low-income Americans work for their food and health care.   

Some folks just never stop dreaming up ways to keep their boots on the necks of the poor.   

The only visible pause during the debt ceiling debate of the last few weeks was when congressmen on both sides of the aisle gathered to clean the Vietnam Memorial Wall. They’ve done this for years around Memorial Day, and good for them. But while they were soaping and shining the wall,  Republicans were proposing plans that would cut services to veterans, throw nearly 2 million poor people off Medicaid, slash more than a quarter-million people off food stamps (including low-income vets). That’s all in addition to proposed work requirements to those who needed help purchasing food or seeing a doctor.

When did cruelty become one of our national values?

Political differences are not just red and blue. There are always issues in politics that push our personal buttons, based on life experience, observations or principles developed over time.  So I freely admit that the perennial debt-ceiling debates, along with work requirements for social services irritate the daylights out of me.     

First, work requirements. This short-sighted idea surfaced in the 1980s and 1990s and was included in the 1996 welfare reform act. It implied that poor people are leeching off society’s largesse, when in fact the vast majority are already working hard to get ahead.  

County Clare famine road winding thru The Burren, a rocky, moon-like landscape

Work requirements are expensive to implement. For example, Kentucky estimated that the administration and monitoring involved would cost the state $271 million.   That’s a lot to spend to hound poor people who are mostly working already.

Work requirements don’t help people get jobs, because many low-income people who are unemployed have child care and other issues that already make it difficult to hold down full-time work. Adding work requirements to Medicaid in Arkansas, the first state to impose them, resulted in zero increase in employment for the poor, but it did result in 18,000 people losing their health care. 

Most low-income individuals subjected to work requirements stayed poor or became even poorer, according to a randomized, controlled study of 13 programs.  

Besides data, a lack of compassion and lessons of history are the biggest reasons I object to work requirements.  

My sister had a DNA test which shows she is 84 percent Irish and 10 percent English. If mine is similar, the blood of both the oppressed and the oppressor courses through my veins.  

I have thought about this a lot during my five trips to Ireland. The visits always move me, particularly one windswept corner of County Mayo where I have lingered near a famine road.  

It is, like all the other such roadways that crisscross Ireland, a road to nowhere, memorials to the desperate people who built them. For a time during the Great Hunger, the British required the starving Irish to build roads during the potato famine in return for slave wages or watery soup. This was to keep the peasants from the sin of dependency on government - seen as so very injurious to their moral values. While the land was lush with oats and other crops that the crown exported for profit, rotting potatoes were left for the Irish to eat. No wonder many who didn’t have strength to flee the country died with mouths green from eating grass.  

This is what I think about when I hear some members of the right wing tout the need to force poor people to work for food and doctor visits.  And indeed, the GOP negotiators won a few things on their wish list: now people 50-54 with no children at home will have to work for government food assistance. (Is this a good time to bring up the fact that 55 of some of the largest corporations in America paid no federal income tax in 2020?) 

And the very idea that we would, as a nation, say, “Oh, never mind,” to our debts is simply unacceptable. The debate on this - that we would even debate it at all - pushed my buttons once again.   

Chalk up my attitude to my parents, who both lived through the Great Depression. They always taught me, by example, that grown-ups pay their bills. They don’t walk away from debt.  And they take care of people who are weaker, sicker and need help.  

Taking care of others isn’t merely a shared burden for all of us. It’s a privilege. It’s the right thing to do.  Compassion makes us better people and a better nation.  As the recent debate illustrates, we can use a lot more of it, not less.