Fortunately for us, the California Budget Project is doing a lot of the hard work of documenting some of the impacts of the massive cuts we’ve had over the last few years. And unsurprisingly, the cuts have really been painful for the poor especially.
The nonpartisan California Budget Project last week issued fact sheets on recent cuts to programs that give stipends to the poor and disabled, families going from welfare to work and a health insurance program for needy kids.
Jean Ross, executive director of the project, said the idea came from one result of a Field Poll question showing that about half the state’s residents felt no impact from California budget cuts.
“We were trying to document that there had been large cuts and large amounts of dollars lost,” Ross said.
Her staff set out to examine how several programs were hit and how each county may have swaths of people struggling to cover costs. (California Watch)
The results? Well, the cuts to the healthy families program have meant that 50,000 fewer children will have insurance. The disabled and others receiving suplemental SSI payments, will see almost 15% less in their checks than 2009. That takes money directly out of the economy, and puts these folks at risk of homelessness in some cases.
And, of course, the cuts to CalWorks have all but decimated that welfare to work program. The simple fact is that you simply can’t cut, cut, cut and not expect ramifications. This isn’t just waste fraud and abuse, these are real people’s lives at stake.
And so when the Republicans deny that we need additional revenue, ask them to explain to that child without insurance why they can’t go to the doctor when they are sick.
It used to be that if I needed to go to my DMV for something, I could make an appointment and expect a short wait if any, and if it was a quick transaction (like needing a driver record printout) it would take maybe 10 minutes.
Now, our DMV cannot schedule appointments in any reasonable timeframe, and so you can’t really do any business there without waiting an hour or even more.
It seems a small thing, but multiplied times every Californian who has lost an extra hour at the DMV this year, mostly during business hours, and I bet you could measure a small impact on state GDP, not to mention the individual cost.
Some “explanations” that you might hear from that Generic Republican:
1) “Your parents are ‘illegal.’ Go back to [Mexico/El Salvador/Guatemala/Luxembourg].”
2) “We can’t afford it, everyone [read: poor people] needs to make sacrifices.”
3) “People should be rewarded for their hard work [read: noble birth] and not encouraged to be lazy [read: be of low birth].”
Until Democrats decide that the way to respond to that is to explain why we both can provide those services and are also ethically obligated to provide them, we’re going to keep losing that argument. However correct we may be, it’s not enough to simply reply that we can afford services – we need to be able to present a compelling argument for why we should. Those arguments are out there but I don’t see them being made often enough.
There are more low-income people than wealthy people. So, why are the services being cut? Too many low-income people don’t vote. I wish that more of these people who are being hit the hardest would vote, and vote for Democrats.
The Democrats need to focus on communicating with people.
All of my adult life I have had the honor of being a civil servant. Retired now, I look back at what I saw and lived and the answer
Is quite simple. Republicans simply do not care about the poor, period. Has been that way a long time. Now they don’t give a dam about the middle class, too.
If there is a hell, it will be filled with Republicans who hide behind religion. No doubt about it.