One of the most mean-spirited and ignorant suppositions of Fox/AM’s brand of “neoconservatism” is that liberal democratic governments have little role to play regarding society’s poorest citizens. The idea that Great Society programs are unfair to taxpayers fortunate enough not to need them, and even more idiotic, provide such a level of high-living their recipients naturally lose all motivation to improve their situation, can only be conceived by imaginations sick with a desire to exploit boundless resentment. How the GOP could devolve to a point where poor whites, many fully dependent on such programs, make up part of its most vocal support for platforms created to make it harder and more humiliating to access benefits they themselves actually depend on, speaks to the formidable delusions bigotry fosters. Cheering a lazy supposed billionaire’s screeds against those struggling, based solely on the subscript that he’s actually dog whistling about minorities, is acute psychosis.
The Trump Administration, with no federal legislative mandate, has used the mechanisms of executive power to increase the paperwork and red tape for programs like Medicaid and SNAP, which serve the nation’s neediest. Moreover, drug testing and work requirements are the abasement du jour Trumpism has embraced with gusto, following in the footsteps of Tea Party darlings like Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Gregg Abbot in Texas, and Matt Bevin in Kentucky, with the express purpose of rendering the process of accessing a vital safety net more trouble and humiliation than its worth. Bullies gotta bully. And it’s far more than just public assistance under siege by pencil pushing nihilists for no other reason than the quest for political advantage.
Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan, Professors of Public Policy at Georgetown University, have written a book titled Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means which examines the myriad of ways the GOP has worked diligently at the task of sabotaging government services, depriving large swaths of citizens everything from voter registration services to health insurance by simply making it more difficult for them to receive what, before the plague of government by Fox/AM, was a bipartisan contract.
Herd and Moynihan succinctly underscore GOP hypocrisy regarding its claims of vigilance toward reducing government beauracracy. Fact is, in broad and vital areas of American life like voter participation, healthcare, food assistance, college grants, minority business development, family planning and special needs services the Republican Party at all levels of government fights tooth and nail to increase regulatory burdens, often in the most petty and beauracraticly nitpicking ways. Forcing advanced auditing requirements on families all out to feed themselves, a favorite of flyover lawmakers as well as Mick Mulvaney, makes Scrooge look philanthropic.
Deregulation is only for a targeted constituency with the lobbying muscle to promote right wing electoral prospects. Those outside that steadily shrinking tent have long been labeled the enemy and viewed with ever increasing disdain, to be dealt with in a myriad of ever more overt ways.
Trump has taken meanness toward those struggling the most to near absurd levels, often punctuated on Facebook by memes shared by, first bots, and then his wretched core. Creating equivalence between drug testing for jobs involving public safety and our poorest who often depend on SNAP benefits and welfare assistance to eat provides an Orwellian twist to common sense. And targeting 45-60 year old Medicaid recipients, the group most likely to be facing disabling conditions, for onerous work requirements is outrageous in its petty cruelty.
Of course, pro-life zealots have no bigger panderer than this President, who recognizes rabid evangelical support is his Alamo as impeachment becomes more viable. Planned Parenthood is viewed as a fiendish enterprise by this constituency. The guidance this Administration’s HHS is providing builds on state efforts that make terminating even a life-threatening pregnancy a harrowing nightmare in 2/3 of America. The latest strategy of forcing reproductive services, in the name of patient safety, to meet the same facility paradigms required for hospitals, despite the fact that dangerous complications from such procedures approach minuscule percentages, clarifies an abyss of ugly disingenuousness that has become a sweet spot for Trumpie legislators.
How the wave of newly elected progressives to the House will get along with more moderate old hands wary of their unbridled enthusiasm to shake things up has become a preoccupation. Herd and Moynihan astutely point out that uniting to push back against GOP sabotage of basic government services is a great place to find common ground; they couldn’t be more spot on. Whatever the differences in legislative temperament, fighting against efforts to take us back to the turn of last century by villainizing the poor and ratcheting up punitive paperwork is a long overdue no-brainer,. Along with ending the crisis that is this Presidency, it should be priority number one. BC
imaginations sick with a desire to exploit boundless resentment….scary but right on, I’d say they are anti-intellectual, millionaire celebrities, what do they care about anyone but themselves
So succinctly stated. Bam! The sentences I’ve been trying to form since the beginning of this nightmare tied up with a bow! Thanks, as always, for the hard work you do to continue to educate the masses.