Richard Kogan and Guillermo Herrera are right in their post at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities when they write that programs target at the poor aren’t driving the deficit:
Recent and future trends in spending on mandatory programs aren’t a justification for cuts, especially when Republican lawmakers just passed costly tax changes that primarily benefit the wealthy and corporations and do relatively little for low- and moderate-income people — and could hurt those affected by the law’s repeal of the mandate on individuals to obtain health insurance). Ultimately, addressing our nation’s longer-term fiscal challenges will require a broader approach that recognizes the need for additional revenues.
and neither is military spending. Health care spending, considered broadly, is. That’s because Congress doesn’t have the political courage to tell anyone “no”. As long as prices rise in health care and we aren’t willing to curtail the procedures covered or total amount of spending, that spending will rise as far as the eye can see. And as long as we decrease taxes we’ll finance that extra spending through borrowing.
“…programs target at the poor aren’t driving the deficit…”
Or, alternatively, we have plenty of money, we just don’t spend it on the poor.
Health care, and pretty soon, interest payments.
Steve
Yeah, that’s right, steve. When you can only service interest you are reduced to perpetually rolling over your debt.
It’s been awhile since I really looked at the budget, but as a fraction of spending so little goes for the poor. It’s a sham. A nice heart tugging argument, but a sham. We redistribute vast sums of money, with Washington taking a cut. A sham.
It’s been going on since the early 60s. But the Bush and Obama administrations were the proverbial drunken sailors.
You get into definitions. Who are “the poor”? What does it mean to be “for the poor”? Does hiring additional case workers at $80,000 a pop count? How about paying more health care workers? Nowadays a lot of what’s being spent ostensibly for the poor is going to people who earn three times the poverty rate, not remotely “the poor”.
I’d like to see much more going to help the poor and less to helping the upper middle class but maybe that’s just me.