Ana Marie Cox
by Ana Marie Cox
Human puff-adder Bill Kristol drolly noted on Morning Joe this week that the shutdown is not “the end of the world”. The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein snapped back, “For these people affected by these cuts, it is sort of comparable to the end of the world.”
I have one quibble with Stein’s otherwise satisfying smackdown: “For the people affected by these cuts” implies that there are people who are not affected by these cuts. Stein was talking specifically about the families and children across the country most likely to suffer when the government stops paying for Head Start programmes and nutritional aid, but they are only the most sympathetic victims of the shutdown.
And there are a lot of them: Almost nine million mothers and children rely on the Special Supplemental Nutrition Programme for Women, Infants and Children (Wic). Most states will be able to operate for about a week on the money they have, but in the words of one administrator in Cook County, “We have no cushion. If our funding stream stops we will temporarily suspend service.”
The US Department of Agriculture is attempting to prop up the programme in the states hardest hit — they announced this week a $2.5m grant to Utah. But the $125m they have on reserve is laughably small for a programme that costs $7bn a year — it’s less than two percent of the total budget. If $125m was all the money the programme had, it would operate for six days.
But that’s just women and children. The poorest of the poor, right? We’re a civilized country; we won’t let them starve. As Kristol told Stein, “Localities can help out. Churches can help out.” Because obviously, up until now, localities and churches were just standing around twiddling their thumbs as lounged on divans and wondered if it was time to pick out new wallpaper or maybe treat themselves to a day at the spa.
If you actually attend a church or do service work, I hope you’ve picked up the laptop from when you hurled it across the room just now. Already a huge patch in the patchwork of federal social services across the country, churches and private food banks have stretched themselves thin to cover the drop in federal aid that accompanied the sequester cuts last spring (Remember that? The last time we had a budget showdown?).
The ripple effects of a Wic crash spread outward quickly. Food stamp and Wic programmes pump about $23m a year into retail grocery stores – indeed, a quarter of all meals for recipients of nutritional aid come from a supermarket. The Wic buys 60 percent of all the baby formula produced in the country. For every dollar spent on Wic, states save about $3.5 in Medicaid spending – but that’s just a quantitative way of saying that Wic produces healthier babies.
But maybe you’re still thinking of this as a sad story, not that has anything to do with you or anyone you know. You don’t go to national parks, or live near one. (Communities that depend on national park tourism stand to lose $30m a day.) You’re not a veteran. (At the VA, money allocated for disability payments and students studying under the GI bill will run out in a few weeks.)
The Guardian
by Ana Marie Cox
Human puff-adder Bill Kristol drolly noted on Morning Joe this week that the shutdown is not “the end of the world”. The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein snapped back, “For these people affected by these cuts, it is sort of comparable to the end of the world.”
I have one quibble with Stein’s otherwise satisfying smackdown: “For the people affected by these cuts” implies that there are people who are not affected by these cuts. Stein was talking specifically about the families and children across the country most likely to suffer when the government stops paying for Head Start programmes and nutritional aid, but they are only the most sympathetic victims of the shutdown.
And there are a lot of them: Almost nine million mothers and children rely on the Special Supplemental Nutrition Programme for Women, Infants and Children (Wic). Most states will be able to operate for about a week on the money they have, but in the words of one administrator in Cook County, “We have no cushion. If our funding stream stops we will temporarily suspend service.”
The US Department of Agriculture is attempting to prop up the programme in the states hardest hit — they announced this week a $2.5m grant to Utah. But the $125m they have on reserve is laughably small for a programme that costs $7bn a year — it’s less than two percent of the total budget. If $125m was all the money the programme had, it would operate for six days.
But that’s just women and children. The poorest of the poor, right? We’re a civilized country; we won’t let them starve. As Kristol told Stein, “Localities can help out. Churches can help out.” Because obviously, up until now, localities and churches were just standing around twiddling their thumbs as lounged on divans and wondered if it was time to pick out new wallpaper or maybe treat themselves to a day at the spa.
If you actually attend a church or do service work, I hope you’ve picked up the laptop from when you hurled it across the room just now. Already a huge patch in the patchwork of federal social services across the country, churches and private food banks have stretched themselves thin to cover the drop in federal aid that accompanied the sequester cuts last spring (Remember that? The last time we had a budget showdown?).
The ripple effects of a Wic crash spread outward quickly. Food stamp and Wic programmes pump about $23m a year into retail grocery stores – indeed, a quarter of all meals for recipients of nutritional aid come from a supermarket. The Wic buys 60 percent of all the baby formula produced in the country. For every dollar spent on Wic, states save about $3.5 in Medicaid spending – but that’s just a quantitative way of saying that Wic produces healthier babies.
But maybe you’re still thinking of this as a sad story, not that has anything to do with you or anyone you know. You don’t go to national parks, or live near one. (Communities that depend on national park tourism stand to lose $30m a day.) You’re not a veteran. (At the VA, money allocated for disability payments and students studying under the GI bill will run out in a few weeks.)
The Guardian
