(In which I establish the fact that I’m center-right, not a full-blown rightie, and you can’t classify people along a single continuum.)
Remember that bumper sticker from many years ago: “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber”?
I never liked this at the time, finding it rather silly, but I’m reminded of that with the current budget battles in Illinois.
I have yet to see any reporting on road construction funds being cut; the road crews are hard at work this summer, just like every year. Effective lobbying? Or generous campaign-donating?
And state employees have got contracts preventing job cuts, or pay cuts.
So the state’s social service providers bear the brunt of the budget crisis.
From today’s Tribune:
under new cost-cutting measures that went into effect July 1, the Child Care Assistance Program has essentially put a freeze on future applicants. Stricter income guidelines have slashed the amount an applicant can earn, so now only 10 percent of families once considered eligible qualify, experts say. For a family of three, that means an annual income of about $10,000, a decrease from roughly $37,000 previously.
According to the article,
conservative think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation, say subsidies only drive up the cost of child care
which is just nonsensical, since, unlike student financial aid, this system is small enough that it’s hard to see it inflating child care rates in general, and, in any case, in all my years of pre-school-aged children, I simply have not seen anyone getting rich off of child care, or adding “frills” to what’s on offer. Perhaps, yes, if the government universally and heavily subsidized child care, with no caps on their payments, we’d see nanny-like ratios and the like, or articles in the business section that child care is the next hot growth industry.
True, some families can make do by finding a relative to watch their children. Maybe the out-of-the-picture unemployed dad could even be recruited. But that’s simply not a option for many poor families/mothers. And the simple fact is that if we want to preach a work ethic among the poor who’d otherwise be on welfare, we need programs like this.
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