When You Think of the Budget, Think of the Children

I just want to remind you that every choice our government makes has real consequences, for real people.

Everybody likes it when I tell stories about the children who live in LaBelle: Jimmy’s boy, the Baker Street Irregulars, the Artful Dodgers. People sometimes wish they could see pictures (which I don’t post publicly, because they’re somebody else’s minor children of course). Once in awhile, somebody mails me clothes or another little gift for one of them.

You should know that, just a few days ago, one of those children gleefully told me “Mom got her food stamps today!” The next day, after their mother walked all the way to the grocery store while they were at school, they came to my house happily licking heart-shaped lollipops and excited for dinner.

Every one of those children is on food stamps and Medicaid. That’s how they stay alive.

Sure, some of those children are in households where a parent doesn’t work. She can’t, because she’s a single mother with a large number of little kids and no transportation. But some of those parents work full time, get paid minimum wage, and still can’t make ends meet. So the children get their cleanings, checkups and fillings at the mobile dentist at the public school once a year, and Medicaid pays the fifty dollar fee. They get their shots and exams at the pediatrician or the school clinic with Medicaid as well. Once a month, their parents get several hundred dollars in EBT benefits, and take them to Kroger or Walmart to stock the freezer. None of that is something they’re ashamed of, because nearly everyone they know is in the same boat.

These children don’t understand phrases like “means testing.” They don’t know the words “adjusted gross income.” All they know, is that in the week leading up to the food stamps, they eat ramen and peanut butter on toast. On the day they get their food stamps, they eat spaghetti and meatballs or chicken and rice. If their food stamps get delayed, they might go hungry. If they get their food stamps early one month, Mom might bring home a jar of heart shaped lollipops and tell them to have as many as they want.

These children couldn’t tell you what the difference is between the budget and the debt ceiling. They also couldn’t tell you what it’s like to not be able to swallow from the mumps, because they get to see a doctor and get their vaccinations. They don’t know what it’s like to get permanent heart damage from strep throat or scarlet fever, because they have access to antibiotics. They’ll keep all their adult teeth well into adulthood, because they saw a dentist. They were all born in the hospital, because their mom had Medicaid.

The massive, overwhelming cuts that Republicans want to pass to the budget are not just ones and zeros. They’re children with tangled hair and freckles.

They’re little boys and girls who like to ride bikes and play in Adrienne’s old sandbox.

I hate paying taxes as much as you do. But your representatives in Congress are excited to take our tax money out of the mouths of hungry children and put it in the hands of billionaires like Elon Musk.

Elon Musk doesn’t need more money.

Jimmy’s boy does need antibiotics when he gets strep throat. The Artful Dodgers need milk and cereal and orange juice. The autistic Baker Street Irregular needs to keep seeing her therapist so she can do well in school.

The doctors and nurses who work at the local hospital won’t be able to keep working if Medicaid doesn’t pay for the local children to get medical care. The grocery stores in many neighborhoods won’t stay open if poor people can’t buy food once a month.

If you think that there’s a better way to get food onto tables and medicine into bodies and employ all of those workers, I’m all ears. But just yanking it away from the people who need it most with no better plan in place will cause chaos and suffering. It will hurt little children. Many of them will die.

This country belongs to all of us, not to whatever political party happens to be in charge. It belongs to all Americans, rich and poor, children and adults.

The federal budget is our money– not my money that was stolen from me and your money that was stolen from you, but OUR money, pooled from a bit of each of our incomes, so that we can fund the country we all share.

Where do you want your money to go? Into the bank account of a person so wealthy he can’t possibly notice the difference? Or into stopping some of the suffering in the country?

Let your representative know. And if they don’t listen, vote them out.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.