It's Easy to be a Republican Columnist

See, with the stroke of a pen, I can write a headline almost as entertaining as the one that accompanied Steve Kimatian's latest guest column in The Post-Standard. Kimatian, a former local television station executive and Republican candidate for mayor of Syracuse, suggests that the Dems have an 'easier sales pitch' to voters, when they offer beliefs like these:

increasing entitlement benefits and minimum wages, extending unemployment insurance and that recipients don't need to work to receive any of these benefits.

Poor Republicans, on the other hand

offer(ed) fewer entitlements, said you would have to work for some of them, that they would provide training to develop your employable skills with the added caution that they were concerned about debt limits and balancing the budget.

Voters, being the blood-sucking leeches that we are, would 'hands down' take the first option, the one presented by the Democrats.  And sure, there probably are some folks who vote that way -- we all of course saw the crazed woman in the ad yelling about her Obama phone. The phone program actually started under Ronald Reagan, in an obvious attempt to buy votes. But she does not represent a single Democrat I know, or even one that Kimatian knows.

Kimatian goes on to describe the Democrat's position as 'self-serving, noting

The Democrat offer encouraged a complicit contract with the voter. If you can befriend a voting block by giving benefits, then you can secure votes and contributions for your re-election.

Hmm.  Let's pretend I'm one of those Democrats, living large on my unemployment benefit (2013 average maximum benefit? Around $400/week) after losing my $100,000 job in the Great Recession.  Assuming I'm getting lots of other safety net benefits, I'm guessing that I have at least one boatload of money to hand over to a politician to ensure my continued glorious lifestyle, maybe even two boatloads. Of course, that's only if I haven't spent it all a a strip joint, porn shop or casino.

Because, as Kimatian points out,

The extremes to which Democrats will go to ensure that benefits continue is shockingly displayed by the Speaker of the (NY) State Assembly, Sheldon Silver, who for the last two legislative sessions has blocked a vote on preventing state electronic benefits cards being used at ATMs located in strip joints, porn shops, and casinos.  Apparently the last thing Silver wants to experience is a disappointed voter's porn backlash and so he goes to great lengths to keep the benefits flowing, even for as blatantly a sordid use of public tax monies as this usage. 

I do believe I have the vapors; I might have to step away from my keyboard.

Kimatian fails to provide any statistics for his outrageous comment, but here are some figures that were reported in the press back in 2013.

A database of 200 million Electronic Benefit Transfer records from January 2011 to July 2012, obtained by The (NY) Post through a Freedom of Information request, showed welfare recipients using their EBT cards to make dozens of cash withdrawals at ATMs... (and then goes on to list several specific establishments not in our area)

That's right:  200 million transactions searched, dozens of these horribly abusive cash withdrawals identified. Oh. My. Lap dance.

He also doesn't mention the key reason this type of legislation is being considered (not just in New York but across the country). There's a risk that states will lose federal safety net funds if they don't illustrate controls over how this money is spent.  According to one Republican State Senator's website,

Federal Law passed earlier this year (2012) requires states to limit electronic benefit transactions in locations including liquor stores, casinos, and strip clubs by welfare recipients before February 2014.

For New York, that's a cool $120M in federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) funds.

Disregarding for a moment that a bill signed into law in 2012 would have been signed by a Democrat, I find it ironic that Kimatian puts forth an example that seems to disprove his own theory. Remember the premise: Democrats offer unencumbered benefits so that people who receive the benefits will become addicted to the benefits and therefore vote for and make campaign contributions to Democrats to keep them in office.

Well, if that's the case, wouldn't one expect Shelly Silver to be bending over backwards to ensure that we don't lost the $120 million? Because if we lose the federal dollars, we would almost certainly have to cut benefits in New York, which would almost certainly antagonize that voting block the Dems work for.

Are there other ATMs that could be used for honest, non-sinful withdrawals of EBT? Sure. Should benefits be spent this way? No. Is continuing this benefit ensuring the continued employment of Shelly Silver? Likely not. Unless, of course, those blatantly sordid ATM users are donating so much money to Silver, or voting in such huge numbers, that he can turn up his nose at 120 million bucks. Where's that data analysis, I wonder?

Folks, this is the same argument as the Republicans make about people buying lobster with their SNAP benefits; it's about as important from a policy perspective, pretending for a moment that there actually is a policy perspective buried in there somewhere. It's a red cape in front of a bull. You know it, they know it, I know it.

And FYI, bills like this also would ban using EBT for lottery tickets.  Now, I don't know about you, but apparently many in government believe that lotteries and casinos are the proper way to fund education and to grow our economy.  Can't we just consider that the benefit-sucking Democratic voters are really just trying to do their part to create jobs and pay for school books? Or, if that's too altruistic for you, that they've fallen for the advertizing the government does, that whole "dollar and a dream" stuff?

Another argument Kimatian puts up is that President Obama killed welfare reform. The same case was made by Mitt Romney and Republican minions during the campaign in which Obama won his second term.

I talked about this in a post back in September 2012, noting that the Republican platform included not one but two mentions of this 'gutting' of welfare reform.  And, the post also noted what actually happened:

• the Department of Health and Human Services acted in response to requests from several governors to give them more flexibility in how the incorporated work requirements in their benefit programs
• HHS would consider waivers to the current law in order challenge states to engage in a new round of innovation for helping families succeed in employment
• HHS would only consider waivers to the work participation requirements that make changes intended to lead to more effective means of meeting the work goals of TANF
• HHS was committed to ensuring that any demonstration projects approved under the waivers would be focused on improving employment outcomes and contributing to the evidence base for effective programs

I included other information in the post, direct citations from the actual documents that were sent to the states by HHS, all of which was easily available for reference. Nowhere in there did I see the part about creating addictive benefits to obtain campaign contributions. Don't fall for it, I said back then, and I say the same thing now.

Yeah, it's easy to be a Republican columnist. Or a moderate blogger.

Kimatian and I apparently agree that continuing to expand the safety net is not the way to run a rodeo, and that there should be some responsibility on the part of recipients to not seek these benefits in perpetuity, and on the government to make sure that real fraud, waste, and abuse of these programs is addressed and stopped.

Where we differ is in our approach. Over the weekend, I published two posts -- one on what Republicans are focusing on that they shouldn't be, and one on what the Dems are focusing on that they shouldn't be, if the goal is to create real jobs, the kind that will get folks out of the safety net and into being productive, taxpaying members of society.

Kimatian, on the other hand, chooses the road more taken -- the demonizing path, the class warfare path, the 47% path.  Sadly, in the dumb-down-the-issue, sound-bite world we wallow in, his take on this is likely to be the winning one.