Efforts to reduce public sector spending ought to focus on weak claims‚ revenue streams that serve no useful purpose. But what happens in practice when people first decide how much they want to cut and only second decide what to cut is that the focus is on weak claimants—the poor, the vulnerable, and others lacking in political voice.
In that light, consider Brian Beutler’s reporting that the six month spending bill passed in April will actually increase federal discretionary expenditures over that period (though it does cut budget authority). But David Rogers notes for Politico that there’s an important exception to this poor people are really taking it on the chin:
After campaigning on the promise to roll back spending to Bush-era levels, House Republicans have overshot their mark and landed in the last years of the Clinton administration — at least in the case of cuts from labor, health and education appropriations important to poor and working-class families.
This is why I get a chill in my bones any time I hear discussion of “caps” on federal spending. It’s not that there are no federal programs that shouldn’t be cut. But the way to cut a federal program that deserves to be cut is to say “let’s cut this program.” Cappings things is code for “let’s keep all the spending that lobbyists love and make up the difference by slashing the incomes of poor people.”
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