Kill the Poor

In a move to further punish the less well-off among us in America (and possibly in retribution for daring to ask for federal help in the wake of Katrina -- on national TV, no less), House Republicans have come up with a way to pay for Katrina relief and reconstruction efforts by -- and I'm not making this up -- proposing to further slash programs for low-income Americans as well as increasing tax audits of poor Americans, as they apparently are depriving the federal coffers of billions of dollars (unlike the richest of the rich or politically connected corporations). According to the Washington Post's Achenblog, here's what's on the table:

"-Delay the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill for One year
-Increase Allowable Co-pays in Medicaid
-Block Grant Medicaid Acute Services
-Reduce Farm Payment Acreage by 1%
-Eliminate Subsidized Loans to Graduate Students
-Increase Medicare Part B Premium from 25% to 30%
-Level Funding for the Peace Corps
-Eliminate the Federal Anti-Drug Advertising
-Eliminate Federal Funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
-Eliminate State Grants for Safe and Drug-Free Schools
-Eliminate the Even Start Program
-Eliminate Teen Funding Portion of Title X Family Planning
-Eliminate Funding for Penile Implants Under Medicare

That's just a sample. Some of these items would save a lot of money, some would save very little. But there's one item that the GOP believes would save $85 billion over 10 years:

Verify Income of Earned Income Tax Credit Participants

This appears to be a proposal to audit people who claim to be poor, to make sure they are truly poor and deserving of the tax credit. I'll try to find out more to make sure I'm not missing some essential element of the idea. The GOP apparently believes that massive fraud exists in this program, and that we could ease the federal deficit by aggressively collecting taxes from the not-truly-poor -- people who could be defined as the merely non-affluent, the not-doing-so-well, the just-scraping-by. But not "poor." The GOP wants these posers to pay up. [And then the GOP will eliminate the Estate Tax, but that's another matter entirely.]"

Some of these proposed cuts are not surprising (they've been after those damn fairies Bert and Ernie on PBS for years -- and the very impudence of giving poor and minority children a good educational foundation with Head Start drives them freakin' INSANE!), but killing the anti-drug efforts seems weird for the Grand Old Party of Just Say No (but maybe with that nasty coke tart Kate Moss knocked off billboards for the near future, the incidence of drug use will plummet?). Yet now that Americans have discovered that millions of poor people are amongst us and have been generously opening up their wallets to help out, it would seem to be a bad political move for them to cut anti-poverty programs, etc. Then again, Dubya's approval ratings already are in the toilet and the Republicans' hubris knows no limits -- plus it's the poor people's fault that they are poor, right?!

I know the Republicans HATE the New Deal and FDR, but wouldn't it be a good idea to set up WPA-type programs to clean up and rebuild the Gulf Coast cities by hiring all of those people without means who are now destitute? I think a lot of Americans would much rather see their tax dollars go to helping their fellow citizens earn a decent living (and to rebuild their lives) instead of further enriching Halliburton's golden boys.

Having said all that, I'm just happy that I already took care of my penile implant...