Illustration by Vidhya Nagarajan
Poor people are really lousy about giving money to political campaigns.
They don’t attend fundraisers. They shun PACs. You never see one on a host committee.
This doesn’t serve them well with politicians here in the Show-Me-the-Money State, where folks’ campaign donations are as blissfully unregulated as their guns. People of means are afforded what in polite society is known as “access” to politicians, provided they share enough of those means with the right public servants.
Rather than access, people on the opposite end of the economic spectrum get “axes” from politicians. Same concept, just a different outcome. On one hand, you give, you get. On the other, well, you’re just a taker, so you’re going to get it.
Every legislative season, Missouri politicians—mostly but not exclusively Republicans—fall all over themselves to introduce bills aimed at attacking the scourge of welfare as you knew it. They attack straw men (and women), often summoning distorted welfare abuse imagery from half a century ago. These issues were addressed by the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act.
Safety net programs today look nothing like the ones of the ’60s. And the people who receive some sort of government assistance for such luxuries as food or housing don’t fit the nasty stereotypes that have fueled resentment toward “the welfare state” for decades. But this much hasn’t changed: Exploiting the resentment of programs for the poor is great sport for right-wing politicians.
The juiciest headlines are generally garnered by the most moronic ideas. At press time, this year’s winners were Rep. Rick Brattin (R–Harrisonville), for his brilliant idea to ban the purchase of energy drinks, cookies, seafood, or steak by people served by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps. The runner-up was an astonishing bill from Rep. J. Eggleston (R–Maryville) prohibiting the purchase of pornography by recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
Nonsense like this does serve an important purpose: It illuminates the callous misunderstanding by many Missouri politicians (and presumably their constituents) of people whose principal offense is that they’re living in poverty. I won’t go as far as saying that these Republican legislators hate the poor. But they sure love gaining cheap political points at their expense.
If only more poor people would show up at campaign fundraisers. Then maybe the politicians would get to know them, and they would overcome some of these stereotypes. It certainly works for wealthy people. If a trust fund kid who’s never worked a day in his life gives a nice donation to a politician, you can be sure that you won’t hear any moralizing about the importance of getting off the dole. It’s actually quite the opposite; the larger the donation, the more likely the politician is to rail with indignation about inheritance taxes…or should I say, ahem, “death taxes.”
Poor people need to be seen at these events. Were they represented proportionally, the first shock to politicians would be that in Missouri only 25 percent of SNAP beneficiaries are African-American, versus 69 percent who are white. Politicians are careful not to publicly discuss race with regard to public assistance programs, but those percentages don’t fit the unstated narrative.
If politicians actually spoke with some of the poor people at their events, they could be regaled with tales of how grateful these people must be to get lavished by taxpayers with $1.32 per person per meal in the SNAP program (far below the national average). To state it in larger numbers, that’s $119 per month per recipient. Bon appétit!
Legislators might not find a whole lot of their prime targets: nondisabled, nonelderly adults who don’t have children. These individuals make up just one-seventh of the SNAP program. And quite a few of those are members of that exclusive club known as the “working poor”—meaning that they do have jobs—with too much income to qualify for Medicaid benefits but too little to pay for much more than food and a roof over their heads.
How about clinking a few glasses at the fundraiser to pause for an introduction to some of the 22 percent of Missourians who live below the poverty line? Or better yet, seeing as how the poverty line itself is $23,850 for a family of four, perhaps it might be better to spotlight someone from one of the 43 percent of poor households living in deep poverty. That would be defined as less than half of that poverty line.
These numbers go on interminably, but they don’t do justice to the real problem, which is how easy it is to dehumanize people one never sees. Once dehumanized, recipients of public assistance can be dismissed as the takers, lazy and unmotivated, happy to do nothing all day at the expense of the taxpayer.
Once that’s the established paradigm, the “solution” is easy: Just give them an ultimatum to work or starve. Make them understand that it’s about responsibility and diligence and values. And if they can’t accept that, well, let the churches and food pantries take care of them. That’s the strategy of “model legislation” from the far-right American Legislative Exchange Council, which has dutifully been copied by GOP lawmakers in Missouri and across the nation. At least one can’t blame them for independent thought on the subject.
To be sure, there are unworthy recipients of public assistance, just as there are unworthy recipients of corporate welfare. And it should be everyone’s goal to get as many people as possible off public assistance through realistic strategies to get them training and education and, therefore, jobs with which they can support themselves and their families. And for those who need programs such as SNAP, there should be incentives to buy healthy foods like fruits and vegetables, to shop at farmers’ markets and the like. Of course, all public assistance programs should be focused on helping people help themselves make good choices that lead to better outcomes in their lives and those of their families.
But none of that can work in the absence of a comprehensive approach to the real causes of poverty, which run a little deeper than simply blaming the poor. The fact that one in seven Americans (and Missourians) requires SNAP assistance is a national disgrace. And that disgrace isn’t the existence of the programs to fight hunger, homelessness, and the absence of medical care.
Poverty is the confluence of many factors. There’s poor-quality education, substandard housing, unaffordable energy costs, food insecurity, nonexistent medical care, and unavailability of jobs that pay enough to address those concerns while providing decent childcare. There are issues of alcohol and drug abuse that disproportionately ravage low-income communities. Ditto the rampant spousal and partner abuse of women trapped in this web.
You can’t just wave a magic wand and fix decades of social decay. But it’s just as unacceptable to blame the poor for poverty as it is to embrace the notion that we should accept the inevitably of a cycle of welfare dependency. There are no simple answers.
But I have one place we can start: Maybe we should discount campaign fundraisers and start allowing poor people to pay admission with their EBT cards.
At least they’d get some access to the politicians.
SLM co-owner Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs Thursdays at 7 p.m.
