Moscow-Pullman Daily News January 7-8, 2006
By Judith L. Brown
Janus, the Roman god of endings and beginnings, was represented with a double-faced head. One face looked backwards and the other forwards. And so January, the month of Janus, is a good month to look both backward and forward, taking stock of the consequences that have followed from past decisions — 10 years ago, five years ago, last year — and wondering about the future consequences of today’s decisions.
Ten years ago, 1996, was the year of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act — welfare reform to “end welfare as we knew it.” Welfare rolls plummeted, nowhere more so than in Idaho. Beyond this, what has happened in the intervening 10 years?
At the time, those who care about reducing poverty — and unfortunately many in our country do not — were divided sharply between a majority of pessimists and a minority of optimists. Pessimists feared welfare recipients, mostly single moms and their children, would be left destitute, unable to find work and without public assistance. Optimists hoped ending the old welfare programs, which had fallen out of public favor, would open opportunities to improve work supports and empower poor women to improve life for themselves and their children.
Neither the dark fears nor the guarded hopes have come to pass. Poor women have joined the work force in droves. Instead of living in poverty on a welfare check, they now work long hours at low wages — and still live in poverty. With the exception of publicly funded health insurance for the children of the working poor through the CHIP component of Medicaid, the promised work supports have failed to materialize. The minimum wage has been allowed to erode to its lowest value (in real terms) ever, making it all the harder for low-wage workers to work their way out of poverty.
Five years ago, 2001, was the last year of a long economic boom. State and federal governments were handing out tax cuts for the rich right and left. Five years later, we have a country in which the rich continue to grow richer and the poor poorer. In addition, the federal government is swimming in deep deficits. Many state governments, Idaho included, have saddled themselves with structural deficits — a situation in which the tax structure is no longer capable of generating enough revenue to fund ongoing expenses, resulting in chronic under-funding of public education, under-paying of state employees and the ongoing erosion of public infrastructure.
Last year, at least in Idaho, was a big year for corporate giveaways. Tax cuts for hiring new employees, tax cuts for expanding facilities, tax cuts basically for doing what businesses are supposed to do. This is part of an ongoing national trend to reduce corporate taxes, and then reduce them some more. Nowadays corporations apparently bear no responsibility for paying for roads, telecommunications infrastructure and the education systems that produce the skilled laborers so essential to corporate success.
Things change, yet things stay the same.
But not everything changes, and not everything stays the same.
In 1996, many presumed Medicaid reform would follow closely on the heels of welfare reform. It did not. Instead, recognition grows that the solution is not “ending Medicaid as we know it,” but creating some kind of universal coverage for all Americans, rich and poor, young and old.
Promises to make quality child care affordable for working parents, a critical work support, have gone unkept in the aftermath of welfare reform. Funding of public K-12 education has eroded in many states. Nonetheless, there is a movement across the nation to invest in early childhood initiatives that improve kindergarten and pre-kindergarten opportunities for youngsters, a public investment with proven social benefits. Idaho has yet to join this movement, but this may change.
Government hands out too many corporate giveaways, but increasingly they are giveaways of a different kind. Idaho has begun attaching performance standards to its giveaways, recognition at last that corporations getting tax breaks should at least have to give something back to the state in return.
Government changes, grows, and moves much like an amoeba — pushing forward here, retreating there in an amorphous way that can make it hard to keep track of where there’s progress and where there’s regress.
But things do, and will, change.
Keep informed. Participate. Be guardedly optimistic. That’s the only way things will be better next year, five years, 10 years from now.
* Judith L. Brown is an economist and the director of the Idaho Center on Budget and Tax Policy. She lives in Moscow with her family and can be reached at jlbrown@turbonet.com.