January has only just ended, but it has already been a tough winter for many Maine families. We continue to suffer through a difficult economy.
Gas and home heating costs are high, jobs are scarce, wages and salaries are stagnant, and many of our neighbors are struggling. The extreme measures proposed in Gov. LePage’s supplemental budget threaten to make life much tougher, more dangerous, and very costly for thousands of Maine children and families.
The short-term savings contained in the proposal are not only reckless and cruel, but also fiscally short-sighted, both shifting costs and adding to long-term budget problems.
In a press release accompanying the state’s “Race to the Top” application to the U.S. Department of Education, Gov. LePage stated: “Guaranteeing children a solid educational foundation before they begin kindergarten is the first crucial investment we as a state can make in a future work force that will drive economic growth in Maine.”
I agree, yet the budget proposal does not match his good words.
The governor’s budget proposes the total elimination of state funding for Head Start, a favorite of President Ronald Reagan and a proven tool to improve the health and education of children in low-income families. Smarter and healthier children become more productive adults, and, importantly for budget discussions, reduce long-term costs for schools, hospitals and jails.
Head Start currently covers about 30 percent of eligible children in Maine. The governor is taking us in the wrong direction.
The Maine Center for Economic Policy has estimated that more than 4,000 jobs would be lost if the governor’s budget proposals are adopted. Not included in that grim calculation is the potential job loss associated with proposed child care cuts.
During the welfare reform debate in the 1990s certain facts were recognized. Among these was that the high cost of child care is a critical barrier to employment for low-income workers and recipients of public assistance. Without child care subsidies, the math just does not work for low wage earners. A single parent taking home $400 a week, but spending $200 a week on day care and $40 a week on gas, is simply not going to make it. Parents will be forced to choose between their jobs and the safe care of their children. Either way, kids lose.
The proposed elimination of MaineCare for 65,000 Mainers — including health care coverage for 29,000 parents and more than 7,000 young adults — would only deepen our health care crisis, increase health costs by forcing emergency room care, and diminish public health. Children whose parents have health care are also healthier, again saving costs for the long haul.
The focus on health care for childless adults has been especially harsh. Many of these people have disabilities, cancer and other serious health conditions.
Like many, I was heartened by the governor’s focus on domestic violence in the State of the State address. Yet, eliminating health coverage for tens of thousands of our neighbors chokes a key access point in the struggle against violence. Doctors and nurses are trained to diagnose the signs of domestic violence, but they can’t help those they can’t see.
Reasonable budget discussions examine all spending and revenue. The current proposal focuses only on one department of state government. Cuts in DHHS will have very real, negative effects on spending in education, public safety and corrections. A larger examination of state priorities is always in order, including tax expenditures. The governor’s tax cuts enacted last year also merit reconsideration, especially as the bulk of those benefits are enjoyed by the wealthiest among us.
Internal administration documents indicate that increased utilization of DHHS services is not the root of the budget problem, and that recent management decisions are largely responsible for the current mess. One thing is certain — kids did not cause this problem. Unless the Legislature stands up and does the right thing, children and families in Maine are going to suffer more.
Ned McCann is vice president of the Maine Children’s Alliance, a nonpartisan research and advocacy organization in Augusta.
The union guy speaks! Actually the research on Head
Start is dubious. Except for the studies sponsored by Head Start, little
positive outcome is noted after 2nd grade. Furthermore, this
begs the question–how much have we spent on these programs and why haven’t they
worked? Also, Maine is #29 I believe in child
poverty. Nevertheless we are the only state in the top 10 for TANF,
Food Stamps and Medicaid.
I’d like to see these studies. Common sense seems to say that we have spent billions on early education efforts, and you our overall educational outcomes have worsened over the past years or so. What gives?
google it.
The spending on TANF, food stamps, and MaineCare have to do with Maine’s poverty rate. I recall someone named LePage promised to bring JOBS into the state. If he were doing this, instead of trying to slash the social safety net, more Mainers would be employed and not needing assistance.
Sorry to disappoint you with FACTS:
Maine does not spend billions on welfare because our population is
more needy than most. Maine is not even close to being the poorest
state. According to the Census, just 12.3 percent of Maine people lived
below the poverty level in 2008, a rate below the national average and
lower than 25 other states’. With regard to child poverty, Maine is ranked 28th in the nation, again below the national average. Only 9.2 percent of Mainers over 65 live in poverty, putting Maine at 24th place, which is also below the national average. Real, inflation-adjusted spending by Maine’s welfare
system has increased, but Maine’s poverty rate has remained more or less
constant for the last 15 years.
Cant spend money you dont have, first Governor we have had who understands that.
Except that he has proposed that we spend $150 million in tax cuts. Do you think we can afford those?
Those have already been passed. Try to keep up.
Here’s an important study you’ll want to read:
http://news.yahoo.com/low-iq-conservative-beliefs-linked-prejudice-180403506.html
And here’s a study from a real statistician refuting your ridiculous “study”:
Low IQ and Liberal Beliefs Linked to Poor Research?
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=5118
“Watch out Sam Harris, Gordon Hodson and Michael A. Busseri of Brock University are giving you competition for the worst use of statistics in an original paper.
Their ‘Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes: Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact’ published in Psychological Science headlined in the press as Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice is a textbook example of confused data, unrecognized bias, and ignorance of statistics.”
LePage gives Maine choices–throw Granny under the bus vs. throw your kids under the bus.
It would sure be nice to see and hear the last of that stupid bus analogy.
Judging by recent headlines, no one has to “throw” people under the bus. The bus is just knocking them all down indiscriminately…
The usual liberal argument intended to end rational debate.
“It’s for the children.”
yeah–Howie Carr’s voice is reverberating in my ears every time I see a headline like this one…
Go get him Ned!!!
The politics of this administration are the politics of greed. Greed is best sold to a well intentioned public through a campaign of fear mongering and manufactured crisis. None of this governor’s budgets are likely to be good for the children of Maine. Each year we can look forward to tax cuts favoring the already well off that create fiscal stress on those things the majority of us rely upon. Roads, schools and health care are but a few. We will live in a state of nonstop crisis because only through manufactured crisis can very unpopular and damaging concepts be brought to fruition. This is the LePage doctrine.
Head Start Racked by Failure and Fraud
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=42323
“Congress, without seeing any solid results, has spent $167.5 billion from its founding in 1965 as part of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society until two years ago.
…Begun in 2002 and completed last year, the evaluation of Head Start concluded that ‘the benefits of access to Head Start at age 4 are largely absent by first grade for the program population as a whole.’ (U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Chilldren and Families, ‘Head Start Impact Study: Final Report,’ p.xxxviii, Jan. 15, 2010)”
In addition, a GAO study in May 2010 reported the program attempted to register fictitious children and misrepresented information.
It’s nothing but a giant taxpayer funded babysitting service.
Here’s an imortant study backing you up:
http://news.yahoo.com/low-iq-conservative-beliefs-linked-prejudice-180403506.html
Funny thing Ive noticed (after working with and for children for over 40 years.) They do no better under liberal, free-spending administrations than they do under tight-fisted conservatives. Actually an argument might be made that some of the States which spend on the lower side have a better outcome.
I have always wondered why this is so, I have an idea that when times are good, the free-spending governments throw a whole bunch of money at children’s organizations, and those organizations use that money to hire administrative staff.
When I first went to work for the Community Advancement program in Worcester Massachusetts, the people who ran that agency had an office right across the hall from mine. We did good work with five line-staff people an accountant and a receptionist. Later that year the Carter administration gave the Dukakis administration a boat-load of money to “improve the program.” What actually happened was the agency heads (The Wolf Brothers who designed and operated the program)opened an office in Washington which they used to lobby for even more funds, the agency hired 3 middle-management “liaison” people to coordinate operations between Washington and Worcester. Still later the Carter Administration hired the Wolf brothers, the program opened administrative offices in Framingham where 14 people were hired to do accounting, public relations, and coordination of staff. During the same period of time we lost two line-staff in Worcester.
They changed the name of the program to KEY, and opened several more offices in different cities to “help” even more children, they also went after, and obtained the contract for “Secure treatment” (juvenile jail) in the commonwealth.
The result of this avalanche of funding was that children were ill served, the people at the top did very well, moving on to bigger and better things, and the program (which served over 200 children using only seven workers) then served over 1,500 children with 150 workers. Do the math. The funny thing was that those of us who kept records during this time found our clients were getting only 25% of the direct contact (from line staff) they were receiving before the funding increase.
So go on ned, use the old fear-tactics gambit that has worked so well for your ilk in the past. Just know that there are some out here in reality land who know the truth.
BTW in case you don’t live here, it has been an inordinately mild winter in Maine for just about everyone. Why don’t you go after the future speculators who have single-handedly driven oil prices up.
Your experience is similar to what I have experienced so far in my work in social services: one example–the agency I worked for, always cash strapped, received grant money from the federal government’s Office on Violence Against Women. The money couldn’t be used to help clients directly–it was earmarked for staff training. So they sent me to Minnesota for three days to attend a training. I came back from the training with no more skills or knowledge than I had before the training. I had a good time, got to share with others about our program, listen to others about their programs and experiences–but the tangible benefits to our clients? Very little for the money spent sending me to this seminar.
Multiply my experience by a million and you get where the waste in many social services is found. It is all well-intentioned–but it ends up being inefficient and ineffective.
Good post Harry.
And similar enough to my own experience.
Oh yes, the children, always a liberal angle. They usually have their soirees in the name of some children’s benefit. Get smashed in the name of little Susie and Johnny. This time the piper must be paid. Maybe our Governor can fire up a printing press for money?