Editorial: Stop bashing poor people

Thursday, April 14, 2005 | 8:54 a.m.

Who can recall any initiative announced by President Bush aimed solely at making life better for people struggling to get by on subsistence wages? The working poor, the homeless, even lower-middle-class Americans -- most are left out while Bush cuts taxes for the wealthy and relaxes federal regulations for large businesses and industries, enabling them to enjoy higher profits. Under the Bush administration, government help is almost exclusively reserved for people who have demonstrated that they can well take care of themselves. It's a different story for the people who really need an assist from the government. They're getting nothing from Bush, except the back of his hand.

This is evident in the House version of Bush's proposed 2006 budget, which would cut up to $20 billion from Medicaid and billions more from other programs that assist the poor, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, foster care, food stamps and Supplemental Security Income. The cuts are not being proposed because these are examples of bloated programs that cannot demonstrate their need. No, they're being proposed to bail this supposedly "conservative" president out of his reckless tax cuts and profligate spending, which has sent the projected federal deficit for this year soaring past $400 billion. Bush believes it's perfectly moral to further enrich his "base" and make poor people pick up the tab.

The impact in Nevada of the House's version of Bush's proposed budget, according to a coalition representing more than 70 local organizations, would be cuts in federal aid totaling $164 million. And this is in a state ranked at the bottom in its assistance to poor families, and in a state where the poor are a rapidly growing constituency. The average number of Nevadans enrolled in Medicaid is now about 178,000 at any given time. Projections show the average will be nearly 205,400 by 2006 and 228,000 in 2007.

These numbers show that an increase in federal Medicaid assistance is urgently needed. But if the House version of Bush's budget passes, Washington will cut its Medicaid assistance to Nevada by $74 million over the next five years, and cut other assistance to poor Nevadans by $90 million over the same time period. We can look forward to our public hospitals overflowing even more than they already are if this happens.

The Senate's version of Bush's budget is much more humane. Cuts to programs for the poor are much smaller. In the end, though, it's disgraceful that our Congress is considering any cuts to the poor at a time when the federal government is showering the wealthy with tax breaks estimated to total more than $100 billion.