Why work requirements don't work

The recent proposal to increase work reporting requirements for people receiving SNAP food assistance under the Limit, Save, and Grow Act is redundant and harmful for several reasons:

*work requirements already exist for SNAP. According to the USDA, these “include registering for work, participating in SNAP Employment and Training (E&T) or workfare if assigned by your state SNAP agency, taking a suitable job if offered, and not voluntarily quitting a job or reducing your work hours below 30 a week without a good reason.” States also have the option to impose additional requirements on able-bodies adults without dependents aged 18-49, although evidence suggests that these have failed to increase workforce participation.

*the term “work requirements” in the context of changing eligibility programs such as SNAP and Medicaid is misleading. A more accurate term would be reporting requirements which involve more layers of paperwork, bureaucracy, and surveillance in exchange for often meager benefits. These reporting requirements impose burdens people receiving food assistance and the businesses, organizations, and/or agencies for which they work and simply result in few people receiving needed assistance.

*work reporting requirements don’t promote work. For example, the New York Times reported that when West Virginia piloted the program in counties with the most favorable labor market conditions, the state Department of Health and Human Resources found that “Our best data does not indicate that the program has had a significant impact on employment figures.” Rather, people lost food aid and local businesses lost out. Similarly, when Arkansas added similar reporting requirements for Medicaid, workforce participation didn’t increase—but the number of uninsured people did.

*work reporting requirements for food assistance hit the most vulnerable people hardest, including homeless people or those with unstable housing—a population that includes many veterans, domestic violence survivors, rural residents, people with disabilities, noncustodial adults supporting children, people in recovery from Substance Use Disorder, and others.

*the “Limit, Save, and Grow Act” would double down on vulnerable populations by imposing reporting requirements on older adults up to age 55. According to AARP, over 9.5 million Americans over age 50 rely on SNAP, a group that faces age discrimination in hiring and employment practices.

*SNAP benefits help local businesses and economies—and loss of benefits costs both. The Food Research and Action Council reports that each dollar in federal SNAP benefits generates $1.79 in economic activity.

*reducing SNAP benefits for millions of Americans would only place greater demands on already stretched food pantries, soup kitchens, and charities which are often staffed by volunteers and seniors.

All of which is to say this is not cool.

One big prison yard?

 Last year, the Legislature passed a bill creating a sentencing commission to jump start reforms in the criminal justice system.

There was a consensus that West Virginia’s penalties were out of sync and, often, more severe than those of neighboring states, at great expense to the public and without making anyone any safer.

As then chairman of the House Judiciary Committee John Shott, R-Mercer, said: “Among the many challenges facing our state, the reform of our criminal justice system is one of the least publicized. To keep this in context, we have a system in which we are 20 to 25% over capacity, and our prisons, our regional jails are overflowing.”

And that was before COVID-19 hit, which makes the issue of reform even more urgent.

The pandemic slowed the work of the commission, but things are starting to move.

Unfortunately, even before the commission gets down to the heavy lifting, proposed legislation in the House of Delegates would drastically rewrite the state’s criminal code before the process has a chance to work.

The measure in question, House Bill 2017, is truly gargantuan. The introduced version was no less than 391 pages. At present, it’s up to 411 pages. It was sprung on the House far too late in the session for members to digest the implications of what they’re going to vote on.

While the bill is no doubt well intentioned, it was crafted without consulting with prosecutors, public defenders, judges, others who work in the system or advocates — much less those directly affected.

If enacted, the bill would increase prison sentences for many offenses (with some exceptions), while also delaying parole eligibility. In particular, it changes many sentences from an indeterminate system, which provides some flexibility, to a determinate system that often would increase the minimum and maximum sentences.

This also would have the effect of reducing the incentives for people in prisons to participate in rehabilitation, education and/or recovery programs, since they would have to serve longer before being eligible for parole.

One provision of the bill that seems especially harsh would increase fines for many offenses and even require some inmates to pay the cost of their incarceration. Since people with low incomes are more likely to get caught in the system to start with, this would increase debt of those families and contribute to the criminalization of poverty.

According to the American Action Forum, which describes itself as center-right, “Adults in poverty are three times more likely to be arrested than those who aren’t, and people earning less than 150% of the federal poverty level are 15 times more likely to be charged with a felony — which, by definition, carries a longer sentence — than people earning above that threshold.”

The Prison Policy Initiative reports: “Poverty is not only a predictor of involvement with the justice system: Too often, it is also the outcome. Criminal punishment subjects people to countless fines, fees and other costs (often enriching private companies in the process). A criminal record, meanwhile, does lasting collateral damage.”

Rather than gallop to a premature decision, a wiser step would be to refer the ideas contained in HB 2017 to the sentencing commission so that its provisions, along with the ideas of others familiar with all aspects of the system, can be evaluated in consultation with all stakeholders.

In the meantime, lawmakers might do better to focus on reforms to reduce mass incarceration and its cost to individuals, communities, families and taxpayers.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Deja vu

I give Gov. Jim Justice credit for pointing out that some promised remedies for West Virginia’s ills didn’t pan out. In a televised town hall meeting, he told the audience:

“Really and truly, let’s just be brutally honest. We passed the right-to-work law in West Virginia. And we ran to the windows looking to see all the people that were going to come — and they didn’t come. We got rid of prevailing wage. We changed our corporate taxes and we’ve done a lot of different things. And we’ve run to the windows and they haven’t come.

“We’ve absolutely built the field in a lot of different places thinking build the field and they’ll come, and they didn’t come.”

It’s hard to argue with that. The promised benefits of West Virginia’s 2007 tax cuts under the leadership of one party never happened. And the state has lost about 60,000 people, more than the population of its capital city, since the push for anti-worker legislation began in 2015 under the leadership of another party.

The governor promises that things will be different this time around, with his plan to drastically cut or phase out the state income tax. I’m sure he has the best of intentions, but, for some reason, I keep thinking about Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown to kick, in the old Peanuts comic.

(In case that cultural reference is dated, it didn’t work out well for Charlie Brown.)

The state income tax provides more than 40% of revenue for the core state budget, to the tune of over $2 billion per year. Eliminating or drastically reducing it would involve shifting taxes to the least wealthy or eliminating state investments in people, infrastructure and health at all levels. Or, more likely, it will mean a bit of both.

West Virginia’s income tax is the only progressive tax in the state, meaning that those with more resources pay a somewhat higher rate. According to an analysis of the proposed legislation, 63% of the tax cuts will go to the top 15% of earners. Proposed rebates notwithstanding, overall taxes likely would go up on people in the lower 60%, who, by necessity, spend most of what they make on taxable goods and services.

Even if all the proposed new and/or increased taxes are enacted, it would still leave a budget gap of about $185 million. That means that more cuts to state programs and services would be required. And that’s assuming that the Legislature agrees to all aspects of the plan, which seems pretty iffy.

The plan includes an increase in the regressive consumer sales tax to 7.9%, increasing excise taxes on soft drinks, beer, wine, tobacco and such; taxes on “luxury goods;” and taxing some new services. All these are likely to arouse a great deal of opposition from retail and industry groups, which have a long history of getting pretty much whatever they want from compliant lawmakers.

We also can be sure of hearing a rousing round of protests from and about the economic impact on border counties, if West Virginians take their purchasing power elsewhere. About 30 counties are at or near the border of another state. More to the point, our colonial overlords extracting the state’s mineral wealth might not be happy about changes to severance taxes.

If these groups get their way, the revenue hole to be made up would be even deeper and the overall package probably would include even more budget cuts.

Proponents claim that any impact will be more than compensated for by the hordes of new people flooding into the state. However, as a saying variously attributed to Yogi Berra, Mark Twain and many others goes: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

I will venture to make one, however: If West Virginia’s leaders cut investments in the things that make a place worth living in — good schools, higher ed and job training, child care, parks and natural resources, public libraries, good roads, broadband, access to health care, support for the elderly — nothing will stop the bleeding of our youngest, best and brightest.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

What could possibly go wrong?

 One of my favorite WV delegates likes to call the legislature a "bad idea factory." I think it's more like a bad idea giant industrial combine with a global supply chain this year. If I summarizing the session so far, it would be something like "burn it down and lock em up."

As if dismantling the state of West Virginia wasn't enough, a house committee wants to pass a resolution calling for an Article 5 constitutional convention. Supposedly, the proposed convention would be limited to enacting term limits to congress, which I think is itself a bad idea, but there's nothing that guarantees any limits on other changes if they open it up. I mean, what could possibly go wrong by rewriting the US Constitution?

Anyhow, there was an online public hearing about the measure last Friday. Several people who spoke in support of the measure were from out of state groups. Here's what I had to say:

I am speaking today in opposition to this measure.

I’m no engineer, but I know engineers frequently try to reduce friction in designing various types of machines. The framers of our constitution deliberately took the opposite approach: they created a system that basically guaranteed friction in terms of the separation of powers and various forms of check and balances to limit that damage that could be done in the heat of the moment without such safeguards.

They created a system that made major changes to the constitution possible but not necessarily easy. Twenty seven amendments have been enacted in 244 years, which amounts to an average of one amendment for every nine years of our existence as a nation.

This system has served us well through those years in good times and bad and has withstood many crises. It is for this reason I oppose efforts to amend it by means of an Article 5 constitutional convention. Proponents of such a measure may claim that the purpose of any such convention could be limited to dealing with a small number of issues. However, Article 5 itself poses no such limits once the process has begun. The risks of such a measure are incalculable.

Some have argued that such a measure would be desirable so that term limits could be enacted on congressional representatives. In fact, voters have it within their power to limit the terms of elected officials at every election cycle. Elected officials can limit their own terms at any time. 

Constitutionally limiting such terms would run counter to good government. The intricacies of congressional procedures and public policies can take a long time to learn. We all know that it takes a while to get good at anything.  Term limits would be a barrier to that knowledge, leaving it to unelected officials. If one is concerned about a deep state, this should be an object of concern. 

Would anyone want to serve in an army, a fire department or a hospital entirely staffed by fresh and inexperienced recruits?

Finally, research in game theory has shown that the incentives to cooperation increase with the possibility of future interaction, which is one reason why historically the US senate with its longer terms has been described as more collegial than the house. In a time of extreme polarization, we need to do all we can to promote rational debate and policy making in the interests of the nation at large.

Another bad idea: the "trail em, nail em, jail em" bill

 For the past several years, there’s been a remarkable bipartisan consensus in the West Virginia Legislature about the need to reform the criminal legal system.

Legislation was passed easing restrictions on food assistance for people with drug felonies; removing occupational license barriers to careers; reforming bail and parole; creating and expanding expungement procedures; issuing state photo IDs to people leaving prisons; investing in recovery programs; driver’s license restoration; and creating the amazingly successful Jobs and Hope program, first known as “Jim’s dream.”

All this happened when Republicans controlled all three branches of government, although Democrats in the Legislature also did their part. People talked, listened and worked things out. The voices of affected people were heard. Changes were made.

That’s the way good policy happens.

Maybe it was because so many families have been touched by addiction. Maybe it was because people are concerned about the ever-increasing cost to taxpayers, individuals, families and communities by mass incarceration. Maybe it was because it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the “war on drugs” was about as disastrous as Prohibition. No doubt, much of these successes were because the leadership and vision of champions such as former delegate and House Judiciary chairman John Shott, R-Mercer, who retired in 2020.

People who disagree on almost everything, from taxes to education to budgets to programs, reached across divides to make these reforms happen. I think all this showed that Lincoln’s “better angels of our nature” still had a feather or two on their wings.

It was good while it lasted. While I was cautiously optimistic that this trend would continue, the recent passage of House Bill 2257 by the House Judiciary Committee might signify a move back to eternal punishment and needlessly warehousing people at the expense of all concerned.

Incredibly, the bill would allow for certain people convicted of certain drug felonies to be subjected to extended supervision for up to 10 years after they completed serving all their prison and parole time. That’s a basically endless round of surveillance and control that could result in many people being sent back to prison for noncriminal technical violations, which could include things as trivial as missing an unnecessary meeting or a curfew.

It also could require people dealing with recovery and reentry issues, most of whom have severe money and job problems because of their convictions, to pay monthly fees for the privilege of additional humiliation, degradation and supervision for years after they served their time. Such extended punishment also would rack up heavy costs for taxpayers, who would have to pay for that regimen and the inevitable costs of re-incarceration, possibly for years, for no good reason.

We’re talking “trail ’em, nail ’em, and jail ’em.”

Imagine this scenario: You’ve spent years in prison. You’ve met all the conditions of parole. Then, you’re under years of additional supervision. At some point, you unwittingly commit a technical violation. You could be back in prison at a cost to taxpayers at a cost of nearly $30,000 per year.

Are there any winners there? Is anyone any safer? As someone in Wisconsin said about that state’s extended probation — which is not nearly as expansive as HB 2257 — “Generally, the longer that somebody is looking over your shoulder and the longer you’re under supervision, the more likely it is that you may do something wrong and end up in prison.”

I once heard a conservative state senator criticize a proposed bill, with some justification, for extending the “tentacles of the state” into the lives of individuals and families.

If we’re talking tentacles, HB 2257 would be the giant-squid edition.

If we extrapolate from the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Annual Report, HB 2257 could affect 86% of people incarcerated for drug offenses. In 2018-19, West Virginia taxpayers paid $1.38 million for people imprisoned again for technical violations. These accounted for over 13% of total admissions to prison. HB 2257 could expand this exponentially.

This measure would have a disparate effect on West Virginia’s Black communities. The NAACP has pointed out that African Americans and whites use drugs at similar rates, but the imprisonment rate of African Americans for drug charges is almost six times that of whites. This bill would do further damage to communities already disproportionately affected by mass incarceration and overpolicing.

Supporters of HB 2257 are operating in an evidence-free environment. Recent studies by the Pew Research Center and Harvard’s Kennedy School have argued that states can shorten probation and still promote public safety.

According to Pew, “Research indicates that people are at the highest risk of re-offending early in their probation terms ... . Further, studies show that after the first year, many supervision provisions, such as reporting requirements and community-based services, have little effect on the likelihood of rearrest, so keeping probation terms short and prioritizing resources for the early stages of supervision can help improve success rates among people on probation, reduce officer caseloads, and protect public safety.”

According to Harvard, “There is no evidence that this extraordinary level of supervision has enhanced public safety. Instead, research reveals that supervising individual who present a low risk of future offending enhances, rather than reduces, the risk of recidivism, while provided tripwires to unnecessary violations and incarnation and distracting community correction agencies from focusing on those most in need of supervision and support.”

Instead of jobs and hope, this could take away both. If the object of legislation is anything other than creating more unnecessary suffering, we should invest in the things that we know work: support for recovery, reentry and reintegration into our communities.

Another bad idea

 Some of West Virginia’s political leaders want to abolish the state income tax. One has even said doing so would help bring 400,000 new people to live in West Virginia.

If memory serves, some of the same people predicted that abolishing the state’s prevailing wage for workers on public building projects would save the state $200 million to $300 million a year.

That didn’t happen. In fact, a study released in 2019, albeit from a pro-labor source, found it lowered wages for construction workers, worsened workplace safety and substantially reduced the number of young people in apprentice programs that would set them on a path to lifetime economic security. There wasn’t evidence of savings for the state either.

I think the latest prophecy might meet a similar fate.

The state’s income tax brings in almost $2 billion per year, or over 40% of West Virginia’s basic budget. Most of that goes to K-12 education; health and human services for seniors, children, and working families; post-secondary education; and things like public safety, libraries, parks, natural resources and other public goods.

It’s also the only progressive tax in the state, meaning that those with higher earnings pay a somewhat higher rate. Otherwise, West Virginia’s tax system is already upside down, with lower income residents paying a higher share of their income in taxes than the very wealthy due to regressive sales and excise taxes.

The West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy has calculated that the 20% of West Virginians with the lowest income ($15,900 a year or less) pay 9.4% of their income in taxes. The wealthiest 1% (with earnings of $401,600 or more) pay 7.4%.

Adam Smith would not approve. In his justly famous “The Wealth of Nations” (1776), widely regarded as a classic celebration of capitalism, he wrote, “The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

If the income tax is phased out, it will be made up for either by increasing regressive taxes that will hit lower income people the hardest or by cutting the services they rely on.

Generally speaking, families and businesses want to locate in places with good schools, a good quality of life and a well-trained workforce.

I’d be surprised if 400,000 new people will want to rush into a state with defunded education and training, a crumbling infrastructure, a degraded environment, a lack of the public goods that make a place desirable and an unhealthy workforce.

I think it’s far more likely eliminating the income tax would only speed up our ongoing exodus.

Toxic medicine

Pick your poison. Image by way of wikipedia.

 If there was a scarier place for a soldier to be in the American Civil War than a battlefield, it might have been a hospital, of either the field or conventional variety.

Medical science had not yet caught on to the germ theory of disease. Overworked doctors rushed from patient to patient with unwashed hands and instruments. Amputation was the order of the day.

But if there was anything scarier than Civil War-era surgery, it might have been the medicine. It was a common practice to administer heroic doses of calomel to patients for a variety of ailments, including diarrhea and dysentery.

Among the ingredients of calomel were a mixture of mercury and chloride.

I managed to avoid a chemistry class in my education, such as it was, but I don’t think you need an advanced degree in that field to get a bad feeling about that.

One obvious result was mercury poisoning, but the specific symptoms could be horrific, including loss of teeth, rotting jaws and gangrene in the mouth and jaws.

Calomel caused misery and sometimes death to countless people, even ruining the health of “Little Women” author Louisa May Alcott during her stint as a nurse for wounded soldiers.

It boggles the mind that generations of doctors would rely on a chemical that caused so much damage and prescribe bad medicine for so long.

But the same kind of thing has happened over and over in the realm of policy and politics for the last half century.

And it might be about to happen again in West Virginia unless people speak up.

The bad medicine I’m referring to is the idea that cutting taxes for the wealthy will create jobs and economic growth. We’ve been told that over and over for years, but the evidence for that is about a scarce as that of the benefits of ingesting calomel.

Recently, researchers at the London School of Economics did the math. In a big way. They examined the impacts of tax cuts for the rich over a 50-year period in 18 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The countries included the United States, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Among the findings:

“We find that major reforms reducing taxes on the rich lead to higher income inequality as measured by the top 1% share of pre-tax national income. The effect remains stable in the medium term. In contrast, such reforms do not have any significant effect on economic growth and unemployment.”

And:

“Furthermore, we find no effect of tax reforms on real GDP per capita. When looking at the effect on unemployment rates, the estimates show a slightly different pattern. Here, tax cuts for the rich lead to slightly higher unemployment rates in the short term.”

And:

“Turning our attention to economic performance, we find no significant effects of major tax cuts for the rich. More specifically, the trajectories of real GDP per capita and the unemployment rate are unaffected by significant reductions in taxes on the rich in both the short and medium term..”

And:

“Cutting taxes on the rich increases top income shares, but has little effect on economic performance.”

If that’s not enough, other research in the field of public health from a variety of sources has found higher rates of inequality to be associated with many social problems, including increases in crime and violence, infant mortality, obesity, addiction, mental health problems and general unhappiness.

It’s very likely that there will be efforts in the coming legislative session to pursue this failed policy by changes to income and business property taxes that benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

I’m sure we’ll be told that taking the fiscal equivalent of calomel will be good for us. I hope the people of West Virginia send a loud and clear message of thanks but no thanks.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

The right way to promote work

During the last legislative session, the West Virginia House of Delegates came dangerously close to passing a bill that could have taken away health insurance coverage from 46,000 or more West Virginians covered by Medicaid expansion.

The bill was framed as a work requirement for the 160,000 or so people who gained coverage by the expansion. Actually, it would have been more of a paperwork reporting requirement that would have created an extra layer of bureaucracy and done a lot of damage without actually promoting work.

There were several things wrong with the bill, the most obvious being that the vast majority of adults who gained coverage are already working the many low-wage but necessary jobs that don’t come with benefits like health coverage and paid sick days and are often only part time.

That’s the real problem.

The Kaiser Family Foundation reported in 2017 that 48 percent of private-sector jobs don’t provide health coverage. Making life more miserable for the people who hold down those jobs would accomplish nothing.

If policymakers really want to help this population move ahead in employment, rather than punish them for being poor, they might look at an innovative and nonpunitive work program being piloted in Louisiana with bipartisan support.

The state’s governor, John Bel Edwards, expanded Medicaid in 2016. Louisiana was the first deep Southern state to take that step. The rate of uninsured Louisianans declined by half over the next year. By early 2019, around half-a-million state residents gained coverage.

As is the case in West Virginia, most of those people hold down jobs, but some might only be working part time or going to school or caring for a relative with a disability.

As an effort to help people move up the economic ladder, the state recently unveiled a voluntary work training program for Medicaid expansion recipients to be piloted in Monroe and West Monroe via a collaboration between the Louisiana Department of Health and Louisiana Delta Community College.

The program will offer training to prepare people for real jobs that need filled in the local community. At this point, offerings include Certified Nurse Assistant/Behavioral Health Technician (239 hours), Commercial Vehicle Operations (160 hours), Environmental Services Technician (120 hours), forklift and OSHA 10 training (24 hours) and Mortgage Documents Specialist (18 hours).

The long-term goal is to expand the program statewide, again offering voluntary training targeted to local labor-market conditions.

In today’s climate, it’s pleasant to note that people reached across the aisle to make something work.

According to Democratic Rep. Katrina Jackson, who authored the bill, “This is not just about training but about helping our people transition to a work environment that gives them a hand up and enables them to get to the point where they can take care of themselves and their families by being gainfully employed.”

Republican Rep. Frank Hoffman, who earlier had proposed similar legislation, was equally supportive, saying, “The goal of my legislation was never to cause anyone to lose their Medicaid coverage, but rather to help them find solid employment. I am pleased that we have reached this point and anticipate great success for those who participate and make the most of this opportunity.”

This is a good example of what can happen if people put ideology aside, focus on problem solving and give what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” a turn at the bat.

(This ran as an op-ed in yesterday's Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Urgent alert for WV people: save health care for thousands

WV people, please consider calling your delegates and ask they vote NO on HB 3136. It would cost money, create bureaucracy, cut off around 46,000 people from Medicaid, most of whom work. It's up for a vote today. Thanks!

Here's the roster and here's a reminder of why the bill is a bad idea.

Messing with Medicaid is a bad idea

Back in May of 2013, then-Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin made the decision to expand Medicaid coverage to low-income families earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.

By that one act, I think he did more to relieve unnecessary human suffering than any number of his predecessors. Maybe more than all of them put together.

Medicaid expansion was an option under the Affordable Care Act. It was originally intended to apply to all states, but this provision was struck down by the US Supreme Court in 2012. Since then, it has become a state option.

That decision has been a lifesaver and a game changer for tens of thousands of West Virginians. As of Feb. 19, 158,137 West Virginians are enrolled in Medicaid expansion. That’s a little shy of one out of 10 state residents, but not by much. In any given year, around 200,000 people have received coverage due to Medicaid expansion.

Most people who gained health coverage came from working families not otherwise eligible for traditional Medicaid.

A lot of the credit for that goes to the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, which did an amazing job of reaching out to and enrolling eligible citizens.

I’m not sure how much this weighed on Gov. Tomblin’s decision at the time, but the expansion opened the gates of treatment for addiction and, ultimately, recovery for thousands of West Virginians struck by the opioid epidemic.

In the words of Nan Whaley, mayor of Dayton, Ohio, a city that has made great progress in reducing overdose deaths, “If you’re a state that does not have Medicaid expansion, you can’t build a system for addressing this disease.”

Not only did West Virginia do something right, but it did it well. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that there’s a move in the Legislature to impose a policy that has failed elsewhere. The House Finance Committee recently voted to impose on West Virginia a policy that has caused a great deal of unnecessary suffering in Arkansas.

The failed policy sounds good, at a superficial level: Let’s impose work requirements on those who receive expanded Medicaid coverage.

I’ve used this Bible verse more than once, but it still fits: “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”

Instead of promoting work, it increases bureaucratic costs and reporting requirements and results in cutting people off for no good reason.

By August 2018, over 18,000 enrollees out of 62,000 — nearly one out of three — in the Arkansas program had been cut off. There’s no evidence whatsoever that those people are doing more work, but it’s a safe bet that they are worse off.

Closer to home, Kentucky has applied for a waiver to impose a similar but more draconian work requirement on its Medicaid population. According to the research of Simon Haeder of West Virginia University’s Rockefeller School of Policy and Politics, if West Virginia would follow suit, this would impact 95,000 West Virginians, including those who are unemployed or who are working but can’t get enough hours to meet the requirement.

Even if we just assume that West Virginia’s results would be similar to those in Arkansas, we would see over 46,000 people losing coverage. That would be about the same as the entire population of Huntington or Charleston — or of Pocahontas, Doddridge, Calhoun, Pleasants, Pendleton, Tucker and Wirt counties combined.

Apparently, some people didn’t get the memo that having health care isn’t a barrier to employment, it actually helps you stay in the game. I know plenty of people, myself included, who are working and paying taxes today but would probably have been disabled or dead without health care.

For that matter, cutting people off from Medicaid doesn’t just hurt those individuals, it also affects local hospitals and health care providers, reduces money coming to local communities and can have a negative effect on employment. And it drives up health care costs for everyone else by increasing emergency room visits and uncompensated care.

The main support for this seems to come from the same kind of outsider-funded astroturf groups that gave us education “reform.” Last year, one of these types of bills succeeded, resulting in new state code that took basic food assistance away from homeless people.

It’s sad to say, but some people in power evidently derive some kind of weird gratification by imposing misery on those less powerful.

Somehow, however, I don’t think most West Virginians are into that kind of thing.

I hope the majority of West Virginia legislators ultimately agree.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Three ways bad

For a quick look at what's bad in the #taxscam bogus tax reform that seems ready to slide through Congress, all you have to do is take a look at three charts here that show how it will:

*increase pre-tax inequality;

*make the tax system more regressive, meaning that people with lower incomes will pay a higher percentage of their income; and

*raise after-tax income for the top 10 percent of income at the expense of the bottom 90. Most of the benefits will go to the wealthiest 0.1 percent.

I guess this is what happens when money trumps democracy.

Notes from the bad idea factory

First off, if you happen to be around a screen on Wednesday, March 15 (the Ides of March!), check out a Facebook Live webinar thingie my co-worker Lida Shepherd and I are doing about SNAP (formerly food stamp) benefits, what they mean to WV, and what some people are trying to do to them. It's a 1:15. More info here.

Next up, this op-ed of mine ran in today's Charleston Gazette-Mail about the bad idea of replacing WV's personal income tax with a regressive consumption tax:

One of my favorite state legislators, who shall remain nameless except to say he’s Mike Pushkin, likes to call a certain place with a dome “the bad-idea factory.”

While I would never even dream of saying such a thing, some days I can see where he’s coming from. Like today, for example.

Senate Bill 335 is a case in point. It would replace West Virginia’s income tax with a steep boost on consumption taxes. The bill has numerous sponsors in the Senate, with the notable exception of Republican Finance Chairman Mike Hall, who knows more about the state budget than just about anybody ever has.

So what’s wrong with the bill?

For starters, it would slam middle-class and low-income families with much higher taxes while granting a huge break to those at the top.

West Virginia’s state and local tax systems are already topsy-turvy, with the poorest 20 percent paying a higher percentage of their incomes in taxes than the wealthiest 1 percent (8.7 percent vs 6.5 percent).

One reason for that is our regressive sales tax, which is basically a consumption tax. The imbalance here is even more extreme, with the poorest fifth paying more than six times the percentage rate of their income than the wealthiest 1 percent.

Eliminating the personal income tax, which is the only state tax actually based on the ability to pay, and replacing it with the proposed consumption tax would increase taxes on the bottom 80 percent, while providing breaks for the very wealthiest. Assuming revenue neutrality, middle-class families would pay over $1,000 more per year, while those earning $353,000 or more per year would see a tax cut of more than $27,000 according to an analysis by the Institute for Tax and Economic Policy.

The reason for this is pretty obvious. Middle-class and low-income people of necessity spend more of their money on basic necessities than the wealthy. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, people earning less than $70,000 per year typically spend 114 percent of their income (think debt) while those earning over $200,000 per year spend around 50 percent.

This shift in tax policy would only increase income inequality, which has skyrocketed in recent decades. In West Virginia, for example, between 1979 and 2011, the average real income in the state increased by only 3.9 percent, compared to the U.S. average of 14.8 percent. But over that time, all of the income growth was gained by the top 1 percent of richest West Virginians. Real income for them grew by more than 71 percent, while it fell for the bottom 99 by almost 3 percent. This bill would be another step in the wrong direction.

SB 335 wouldn’t be great for state businesses either. They already pay more in sales taxes than income taxes. Phasing out the income tax would likely mean a hit for them, as well.

Then there’s the border-county issue. I checked a map and found that 29 counties border another state (31, if you count tiny parts of Tucker and Summers). While small or moderate increases of excise taxes on some goods wouldn’t have much of an effect on consumer behavior, a major hike in consumption taxes would encourage people to take their business out of state or online, thus hurting the state’s economy.

Recently, Gov. Jim Justice memorably said West Virginia is like “a patient laying there, and blood is shooting to the ceiling.”

(Try getting that image out of your head.)

Sticking with that simile, SB 335 is like an unnecessary surgery that would make the bleeding even worse.

Of flooding, the role of government and such

The Charleston Gazette-Mail recently ran an editorial that hit the nail on the head. Here are the opening paragraphs:

THE RECENT deadly floods offer clear examples why it is so important for West Virginia lawmakers to figure out how to fund a healthy and responsive state government as the state’s traditional sources of revenue shrink.

A storm like the one in June would cause anyone to dip into the Rainy Day Fund to keep services running. That is what the fund is for. But in recent years, West Virginia has been relying on its savings account too much just to cover its usual bills.

West Virginia would have been hurting anyway with the drop in coal severance taxes and other fluctuations. But making matters more difficult were $300 million worth of business tax cuts in recent years. By now lawmakers should have figured out how to make up that lost revenue. Instead, the state has been cutting spending.

Gazette reporter David Gutman recently pointed out that many of the agencies being cut are precisely those that could help people deal with the flood. This includes:

*the State Police, which will see a cut of around $2 million, 11 percent below 2014;

*The WV National Guard. With funding flat since 2013, this amounts to a 5 percent cut if you factor in inflation;

*the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, which has had flat funding for the last five years, another cut when inflation is factored in;

*the state Early Warning Flood System, which is down by 11 percent since 2013 and will get a $25K budget cut next year;

*the Bureau for Public Health's aid for local water systems has been flat since 2013 and will be cut by 24 percent next year.

Other state agencies that have been cut include the Department of Environmental Protection, which among other things regulates nearly 400 non-coal dams and the WV Conservation Agency, which maintains 170 flood control dams as part of the Department of Agriculture. It will cut by around $450,000 and will be funded at about 25 percent less than in 2013.

This is just nuts, a needless disaster waiting to happen due to bad decisions of the past and the anti-tax mentality of the WV legislature's majority.

 

Don't mess with the US Constitution

This op-ed of mine appeared in today's Huntington WV Herald-Dispatch:

The United States Constitution has served us well since it was first debated and cobbled together in the hot summer of 1787 and ratified the following year.

Its creation has been called the "miracle in Philadelphia" and it has been described, pretty accurately, as a "machine that would go of itself."

It's a bit different from many machines in that its framers designed it to increase rather than reduce friction through an elaborate system of checks and balances. The resulting mechanism isn't always pretty to watch, but it has provided the nation with both the stability to endure and the adaptability to adjust to changing times and unforeseen situations.

As the great English political thinker and statesman Edmund Burke put it, "A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation."

A supporter of the American Revolution and a critic of the radicalism of its French counterpart, Burke advocated a cautious approach to major changes in the constitution of a nation. As he understood it, the social contract that binds a nation together over time is best seen as "a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."

Unfortunately, some measures now under consideration at the West Virginia legislature threaten that partnership. A number of out-of-state groups have been pushing for legislators to pass a resolution calling for a constitutional convention of states to revise our founding document, an unprecedented step in U.S. history.

Here's the deal: If 34 states approve such a resolution, it could become a reality. Then all bets are off.

It reminds me of a story about a child who was fascinated by the beauty and intricacy of a Swiss watch with its tiny springs and gears and tried to take it apart to see how it worked. It never worked again. Or, to use a more current example, inviting a group of zealots to take apart our national system of government could be a bit like handing the car keys to drunken teenagers.

Sadly, this week the state Senate passed a concurrent resolution calling for an "Article 5" convention of states, which would "impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government and limit the terms of office for its officials"

There is widespread agreement among legal scholars that opening this can of worms could lead to major and unpredictable changes.

Such an approach is risky and unnecessary. The political process as outlined in our old constitution provides plenty of avenues to address fiscal and federal concerns. And an ingenious means has long been invented to limit terms for officials: democratic elections.

Those concerned with federal fiscal issues often compare the national budget to a household, an analogy that doesn't work. Unlike the federal government, most households don't get to decide how much their income will be. Nor do they control the money supply. However, many households do engage in controlled debt to pay for things they cannot with current earnings, such as a home mortgage or a higher education.

Arbitrary budget constraints from a re-written constitution could harm economic growth as well as national security by limiting the ability of the government to make needed investments, deal with depressions and recessions, and respond to natural disasters or threats to national security.

Those concerned about national debt and deficits have other, less drastic means to deal with these issues - like statesmanship. As the late, great Sen. Robert C. Byrd once said, "I support a balanced budget, and I want to lower the federal deficits ... But the answer must not be to perform a lobotomy on our nation's most sacred principles of checks and balances and separation of powers ... simply because we are frustrated."

While some (but not all) of the out-of-state groups pushing for a constitutional convention resolution are rightward leaning, many conservatives oppose it, including some pretty hard core groups like the Eagle Forum, Gun Owners of America and the John Birch Society, as well as some moderate thinkers connected with such groups as the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Hoover Institute. They have found themselves on the same side as unlikely allies like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Among them was the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who gets the last word: "I certainly would not want a constitutional convention. Whoa! Who knows what would come out of it?"

More of a tweet really

One of things I love about Nietzsche is his ability to pack a whole essay or maybe even a book into a single sentence. One of my favorites is about how our sincere attachment to bad or false ideas can do more damage than deliberate falsehoods. Think Bush building up to Iraq invasion, European war plans in 1914, tinkle down economics, utopias induced by violence, etc. etc. etc.

Here's the passage:

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

Droning on

Back in the heyday of the Industrial Workers of the World, footloose organizers rode the rails into skid rows, lumber camps and hobo jungles to sign up workers for the One Big Union. Often, they used song as an organizing tool, taking familiar tunes and changing the words around "so they made more sense," as the late great Utah Phillips used to say.

The spirit of the Wobblies lives on these days in a friend and co-worker of mine known here as New Hampshire Slim. At least one of his songs has even made its way into the latest version of the IWW Little Red Songbook.

I can picture Slim right now hopping freight trains and spreading the rebel gospel to the downpressed wage slaves of that New England state, whilst regaling one and all with song. Here's his latest effort, which is sung to the tune of a popular Bob Dylan song. It is reproduced with permission. From Slim, not from Bob, that is. Nothing personal, Bob...but these days

Everybody must get droned

They’ll drone you when you’re leaving from the bar,They’ll drone you when you’re driving in your car,They’ll drone you when you’re trying to be discrete,They’ll drone you when you’re marching in the street.

Well I would not feel so all alone,Everybody must get droned.

They’ll drone you when you’re maintaining law and order,They’ll drone you when you’re getting near the border,They’ll drone you when you’re sitting in the park,They’ll drone you when it’s light and when it’s dark.  

Well I would not feel so all alone,Everybody must get droned.

They’ll drone you when your minding your own business,They’ll drone you when you’re improving your physical fitness,They’ll drone you when you’re at a private luncheon,They’ll drone you while performing a bodily function,

Well I would not feel so all alone,Everybody must get droned.

They’ll drone you when you’re at a wedding party,They’ll drone you if you’re early or you’re tardy,They’ll drone you when you’re riding in the bus,They’ll drone you if you’re them or if you’re us,

Well I would not feel so all alone,Everybody must get droned.

Slim has a blog worthy of a look that he updates whenever he is not riding the rods or working the wheat harvest. You can find it here.

BAD MEDICINE. Here's a look at what Paul Ryan's budget would do to El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia.

MORE OF THE SAME. Here's a look at the Long March of Ayn Rand's BS into the mainstream of American political thought.

IT EVEN RHYMES. Here's a fun and quick look at what's wrong with trickle (tinkle?) down economics.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Of gardens, winter, death and life

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." Those lines from the Gospel of John have been on my mind this weekend, as four generations of my family headed to Columbus for the funeral of my favorite aunt.



(And, yes, we did hit a White Castle on the way home.)




Only a week or so before, I planted garlic in our garden. The idea that anything put under the ground in such wicked weather could sprout, grow and thrive months later seems impossible, but it happens.

I broke up the ground with a spading fork, pushed garlic cloves into the dirt with freezing fingers and covered it liberally with old hay and goat manure. Unless something goes wrong, new life will emerge from dirt and decay.

When I try to think in a purely rational way about what happens to us after the Big Checkout, I've always found it as hard to believe that nothing comes after it as it is to believe that anything comes after it.

In the absence of knowing, I'll stick with Bruce: "Everything dies, baby, that's a fact/but maybe everything that dies some day comes back."

ZOMBIE ECONOMICS. Bad ideas are hard to kill.

LEFT BEHIND. Here's a profile from the Charleston Gazette of a miner who died in Massey's Upper Big Branch mine and the widow he left behind.

NO SHOW. WV's newest senator ducked out of controversial votes on the DREAM Act and repealing don't ask/don't tell.

NEANDERTHALS apparently used human bones as tools.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED