Op-ed at
http://bangordailynews.com/2011/05/26/opinion/contributors/the-state-budget-and-poverty/?ref=mostReadBox
GUEST
COLUMN
By Alice Bolstridge,
Special to the BDN
Posted May 26, 2011, at 6:42 p.m.
I grew up in poverty in the ’30s, ’40s and
’50s. With a crippled father and a sickly mother, neither one of whom completed
elementary school, we often were dependent on state welfare and charity from
relatives and neighbors for the basic necessities of food, clothing and health
care.
All six of us siblings eventually worked our
way out of poverty and far enough up the rungs of the middle-class ladder that
we could provide through work the basics for ourselves most of the time and
contribute as taxpayers. Though some of my siblings would argue that they
pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps, as “rugged individualist” wisdom
suggests we all should, I know that none of us do it by ourselves.
First, we survived childhood as healthy as we
did with the aid of a social safety net that provided for much of our food and
health care. Second, we all were educated through high school by a publicly
funded education system. Third, we all received some sort of training beyond
high school that was in large measure publicly funded.
Upon graduation from high school, my older
sister received a scholarship to a business school that led to a job in the
Veterans’ Administration, where she spent her entire career helping to
administer the design and construction of veterans’ hospitals, a publicly
funded enterprise. All four of my brothers joined the publicly funded military
after high school, which provided not only training useful in later civilian
life but also some lifelong health benefits.
My publicly funded education provided a few
great teachers who awakened my sleepy brain and nurtured my intellectual
development all the way through higher education and beyond. Yes, I paid for a
good part of my adult education by teaching part time, but I also was helped by
scholarships and publicly funded grants. Other forms of education, in whole or
in part publicly funded, such as PBS and senior education, continue through old
age.
With
this proposed Maine
state budget, the important social safety nets that are the major drivers in
lifting people out of poverty and into tax-paying status are under threat. The proposed changes to pension and health care contributions of
teachers and other state workers can only serve to discourage great teachers
like I have known as well as those who work with the mentally and physically
challenged, many of whom can become taxpayers with the right care.
The
budget proposes egregious cuts to
Maine’s poor
workers, particularly in the area of health care, cuts that can only serve to
increase the costs to the rest of us.
Increasing
the economic distress of the poor, which this budget
proposal would do, cannot improve the Maine
economy overall. Neither can other actions such as recent passage of the health
insurance bill, LD 1333, and the removal of the labor mural from the Department of Labor building
in Augusta, which reflects the administration’s
lack of respect for Maine’s labor force, a
vital necessity to the Maine
economy.
The
policies and proposed budget of this administration and Legislature amount to
economic attacks on teachers, state workers, low-earning wage workers and
micro-businesses, which together are vital to the Maine economy. Such actions only serve to
exacerbate the problem of poverty, not just for the poor but for all of us. And
for what? To give tax breaks that
further enrich the already rich?
