The debt ceiling bill that is making the rounds this week on Capitol Hill has distractions and profit in it. A lot of people are going to be worse off and a few people are going to be better off for it.
Forced labor requirements are euphemistically and usually called work requirements when officials and the media refer to this debt deal. But they are forced labor requirements. They're in the debt ceiling bill to provide cruelty appeal to a percentage of the votes in the U.S. House and in the U.S. Senate, but realistically, more so in the House. The appeal of being cruel when they vote for this bill makes it attractive and so the bill is more likely to pass.
The forced labor requirements will never apply to the people who vote for them. Their soft little hands could not do the work. People who apply for TANF (what's left of welfare) or SNAP (which used to be food stamps) are the people who face forced labor – but even then, not everyone. There are exemptions for veterans or members of the military, or homeless people. So the labor requirements will fall on the backs of mothers with four children who never served in the military, say, or on the backs of older people already bent with age.
Ignore the distractions and follow the money. There's money to be made here, and the billionaires know how.
The debt deal removes about 25% of the funding which Congress just voted for the Internal Revenue Service to flag wealthy tax cheats. Only the rich can afford to be big tax cheats. The funding applies only to tagging rich cheats. This is a threat to them. It had to be cut, from where they sit.
Leaders who made this deal make their money by pushing programs of the rich. Or they have a much better chance of winning coveted re-election by pushing programs wanted by the rich. Or both. To some, the cruelty of forced labor requirements is an added attraction as well; again, the idea seems to be to maximize your percentages of success even when you cannot completely, 100% guarantee your success.
Progressives, for their part, are more or less naturally inclined to support a deal reached by the president of their own party. Here, they were also told that this deal cutting the IRS search for wealthy tax cheats is temporary. The IRS can get the money back some day, they say. Maybe there will be even more funding in the future, they say. Unfortunately for what they say, the reality in Washington, D.C. is now and has always been that once the money is gone, it's gone.
The bottom line? It's in the title: Ignore the Distractions, Follow the Money.
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