Newt & Co. Concocting Idiotic Policy

To quote House Speaker Newt Gingrich, “Weird. Bizarre. Pathetic. And sick.” I’ve never before seen such a sorry hash of idiotic public policy in my life, and I used to be fond of collecting the Pentagon’s more malodorous flights of fancy.

Before we get to the piece de resistance, as we often say in Lubbock, Texas, let’s look at the scorecard thus far. Nootie & Co. now have advanced legislation to (A) take money away from preventing crime and put it into building more prisons; (B) cut spending on nutrition programs for poor folks and for child care; (C) cut spending to prevent the spread of AIDS; (D) slash money for severely disabled children; (E) make new regulations on health and safety dependent on cost/benefit analysis; and (F) give a pile of new legal advantages to corporations.

Are we a better nation for this?

I figured Newt and the Little Newtonians actually had something in mind here, like a strategy: Their aim was to pacify the sorehead vote. So what if it’s not exactly bringing out the best in Americans, but think what a relief it would be to have the soreheads shut up for a while.

Take money away from crippled children and build more prisons - that’s a classic sorehead prescription. In my favorite role as Little Mary Sunshine, I even was thinking we could use this as a reality check. We’ve had some crime-prevention programs, and a lot of people think they don’t work because crime is getting worse. (Actually, it’s not, but because you can’t convince the soreheads of that, there’s no use wasting effort.) Now that we’re cutting crime-prevention programs, let’s see if that improves the crime picture, eh? Let’s cut AIDS spending and see if that stops the epidemic. Let’s cut money for child nutrition and see if kids get healthier. Why not? Stupidity got us into this; stupidity should get us out.

But that was before I saw the Republican policy on sex. Now, one has to admit that Republicans are not unusually messed up about sex. Frankly, the whole country is a little weird on the subject, which is why I generally advocate keeping government away from sex - you just get institutionalized weirdness.

But Republicans as a group have an additional problem in this department, which is that their party (A) is opposed to abortion and (B) wants to stop unwed mothers from having children. You notice that there’s a slight contradiction between A and B.

Now, when Republicans talk about unwed mothers, they mean poor unwed mothers. And since the poor are, by definition, disproportionately black and brown in this country (but that’s not something the Republicans want to do anything about), they are, in fact, talking about minority moms. But that’s something we’re not supposed to mention in polite company, so of course I won’t.

The reason we know Republicans don’t mind rich unwed mothers is that they have proposed giving an additional $500-per-child tax break to people making under $200,000 a year - $200,000 a year being what Republicans consider an average income.

So you get more money for having a baby if you make $200,000 a year, but if you are age 18 and poor, they kick you off welfare for having a baby. Is this clear to everyone? There’s some jigger in the Constitution about equality under the law, but forget the Constitution - the Republicans do.

Now, you need to follow this next part closely because Republican social engineering is sort of confusing. Republicans are big on family values, but they do not want poor people to be single moms. Now, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole made his ex-wife a single mom, House Speaker Newt Gingrich made his ex-wife a single mom and Texas Sen. Phil Gramm made his ex-wife just an ex-wife, but this is something they all devoutly believe poor people should not do.

Now their problem is: If they kick all unmarried teen moms off welfare, it gives those unmarried teens more of an incentive to get an abortion, which Republicans also don’t like. What to do? The GOP response is ta-da - the illegitimacy ratio.

It goes as follows: To arrive at the illegitimacy ratio, add the number of abortions to the number of out-of-wedlock births and divide by the total number of births. A state that reduces its illegitimacy ratio will receive an annual cash bonus on its welfare grant.

The fellow who explained this to me kept punctuating his explanation with the unlikely phrase, “You see?”

States will be rewarded for lowering teen pregnancy rates only if they also keep abortion rates down, thus promoting chastity among innercity youths. Republicans are under the impression that inner-city youths are out there breeding like bunny rabbits and it has to stop.

Actually, the reason why the ratio of out-ofwedlock births is rising is because married people are having fewer kids, not because welfare moms are having more, but try explaining that to a Republican.

The Republicans have a fit whenever they think government is “promoting abortion,” which has led them to such idiocies as the gag rule. If government should not be promoting abortion, government also should not be punishing abortion because it happens to be quite legal. But the illegitimacy ratio is a way of punishing abortion.

Which is why I say again: Government really should just stay the hell out of people’s sex lives.

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