Today’s Paul Krugman is really quite a doozy.
Federal aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina is already faltering on two
crucial fronts: health care and housing. Incompetence is part of the
problem, but deeper political issues also play a crucial role.
Start with health care, where conservative senators, generally believed
to be acting on behalf of the White House, have blocked bipartisan
legislation that would provide all low-income victims of Katrina with
health coverage under Medicaid.
In a letter urging Senate leaders to reject the bill, Mike Leavitt, the
secretary of Health and Human Services, warned that it would create ”a
new Medicaid entitlement.” He asserted that victims can be taken care
of by Medicaid ”waivers,” which basically amount to giving refugees
the health benefits, if any, that they would have been entitled to in
their home states — and no more.
As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, many needy
victims won’t qualify for aid. For example, Medicaid doesn’t cover
childless adults of working age. In fact, surveys show that many
destitute survivors of Katrina are being denied Medicaid, and some are
going without medicines they need.
Local hospitals and doctors will often treat Katrina victims even if
they can’t pay. But this means that communities that have welcomed
Katrina refugees will, in effect, be financially punished for their
generosity — something local officials will remember in future crises.
(The administration has offered vague, unconvincing assurances that it
will do something to compensate medical caregivers. It has offered much
more concrete assurances that it will reimburse religious groups that
provide aid.)
What about housing? These days, both conservatives and liberals agree
that public housing projects are a bad idea, and that housing vouchers
— which help the poor pay rent — are much better. In the aftermath of
the 1994 Northridge earthquake, special housing vouchers issued to
victims worked very well.
But the administration has chosen, instead, to focus its efforts on the
creation of public housing in the form of trailer parks, which have
been slow to take shape, will almost surely be more expensive than a
voucher program and may create long-term refugee ghettoes. Even Newt
Gingrich calls this ”extraordinarily bad policy” that ”violates
every conservative principle.”
What’s going on here? The crucial point is that President Bush has been
forced by events into short-term actions that conflict with his
long-term goals. His mission in office is to dismantle or at least
shrink the federal social safety net, yet he must, as a matter of
political necessity, provide aid to Katrina’s victims. His problem is
how to do that without legitimizing the very role of government he
opposes.
This dilemma explains the administration’s opposition to Medicaid
coverage for all Katrina refugees. How can it provide that coverage
without undermining its ongoing efforts to reduce the Medicaid rolls?
More broadly, if it accepts the principle that all hurricane victims
are entitled to medical care, people might start asking why the same
isn’t true of all American citizens — a line of thought that points
toward a system of universal health insurance, which is anathema to
conservatives.
As for the administration’s odd insistence on providing public housing
instead of relying on the market, The Los Angeles Times reports that
Department of Housing and Urban Development officials initially
announced plans to issue rent vouchers, then backed off after meeting
with White House aides. As the article notes, the administration has
”repeatedly sought to cut or limit” the existing housing voucher
program.
This suggests that what administration officials fear isn’t that
housing vouchers would fail, but that they would succeed — and that
this success would undermine the administration’s ongoing efforts to
cut back housing aid.
So here’s the key to understanding post-Katrina policy: Mr. Bush can’t
avoid helping Katrina’s victims, but he doesn’t want to legitimize
institutions that help the needy, like the housing voucher program. As
a result, his administration refuses to use those institutions, even
when they are the best way to provide victims with aid. More generally,
the administration is trying to treat Katrina’s victims as harshly as
the political realities allow, so as not to create a precedent for
other aid efforts.
As the misery of the hurricane’s survivors goes on, remember this: to a large extent, they are miserable by design.
Let’s start with the quite wonderful idea that The Dear Professor, normally so dismissive of the collective IQ of the current administration, now thinks they are sufficiently clever to be so Machiavellian. Really, he’s stating that Shrub, Dick, Wolfie and the rest really did go "Yup, gotta help these people but not too much. Otherwise people will think, y’know, like Government works or something. So, Brownie, you be the fall guy on this, y’hear?"
No, I think they must be serving larger portions than usual of paranoia in the Yale cafeteria.
There’s also the delightful vision of a leftist, that same Dear Professor, arguing against the government provision of something (housing is better dealt with by markets aided by vouchers) and also in favour of government provision of something (universal health insurance rather than, say funding it for the poor by a system of vouchers).
But you know what’s absolutely the very best part of it? Paul Krugman doesn’t read the paper he writes for! From Friday’s paper:
WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 – After Hurricane Katrina left hundreds of
thousands of people homeless, the Federal Emergency Management Agency
signed contracts for more than $2 billion in temporary housing,
including more than 120,000 trailers and mobile homes. But the agency
has placed just 109 Louisiana families in those homes.
A month after the disaster, the federal government’s temporary housing effort is stumbling.
The inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security said
Wednesday that FEMA was freezing many orders for trailers, although the
agency disputes that. Members of Congress, complaining that a $236
million deal to lease three ships to house evacuees was far too
expensive, are calling for an investigation. And under an alternative
FEMA program to give victims cash to find their own housing, 332,000
households have been approved in just a week.
That’s right! Dick, Shrub, Wolfie, and the rest are sooooo clever and Machiavellian and so insistent that government cannot be the solution that they’ve used the inefficient, damaging, method of housing them in trailer parks for 109 families and then the better, Dear Professor approved method for a measly 322,000 households. Yes! Really! I mean isn’t that the cleverest thing you have ever seen anyone do? Make housing vouchers look bad by using them, umm, 2,954 (that’s two thousand nine hundred and fifty four times) times more than the method that would show that government doesn’t work!
You know, when I were a lad I had great hopes of becoming an academic, thinking grand thoughts and helping to point out the solutions to the world’s problems. My tutor when I was an undergraduate thought I might become one as well, in the field I so enjoy, in economics. But it turned out I just wasn’t smart enough as my tutor told me one day.
We should all thank God, of course, that someone is. Like the Dear Professor. For he can spot that using vouchers 2,954 times more often than trailer parks is evidence of:
But the administration has chosen, instead, to focus its efforts on the
creation of public housing in the form of trailer parks, which have
been slow to take shape, will almost surely be more expensive than a
voucher program and may create long-term refugee ghettoes.
My tutor was right. I just ain’t smart enough.
Technorati tag Paul Krugman.
(Just a quick note about yesterday’s correction by Gail Collins. Still not on Lexis Nexis.)
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