Much poverty in Connecticut arises from bad state policy

By Chris Powell

Poverty has three causes. First is bad luck, like diseases and accidents that are not the fault of the sufferer. Second is bad personal conduct. Third is public policy that incentivizes bad conduct.

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But nothing about poverty will be examined by the study state legislators want to commission on whether Connecticut should enact a program of universal basic income.

The idea is nutty, doubly so on the state level. For any state with such a program would risk drawing thousands of shiftless people from states without universal basic income.

The idea is also nutty insofar as Connecticut and most states have many social-welfare programs that, together with federal programs, already constitute universal basic income — welfare stipends for the indigent, Medicaid medical insurance, food and housing subsidies, and unemployment compensation

These programs aren’t perfect or comprehensive. But Connecticut could do much more for its poor people simply by increasing rates paid to providers of medical care under Medicaid, rates so eroded by inflation that many people on Medicaid have trouble finding doctors. Improving Medicaid to improve life for the poor would require legislators to find a lot of money, while authorizing a study on a grand concept like universal basic income lets legislators strike a lovely pose while expending and accomplishing little. 

Some state legislators and members of Congress are open to the idea of consolidating welfare programs into a universal basic income stipend. But that would be troublesome, since many poor people can’t manage their own affairs. If government didn’t send their welfare money directly into medical care, housing, and food, many people would waste it and become poorer.

But many poor people are competent to manage their own affairs, or would be if government insisted. That’s why the slim Republican majority in Congress wants to impose modest work requirements on able-bodied, childless Medicaid recipients between 18 and 64 years old. 

Everyone receiving financial benefits from the government owes something in return. For as a great liberal, Theodore Roosevelt, said a century ago, the first duty of the citizen is to pull his own weight.

Congressional Republicans also think work requirements for able-bodied Medicaid recipients would reduce fraud in the program, of which there is a lot, as Connecticut should acknowledge. 

In February an eye doctor in Bristol, Helen Zervas, pleaded guilty to federal charges of defrauding Medicaid and Medicare. Governor Lamont’s former deputy budget director, Konstantinos Diamantis, and former Bristol state Rep. Christopher Ziogas have been indicted in connection with a $100,000 bribe allegedly paid to Diamantis to persuade the state Department of Social Services to cancel an audit of the eye doctor upon her repayment of $600,000 she had overcharged the state. The department’s commissioner, Deidre Gifford, recently retired when it became known that she had presided over the audit’s cancellation.

Of course the Republican administration in Washington may not be any more competent to root out Medicaid fraud than Connecticut’s Democratic administration is. But until there is much more pressure on Medicaid spending, few people will bother looking.

Connecticut has plenty of self-inflicted poverty facilitated by bad state policy.

About 40% of births in the state are to women on Medicaid — that is, women who cannot support themselves but choose to have children anyway. In the era of government-funded contraception and abortion, these pregnancies are not accidents. Most would not happen without the promise of government medical insurance and welfare stipends.

Indeed, nearly every news report on the shortage and expense of housing in Connecticut ridiculously takes as an example of the problem an unmarried, low-skilled woman with three or more children by different men complaining that her life is too hard and her landlord is to blame.

Life in Connecticut is too hard, insofar as government has fueled high inflation, obstructed housing construction, and demolished public education and personal responsibility with social promotion and welfare for childbearing outside marriage, and then taxes electricity, a necessity of life. And still government proceeds on the premise that the solution to poverty is more of the same. 

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Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

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