Possibilities for the poor

The uncle’s state government was on trial Thursday in Washington for punishing poor people illegally.

Meantime, the nephew was announcing in Little Rock a bill co-sponsored by Democrats to help poor people.

Indeed, the Arkansas Hutchinson Dynasty gives and takes away.

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I refer to Gov. Asa Hutchinson and Sen. Jim Hendren, president pro tempore. Hutchinson is the uncle; Hendren the nephew. Sometimes I refer to them as King Asa and Prime Minister Jim.

The legal proceeding in Washington was in a lawsuit filed nominally against the Trump administration. But it’s specifically against so-called work requirements for Medicaid recipients, the first of which Hutchinson rushed to impose in Arkansas to try to keep this misguided state’s ravenous right-wing base fed.

What’s happened in Arkansas under this so-called work requirement is that more than 18,000 people have been thrown off Medicaid health insurance for not jumping through ever-changing administrative hoops to verify, supposedly, that they have been working or looking for work or doing volunteer services.

The lawsuit argues that Medicaid, by plain legal language, is a health program, not a job-requirement program, and that it makes no sense to throw a poor person off health insurance if your point is to get that poor person working—since untreated illness is not how one normally enhances employment prospects.

It also argues that, since Arkansas has no earthly idea whether these 18,000-plus are working or have flown from the coop or fallen through the cracks, the work requirement is not demonstrably a success, but quite possibly an abject debacle.

This same D.C. judge already threw out Kentucky’s attempted first foray into the work requirement. The Arkansas case is no better and maybe worse.

The judge says he’ll try to rule by the end of the month.

The chances seem good that the Arkansas work requirement is headed for the trash heap. And that outcome seems likely even if the judge hints that other states might come along with work programs he could live with.

It may be that Arkansas has ventured valuably into the vanguard to show other states absolutely what not to do.

Meantime, back in the politically unpredictable little state of Arkansas, and on the bright side: Nephew Hendren gathered co-sponsoring Democrats and Republicans around him to announce the filing of a bill to create a federally modeled earned income tax credit for low-income earners in the state.

Unlike the recent tax cuts for the rich, which will be paid for by cuts to poor people on Medicaid and in other services, the measure from Hendren, et al., would be paid for by mathematics, not pain.

It would do that by raising taxes on cigarettes, vaping and e-cigarettes.

The Hendren initiative does not excuse or mitigate the Hutchinson Dynasty’s broader disgrace of cutting income taxes by millions for rich people while throwing the poorest people off Medicaid. But it would stand nobly on its own in rewarding the poor for working, rather than punishing them for not.

It would grant those below a certain income level a credit toward their taxes due by applying the meager income they’d earned as automatic payment of those taxes, even to the conceivable point of refunding amounts they hadn’t actually paid.

Modern-day right-wingers, consumed by mean-spiritedness, tend to deplore the policy as a giveaway to deadbeats. But it’s the opposite. It’s a credit earned by work.

It began as a Reagan administration initiative growing out of conservative think tanks. They thought the idea of rewarding work was a sound conservative notion.

Thus, Hendren seeks to return GOP thinking to its heritage. He’ll have to assuage the concerns of Republican colleagues who will resent that the entire 24-member House Democratic caucus supports the bill. They’ll ask how anything those enemies would support could be worthy of their endorsement.

The Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families hurried out Thursday with a statement declaring itself “thrilled” with the Hendren announcement.

The proposal might not be easily passed, even as Hendren announced 17 co-sponsors in the 35-member and 40 in the 100-member House. Uncle Asa could help by actual effort rather than the acquiescent passivity and neutrality that Nephew Jim expects.

If everything goes well—from the judge’s ruling in Washington to the legislative outcome in Little Rock—we might look up in a matter of weeks and see an Arkansas in which poor people are not being punished for being jobless but rewarded with credit on their taxes if they work.

Imagine—health insurance and a job with a wage that covers its own taxes.

Rich conservatives could whine all they want. They’ll soon have new millions from their own tax cuts to help ease their resentments of the poor.