The good news: Vermont will be be getting nearly $60 million in federal stimulus money for education and health care programs.
The bad news: Congress is cutting the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, by $12 billion to help pay for the education and health care aid.
Even though the cuts won't take effect until 2014, this is a particularly galling bit of legislative sleight-of-hand by Congress that will have serious consequences for many Vermonters.
According to the Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger, more than 86,000 Vermonters receive food assistance from SNAP and the Vermont “3 Squares” food program. The cuts will amount to about $50 less per month for families.
The U.S. Census Bureau says Vermont is the sixth-hungriest state in the nation, with a record number of residents receiving food assistance. Nationally, more than 41 million people get SNAP benefits - a number that has doubled since the current recession began more than two years ago.
Yet these are the people who have been chosen to take a big financial hit to help Vermont and the rest of the states avoid big budget cuts to education and health care aid.
We think this is a perfect example of misplaced priorities in Washington. There always seems to be money to wage war. There always seems to be money for tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations. And there never seems to be enough money to pay for programs and services that benefit the public.
It's a trend that can also be seen at the local and state level across our nation.
• Towns in the Midwest are breaking up their asphalt roads because they can't afford to pave them.
• Camden, N.J., is set to permanently shut down its libraries and become the largest city in America without library service.
• Colorado Springs, Colo., shut off a third of its 24,512 streetlights to save money.
• Hawaii closed its public schools for 17 Fridays in the 2009-10 school year, giving that state the shortest school year in America.
• Utah is contemplating eliminating the 12th grade, or making it optional.
• Clayton County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, shut down its entire public bus system, stranding the 8,400 riders who relied upon it each day.
As Paul Krugman recently wrote in The New York Times, “Everything we know about economic growth says that a well-educated population and high-quality infrastructure are crucial. Emerging nations are making huge efforts to upgrade their roads, their ports and their schools. Yet in America we're going backward.”
Our Congressman, Peter Welch, said last week that he will fight to prevent the planned SNAP cuts from taking effect in 2014.
But Welch will have to fight the sentiment - built up over the last three decades - that the public sector can't do anything right and that lower taxes are more important than paved roads, open libraries, food, and shelter for those in need, or more important than decent public schools.
A nation that accepts this kind of thinking is a nation that is definitely not heading in the right direction.