…about how she is helping out the middle class.

A full color mailer graced my mailbox yesterday–pictured here–with the traditional extended family around the dinner table.  Without getting too wrapped up in the contradictions between Democrat policies which Rep Shea-Porter supports, and how they are more likely to destroy the traditional family regardless of class, let us instead focus on what she is promoting as her legislative “accomplishments.”

Tax cuts for the middle class; An increase in the minimum wage; Help with home heating bills; The Middle Class Assistance act; and expanding SCHIP.

This all just sounds so dreamy, but while I’m firmly placed in the middle of the middle class–making me, I guess about as middle class as you can get–my concerns revolve more around the fact that none of the things she’s hawking are either all that good for the middle class, or are things she had any impact on whatsoever.   Let me tell you why I wouldn’t be bragging about it on the Jump

Let’s roll through the list she provides, item by item, on page two of her mailer.

Tax Cuts for the middle class. 

She is of course referring to the Stimulus package.  SHe mentions the rebates specifically.  I always like it when the Government wants to let me keep my own money, but this thing was a mess of politics and pandering.  Very few economists, pundits, or observers, considered the rebate checks to be a great idea but  HR 5140 did include some tax breaks for small business, a much better incentive for growth, but these were added by Republicans.    

So why is Shea-Porter playing this up as a benefit?  It’s not sound legislation with legs.  It’s pandering.  It’s a chocolate bar for a screaming child.  And looking back for Rep Shea-Porters contribution, it is difficult to determine what “work” she actually did other than show up and vote.   There are no speeches to her credit, no evidence of her helping work out last minute compromises, or work of any kind on her part.  This is her lead accomplishment in the flier and it would have passed if she had skipped the vote.  75% of the House voted for it.  I got a check, but where is there any proof that the government handing out money to people helped them in the long run?   That’s not a tax cut, that’s a bribe.

An Increase in the minimum wage.

If Carol is proud that students and low income workers are getting laid off or are simply unable to find a job because employers are now less inclined to hire extra workers, she is welcome to it.  It’s a maxim of the free market that if you fix prices you create supply constraints, and forcing higher wages will have a similar corrolary effect on employment; until such time as the market demand for labor reaches the new mandated wage there will be fewer jobs available.  Hey middle-class constituents!  I’m proud to have made the job market you rely on that much smaller. Go Carol!  That’s the way to help the Middle class.

The most recent proof of this is the May filings for unemployment. Retail trade, temporary help, and manufacturing all rely on the minimum wage market to get entry level employees, and they have all cut back on their hiring in anticipation of the Federal wage change.  There was also an increase in the layoffs of new hires shed just before the wage increase deadline.   But look on the bright side.  I hear her job is available.

NOTE: I realize construction hires are down as well, but that’s backlash from 5 years of over-building and the glut of availabel homes on the market.

More help for home heating bills

This ones great because she didn’t have to do anything here either, but has no problem taking credit.  The money she refers to is already budgeted into the HHS funding in LIHEAP  as contingency funds.  It’s always in there.  It is used to assist areas with excessive heat–for cooling, and for areas suffering from excessive cold to help pay for heat, among other things.  Saying she helped 30,000 NH residents with their heating bills is the same as saying 30,000 Red Sox fans helped them win the World Series.   Yes, you were there, but it would have happened even if you were dead. 

The facts are that the fiscal 2007 and 2008 funding totals were exactly the same, at 2.161 billion.  Efforts to modify these figures upwards failed. (Twice)  So if you want to be accurate, she actually failed to provide ‘MORE’ help for home heating bills.  To get even more picky LIHEAP in 2006 was funded at 3.161 billion, so over her two year tenure the overall funding for this program has decreased by one billion dollars.

I can almost hear her saying, “I would have got away with it too if it wasn’t for those meddling kids.”

On the subject of “Original Legislation,” one I have discussed at length previously, we are again seriously mislead. 

The Middle class tax assistance Act

 HR5691 would allow a deduction from gross income for state and local real property taxes on the principal residences of taxpayers who elect not to deduct state and local income and general sales taxes (making such deduction available to taxpayers who do not itemize);

There is a provision for deducting up to $500.00 dollars for excessive home heating oil costs, and to make permanent a deduction for tuition.   This is not a bad piece of legislation on its face, but neither is it great.  This may be why it has no co-sponsors and has not been scheduled for debate.  If its provisions have found their way into other legislation I have not found them.  So Carol is bragging about a dead bill.  She meant well, can’t you see; but legislators who are incapable of getting their legislation past the introduction stage–even one that might have some value, are poor representatives, and should not use this as proof of their value for governance. 

 SCHIP

What Carol’s buddy Nancy Pelosi and the Dems tried to do was give our tax dollars away under the guise of health care for “needy” children.  The  Democrat’s broadened sense of “needy’ included children of families making up to 70-80K per year.  67K is the median average income in the US, and “Rich” starts around 90K.   Almost all of the kids they wanted to add din’t need the insurance.  So what they were really doing is promoting a stepping stone for massive Government funded health care the same way insurgents protect their weapons–by hiding them behind the children. 

We already know what the feds do to health care.  Their policies make it harder to get the coverage we really need, and make it more expensive at the same time.   Medicare is not just a corrupt waste of economic resources, it’s a financial disaster.   The VA system is fraught with long waits, and poor treatment.  None of this is intentional, it’s just what happens when a massive bureaucracy tries to manage health care, even with the best of intentions.   Nothing to be proud of here either.

So I can’t figure out how she helped here, or why she’d be bragging about it.   Yes, they funded SCHIP, but they made it a media spectacle when Republicans didn’t want to cover the whole middle class with a program designed to help impoverished kids.  The final plan was more realistic but on the whole it was a giant parliamentary trick to make the Right look like they hated kids.  She might be proud of that, but I can’t see why I should be.

Finally, Rep Shea-Porter has historically refused to announce her policy positions to anyone who has asked.   I have claimed (often) that this is because she needs Nancy Pelosi to explain them to her first.  It seem quite clear that she has either run out of index cards, or simply hasn’t got any, and is floating along hoping no one notices.   The upcoming political season had better produce more meat or Carol will be looking for work.  Hopefully it’s not in Retail, or manufacturing. 

In conclusion, the accomplishments she credits herself with are minimal–and even that is a gracious exaggeration of the facts.  If that is the best she can do, or all she can admit to that is by her reckoning worthy, it is time for a new Representaitve from NH-01