The Boomerang: Should Public Programs be Means-Tested?

The Boomerang is a monthly feature where two opposing views about an issue are debated by different columnists.

As the Democratic presidential primary has gotten into full swing, many candidates are proposing broad plans to establish universal healthcare systems, no-tuition public college, and publicly-funded childcare. But as the focus shifts to how will we pay for all these programs, the question of means-testing–the examination of a person’s financial state to determine eligibility–arises. Whether programs such as Medicare and Social Security should be means-tested (and whether they really are already) has been debated endlessly for decades, and if Democrats win the White House in 2020, it is sure to become an even more hotly-contested issue with even greater relevance. So, should public programs–those existing and recently proposed–be means-tested?

Welfare

Avani Sethi

Yes, public programs should be means-tested. If the upper class were to receive the same economic benefits as the middle and low class, it would be unfair, as the wealthy would be receiving something they could easily pay for. If we had free public college for only students whose parents make up to a certain amount then the government would have more money to spend on different needed goals such as infrastructure. This would make college more affordable for the poor and middle class, the people who struggle with student debt the most. This would also end up with more people being able to go to college, allowing for a more diverse workforce.

Means-tested benefits are fairer because they distribute benefits and resources to those are in greater need instead of supporting rich ‘free-loaders’, who receive unnecessary benefits. The current national debt of the United States is more than 22 trillion dollars and is only increasing. If national benefits were means-tested, the government would be able to conserve some of the money. Of course, public programs are needed for the good of the country, but the wealthy do not need them. 8 out of 10 Americans live in debt and more Americans are going into retirement with debt, a majority of the reason being student loans and mortgage debt. Additionally, an estimated 40 million Americans live in poverty. Means-tested benefits will help the government focus on helping the poor to decrease the number of families living in poverty. 

Lastly, wasting money on the rich defeats the purpose of redistributive government programs. The whole point of public benefits is to help the poor rise from economic deficiencies. 

Sources[smartasset.com, usdebtclock.org, cnbc.com, poverty.ucdavis.edu]

Politically-Tested

Gaurav Varma

Means-testing sounds great at first. You’re telling me we can provide more benefits to the people who need them most at the lowest cost to taxpayers—where do I sign? But public programs do not exist in a vacuum, and as much as I as a progressive would love to make Charles Koch and Robert Mercer pay entirely for their own healthcare, and childrens’ education, means-testing public programs opens them up to attacks from the right and makes them less politically stable.

Look no further than the pernicious myth of the welfare queen. Generalizing a small number of cases of welfare fraud to claim widespread delivery of handouts to those without a need for them has been the strategy of Fox News and conservative media for more than twenty years. Claiming rampant misuse of taxpayer funds has allowed the right to turn many Republican voters against SNAP, TANF, and SSI. A recent Pew Research survey found almost half of Republicans want to cut federal funding for helping the unemployed and more than a third thought the government should spend less on healthcare. Right-wing media has turned the very word “welfare” into something derogatory.

This negative attitude about welfare programs has real consequences. Two years ago, Republicans held the Children’s Health Insurance Program hostage to push for partisan spending cuts. CHIP has had high approval ratings since its inception, but its status as a means-tested program apparently convinced Republicans that using its funding as a bargaining chip was politically feasible.

Social Security and Medicare are somewhat means-tested programs, as they make higher-earners pay relatively more for what they get than lower-earners, but this reality escapes many Americans, partly because the programs do not totally prevent high-earners from participating. This “soft” means-testing allows these programs to be much more popular with conservatives than programs with hard cutoffs. The same Pew Research study found only fifteen percent of Republicans favor cutting Medicare and only ten percent favor cutting Social Security.

If Democrats want their bold new government programs to last through future Republican administrations, they should look to avoid means-testing them when possible, with a particular emphasis on avoiding hard, income-based cutoffs.

Sources[vox.com, pewresearch.org, ced.org]