PLATFORM : Harming Children

His proposal represents the most radical attack on poor children, the disabled and senior in California’s history. It is vicious in its consequences and its unabashed resort to the same tired and oft-disproved stereotypes about the poor that desperate officeholders trot out when they’re running short on serious ideas and in the polls.

There’s a welfare problem in this state, but it’s the tax relief that Wilson supports as a dole for the very wealthy. The taxpayers of California subsidize unlimited interest on million-dollar mansions, pick up part of every business meal tab and every luxury corporate box at sporting events, even underwrite interest on yachts. Just last year, Wilson failed to endorse a plan to save tax dollars by eliminating the deduction for tobacco advertising, and the proposal accordingly failed in the Legislature.

Much of the Governor’s proposal is being touted as a means to discourage the poor from coming to California from other states. Cut subsistence levels for the poor within California--for example, 25% in the case of mothers receiving Aid To Families with Dependent Children--and, goes the reasoning, the poor elsewhere will lose all interest in the state. But even California’s own legislative analyst concludes that there’s no evidence that welfare acts as a “magnet” to draw in the poor.

So all that Wilson’s plan would accomplish is to make life even more difficult for, say, a poor mother, perhaps recently displaced by a plant closing or layoff. It would simply make the poor poorer.