Romney’s Charge That Most Federal Low-Income Spending Goes 4 “Overhead” & “Bureaucrats” Is more BULL

[Bill USA]

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities



Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has endorsed a proposal to eliminate major federal assistance programs for low-income Americans and turn them over to the states, often with deep funding cuts. But the rationale he offered for doing so in this past Sunday’s “Meet the Press” debate — that the federal bureaucracy eats up most of the money Congress provides for these programs, and little actually reaches people in need — is simply false. At least nine-tenths of federal spending for each of these programs (and in most cases, a higher percentage) reaches low-income Americans.

Romney said that “all these federal programs that are bundled to help people and make sure we have a safety net need to be brought together and sent back to the states,” and he specifically called for subjecting Medicaid, food stamps, and housing vouchers to this treatment. He has also embraced the budget of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), which the House passed in April, including provisions that would convert Medicaid and food stamps to block grants and cut their federal funding by $750 billion and $127 billion over ten years, respectively.

On Sunday, Romney said that most federal funding for these programs is absorbed by federal administrative costs, leaving very little for the low-income people whom the programs are supposed to help:

"What unfortunately happens is with all the multiplicity of federal programs, you have massive overhead, with government bureaucrats in Washington administering all these programs, very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them."

This statement is false. Budget data for the major low-income assistance programs — Medicaid, food stamps (now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP), the Supplemental Security Income program for the elderly and disabled poor, housing vouchers, the school lunch and breakfast programs, and the Earned Income Tax Credit — show that, in every case, federal administrative costs range from less than 1 percent to 8 percent of total federal program spending. Combined federal and state administrative costs range from 1 percent to 10 percent of total federal- and state-funded program spending.

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[qb]

1. He's confused them with for-profit health care.

[Warren Stupidity]

2. where the 1% fought tooth and nail to keep 15-20% off the top in for-profit insurance.

And they wanted much more. They are screaming about having to spend 80-85% of every dollar taken in on actual medical care. The horrors!

[marmar]

3. No, that would be PRIVATE industry, Mittens......

There's far less overhead in government.