Jared Bernstein: Mitt Romney needs to get his facts straight

[highplainsdem]

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/On-the-Economy/2012/0115/Mitt-Romney-needs-to-get-his-facts-straight

When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney asserted that federal low-income programs are administered so inefficiently that “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,” my colleagues at the CBPP got to work on this graph.

It shows that “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.”

Gov Romney is singing from the same playbook as Rep Paul Ryan along with a litany of conservatives whose goal for years has been for the Federal gov’t to shed the responsibility for Medicaid, food stamps (SNAP), low-income housing, and so on. Once you “block grant” these functions to the states, it’s easier to cut them. And remember, this is from a candidate (and the same is true for the House R’s budget) that wants to cut taxes deeply for the richest households.

So he’s launching his attack based on inefficient administration—the claim that most of the dollars don’t reach the clients. Trouble is, the facts got in the way.

-snip-

Link to the graph, which is on Bernstein's blog (which the Christian Science Monitor reprinted):

http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/everyone%E2%80%99s-got-a-right-to-their-own-opinions.../