During the Great Depression, my
grandmother’s salary as an elevator operator (yes, that was an actual job) did
not stretch far enough to provide for the three children she was raising on her
own. My mother’s elementary school was
so concerned with her low weight that they sent her, along with the other
skinny kids, to a “milk lunch” in the middle of the morning in an attempt to
beef her up a little. In the summers,
she and her sister were shipped off to my great-grandmother’s Iowa boarding
house cum maternity home cum bakery (out of necessity, grandma
was quite the entrepreneur) to earn their keep cleaning, doing the laundry, and
cooking, “from sun up to sun down.” She
made dolls out of sticks and hollyhock buds in the rare spare moment she had
during these summers, and showed me how to do it when I was a child, although I
didn’t understand the point when I had a toybox full of Barbies.
My father recalled growing up
during what he called “The Dirty Thirties” in similar straights. He told of taking off his one pair of shoes
at the end of the school year and not putting them back on until school resumed
in the fall. His family lived in a
multi-generational household in cramped conditions, and he ran with the tough
crowd on the south side of Lincoln, Nebraska under the protection of his older
brother, probably because there was just not enough room to hang around at
home.
With my father’s death at the age of 82 two years ago, this
living memory of the Great Depression died in my family, as it has for others as
that entire generation now fades in assisted living centers all across
America. As a result, the current
generation of decision makers and those in power are left without that living
memory of just how bad things can get when there are few regulations and almost
no social safety net. You therefore end
up with the very young Paul Ryan, born in 1970, who believes Ayn Rand and her
cult of selfishness were just dandy and that to “prevent
violent crime in the inner cities” all you have to do is “bring opportunity to
the inner cities” and “teach people good discipline, good character.” "That is civil society," Ryan said. “That’s
what charities and civic groups and churches do to help one another make sure
that they can realize the value of one another.”
Bread for the World, a faith-based anti-hunger
group, estimates that churches would have to fund their food pantries by
raising an extra $50,000 each year to make up for the cuts called for in the
Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” budget. Apparently, addressing inner city poverty
with little support from the government requires more than “teaching people
good discipline, good character;” it also requires Bain Capital level rummage
and bake sales.
The Romney/Ryan budget (which we now need
to call it, although Romney still disavows any knowledge of its particulars)
also calls for drastic cuts to Medicaid, which the Kaiser Family Foundation found would “almost inevitably result in drastic reductions in coverage,” as
well as enrollment. Medicaid pays for the nursing home care of
many of these fading Great Depression survivors, the costs of which, if borne
by their families, would quickly deplete most middle-class families’
assets. (Medicare only covers the first
few days of such care. After that,
Medicaid or private insurance must kick in or the family must pay.)
Medicaid also pays for care for poor and disabled
adults and children, such as many of the clients I represent in claims for
disability benefits under the Social Security Act. Medicaid is literally the lifeline for these
people, who depend on it for medication and primary care. Apparently in Paul Ryan’s Ayn Randish world,
these folks are to be left by the side of the road awaiting a Good Samaritan,
and they are not the government’s or our problem.
Paul Ryan is a staunch and conservative Roman
Catholic, and I suspect that it must be hard, while prepping for Thursday’s
debate and campaigning, to avoid the Nuns on a Bus who are fired up and back after him, presumably with wooden rulers in hand
ready to rap across his healthy knuckles.
Vice President Biden is getting a lot of
advice this week, prepping for his debate with Ryan, and he certainly doesn’t
need any more from little old me, as I’m sure he has thought of all of
this. I just ask that while you watch
the debate, try, if you can, to see Ryan through the eyes of a Great Depression
survivor. On Election Day, vote your
conscience, with their memories in mind.
