Over the past few weeks, I began to notice the nearly complete absence of a certain word from the opinion columns on the governor’s race this paper has been running – or at least, the ones promoting either Democrat Michael Michaud or independent Eliot Cutler.
However, I found in those columns plenty of defenses of the state’s welfare system, coupled with attacks on Gov. LePage for wanting to halt its rather spectacular excesses, criticism of his (now well-reined-in) salty language, and other assaults on his probity, personality and working-class background.
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Political philosopher Thomas Sowell of Stanford’s Hoover Institute pointed out in his book “The Vision of the Anointed” that to a liberal, not being “one of us” is perhaps the greatest flaw of all.
And Republican Paul LePage, for good or ill, is most certainly not one of them. Which is a major reason why so many Mainers, myself included, like him.
Oh, the word I was looking for? It refers to the “Invisible Man” (and lots of women) of state politics.
Nothing can be done without their aid – and yet no one, at least on the left, seems to worry about their interests one tiny bit.
Who are they? Why, Maine’s taxpayers, of course.
So this week I typed the words “taxpayer LePage” into the paper’s search engine and scrolled through all the citations going back to Labor Day, the official start of the campaign season, to see what was up.
And I did find two columns, both by members of the paper’s staff, that were critical of LePage for hurting taxpayers. One took him to task for pledging state funds in a failed effort to keep the Verso mill open, and the other for spending $50 grand on sponsoring a race car advertising the state’s business-friendliness.
But I couldn’t find a single column by an outside-the-paper advocate for Cutler or Michaud that proved they knew taxpaying Mainers existed.
Some people need society’s help, to be sure, but making that help permanent for the able-bodied only produces dependency and despair.
Liberals are so focused on their victims du jour, they have forgotten that productive people and businesses are the engines of our prosperity.
Conservatives, on the other hand, see that what LePage is doing has import well beyond the Piscataqua River.
On Oct. 17, for example, Jillian Kay Melchior of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity wrote for National Review Online about LePage’s fight against Democratic efforts to raise taxes.
She said: “The nation’s most effective welfare reformer may be the Republican governor of Maine, Paul LePage, and he’s under assault for it.”
But he needs help, as Melchior points out: “Maine has been identified as one state where control of the Legislature may flip Republican, and the LePage administration says it would need the support of lawmakers to move forward on other key welfare-reform measures next term.”
But LePage has already made a real difference for those who pay the bills: “To cut back on fraud abuse (estimated at $3.7 million a year), Maine has doubled the number of fraud investigators, put photo IDs on EBT (electronic-benefit-transfer) cards, and required all welfare recipients with a drug-related felony on their records to prove they’re clean while receiving cash benefits.”
Melchior credited themainewire.com, published by the Maine Heritage Policy Center, “for pointing out that over a three-year period, Maine EBT cards had been used in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and that benefit cash had been withdrawn at amusement parks, strip clubs, liquor stores and five-star resorts.”
Maine is “currently in the process of blocking EBT usage at 200 locations, including liquor stores, bars, and casinos,” and is better able to terminate benefits when a recipient moves away.
Finally, Maine is beginning to require “able-bodied, working-age beneficiaries to volunteer, work, or receive job training for 20 hours a week or lose their benefits within three months. And in 2012, Maine began enforcing a five-year cap on cash welfare benefits for recipients who aren’t elderly or disabled.”
None of that means the state is abandoning the poor, however. As Labor Commissioner Jeanne S. Paquette noted in a Maine Voices column on these pages Monday, “More than two years ago, Gov. LePage led the formation of a tri-agency collaborative to get people back to work.” So far, the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Education have aided “more than 1,200 Mainers find full-time careers.”
LePage understands that a welfare program isn’t judged by how many people it can add to its rolls, but by how many it can help to support themselves and get off them.
So, if you’re a Maine taxpayer, consider who has your interests at heart. And then assist him by voting for the most fiscally responsible legislative candidates in your district, too.
M.D. Harmon, a retired journalist and military officer, is a freelance writer and speaker. He can be contacted at:
mdharmoncol@yahoo.com
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