When it comes to welfare, Mainers have three different philosophies.

Republicans believe giving taxpayer money to those in need to cover the costs of life’s necessities encourages dependency, engenders fraud and creates Democrats. To the extent such programs must exist, they should be oppressively monitored, severely limited in their coverage and expire faster than Carly Fiorina’s presidential campaign.

Democrats believe most people who fall into poverty do so through no fault of their own and remain in reduced circumstances only because hostile societal forces – mostly Republicans – thwart their hopes and dreams at every turn. To counteract these negative influences, they support exhaustive, long-term efforts to provide the impoverished with everything their hearts might desire, except, possibly, household servants and nude dancers.

Normal people – by which I mean those whose partisan instincts are moderated by a bit of common sense – agree with the Dems that welfare is always going to be necessary and with the GOP that it should be somewhat limited in both duration and coverage. They’re willing to help their less fortunate neighbors, but they don’t want to be taken for suckers.

For the past six years, Republicans have done a much better job than Democrats of convincing average folks that their approach is superior. This has resulted in the election and re-election of GOP Gov. Paul LePage and dramatic gains by the pachyderm party in the Legislature. It has also produced numerous restrictions on who gets welfare and how those benefits can be used, some of which were even reasonable. However, Republican claims to the contrary, these efforts neither saved much money nor reduced poverty.

After repeated trouncings, Democrats have finally realized they need to make at least a halfhearted effort to reform welfare to avoid another clobbering in November. So, the jackass party drafted a plan called “Welfare That Works.”

Also known as “We Have No Fear Of Oxymorons.”

“Mainers, we have heard you,” Democratic House Speaker Mark Eves proclaimed at a March 10 news conference, while failing to explain why it took nearly four election cycles for his party to clean the wax out of its ears. But he did present a proposal that contained several items the Dems had previously opposed, plus a handful of other stuff that has no chance of passage. It’s welfare reform in much the same sense that Trump University is higher education.

The Democrats’ plan calls for making it illegal for those on the dole to use their electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards to withdraw money to buy lottery tickets. How this would be enforced is a mystery, since a Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting investigation found that since 2010, welfare recipients have won over $22 million in lottery prizes, mostly without suffering any loss of benefits. There’s nothing in the bill to improve procedures at LePage’s chronically inept Department of Health and Human Services for comparing the list of lottery winners to the roster of welfare recipients to see if there are any matches.

Other items Democrats don’t want those on public assistance buying include alcoholic beverages, tobacco, firearms, ammunition and tattoos. In addition, poor criminals wouldn’t be able to use their EBT cards to post bail.

Since both Republicans and normal people support such restrictions, there’s no good reason a bill containing these reforms couldn’t become law. There is, however, a bad reason:

Politics.

Similar measures have failed repeatedly in the past because of squabbles over petty details, partisan conflicts or LePage’s propensity for boorish behavior. In this case, the Democratic plan – which also calls for converting some housing subsidies to direct payments to landlords, crafting individual plans for health care and job training, and creating an oversight board to study whether any of this is working – is almost certain to meet the same fate.

And that’s OK with the Dems.

Although House Majority Leader Jeff McCabe and state Rep. Henry Beck wrote an op-ed claiming, “This is too important to be a political football,” that’s exactly what this reform package is intended to be. It’s designed to make it appear the Democrats favor welfare reform – without actually producing any.

The Dems haven’t changed their philosophy concerning welfare. They’ve just concocted a cynical scheme to obscure it.

[[tagline]] Pour out your thoughts on the poor by emailing aldiamon@herniahill.net.