{"id":7253,"date":"2006-04-27T10:45:02","date_gmt":"2006-04-27T14:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7253"},"modified":"2006-04-27T10:45:02","modified_gmt":"2006-04-27T14:45:02","slug":"get-married-get-paid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/get-married-get-paid\/","title":{"rendered":"Get married, get paid"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a party that claims to oppose “[tag]social engineering[\/tag],” this<\/a> just amazes me.<\/p>\n

Winston Graham and Saundra Corley finally tied the knot after almost 20 years and four children together.<\/p>\n

Now they’re planning to make their new marriage reap some additional benefits. They’ve signed up for a new pilot program for low-income couples in the District of Columbia that could give them as much as $9,000 in federal funds and other cash just because they make their relationship legal. […]<\/p>\n

When they set the wedding date, the couple hadn’t heard about the idea pushed by Sen. Sam [tag]Brownback[\/tag], R-Kan., and approved by Congress to give couples earning under $50,000 a year a “[tag]marriage bonus[\/tag]” to buy a home, pay for job training or education for themselves or their children, or to start or expand a business. If couples save $3,000 in three years, they will receive a 3-to-1 match of up to $9,000.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Way back in 2000, Dick Cheney criticized Al Gore’s tax plan because, as he saw it, the plan only provided benefits “if you live your life the way they want you to live your life<\/a>, if you behave in a certain way.” Six years later, with the administration’s blessing, couples are eligible for all kinds of financial perks, just so long as they live their lives the way Republicans want them to. (And if you’re gay, and can’t legally get married, too bad.)<\/p>\n

Brownback, who proposed this idea in the first place, said [tag]poverty[\/tag] “exacerbates [a problem] in people not getting or staying married.” I only wished Brownback and others who share his ideology were willing to expand the focus just a little bit.<\/p>\n

After all, the same conservative lawmakers who embrace budget cuts for low-income health care and child-care programs, are deeply concerned about reducing poverty through government spending, just so long as it involves an issue they care about. This may, however, offer a clue about how to pitch progressive policies — families would be stronger if they had health care, more marriages might last if low-income workers got a boost in the minimum wage, etc. Brownback & Co. are pro-family, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a party that claims to oppose “[tag]social engineering[\/tag],” this just amazes me. Winston Graham and Saundra Corley finally tied the knot after almost 20 years and four children together. Now they’re planning to make their new marriage reap some additional benefits. They’ve signed up for a new pilot program for low-income couples in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}