What About the Needy?

"'I worked all my life,' Defender said. 'And now when I need it, I'd like to get help.'"

Woster also quotes Cindy Lloyd, an administrator at the Rapid City Club for Boys: "I've got one grandma who's essentially raising her 10-year-old grandson on $325 a month. Think what a few hundred dollars could mean to her."

Woster writes: "Even when the poor find work and begin rebuilding their lives, they often are blocked from affordable, income-based housing because they can't come up with the money needed for a deposit, Lloyd said. A check from the government for a few hundred dollars would provide deposit money for many, she said.

"'When you're homeless and stuck in a cockroach motel room, you can't save up enough for a deposit,' Lloyd said. 'I have a mother who's been four or five months in that situation, and she has three kids. She needs $200 to even apply for an apartment.'

"The needs are endless, and the money is short, Lloyd said. Properly designed, the stimulus plan could work for the economy and the poor, she said.

"'We have a lot of families where both parents are working minimum-wage jobs, and they can't make enough to eat,' she said. 'We put up as many safety nets as we can. But a lot of our families still fall through the cracks.'"

Opinion Watch

Paul Krugman writes in his New York Times opinion column: "Unfortunately, the plan -- which essentially consists of nothing but tax cuts and gives most of those tax cuts to people in fairly good financial shape -- looks like a lemon.

"Specifically, the Democrats appear to have buckled in the face of the Bush administration's ideological rigidity, dropping demands for provisions that would have helped those most in need. And those happen to be the same provisions that might actually have made the stimulus plan effective. . . .

"[S]ending checks to people in good financial shape does little or nothing to increase overall spending. . . .

"On the other hand, money delivered to people who aren't in good financial shape -- who are short on cash and living check to check -- does double duty: it alleviates hardship and also pumps up consumer spending. . . .

"Why would the administration want to do this? It has nothing to do with economic efficacy: no economic theory or evidence I know of says that upper-middle-class families are more likely to spend rebate checks than the poor and unemployed. Instead, what seems to be happening is that the Bush administration refuses to sign on to anything that it can't call a 'tax cut.'

"Behind that refusal, in turn, lies the administration's commitment to slashing tax rates on the affluent while blocking aid for families in trouble -- a commitment that requires maintaining the pretense that government spending is always bad. And the result is a plan that not only fails to deliver help where it's most needed, but is likely to fail as an economic measure."