Don't have unemployment? Hard to get food stamps? Just how GOPs want it.

For your Sunday reading, I wanted to direct you to an interview in Vox with former UW-Madison professor Pamela Herd on barriers put up by government to keep Americans from receiving social benefits. Prof. Herd and fellow ex-UW professor/husband Donald Moynihan wrote an award-winning book on this subject in 2018, and it seems as relevant as ever these days.

(disclaimer: I took classes taught by both professors while at UW-Madison)

Vox's Sean Illing talked to Professor Herd, and she explains how a lot of the dysfunction and frustration that comes with people getting benefits is by design. Here are a few excerpts.

Pamela Herd: ....Most of our social welfare policies are designed in such a way where they’re a lot more concerned about preventing people who aren’t eligible from accessing benefits than ensuring that those who are eligible actually receive them. We’re fixated on fraud and abuse, which is extremely low in social welfare programs — something like 1 to 2 percent of cases. And even then, it’s not what people mean when they think of “fraud and abuse.” It’s mostly people making mistakes because they didn’t understand eligibility rules.

The problem with this unjustified obsession with fraud and abuse is that it means 20 to 30 percent of people are unable to access these programs even when they’re clearly eligible for them, because they’ve created all these administrative burdens designed to target people they don’t want on the programs. So it’s a huge disconnect in terms of trying to meet the broader goals of these programs.

Sean Illing: I want to push a little on this point because I don’t think a lot of people who claim to be concerned about fraud and abuse are really concerned about fraud and abuse. As far as I can tell, this is about trumping [up] these accusations in order to undermine programs they fundamentally don’t believe in, just as a lot of Republicans disingenuously complain about voting fraud as a cover for depressing voting numbers.

Herd: You’re right about that. Partly, this is a way conservatives justify the use of administrative burdens. They make these sorts of arguments all the time, whether it’s about voting or social welfare programs. The pretense is always about preventing fraud and abuse. But think about a program like SNAP, or food stamps. The goal of that program was to prevent hunger, was to ensure people had adequate nutrition. If you think about that goal and you realize the way that you’re running that program means that 20 percent of people eligible for that benefit aren’t getting that help that they really need, then you’re fundamentally undermining these programmatic goals. You’re allowing all those people to go hungry.

I'd listen to her. If I wanted to get it right.

Herd says that there are better ways that we can carry out these programs, especially now that so many more people are in need of assistance these days.

In the short term, if we’re thinking about how to deal with this crisis, we need some quick, easy things the government can do, like increasing SNAP benefits. No one needs to do anything. It just gets loaded on your card and it’s super effective in terms of the return on investment and economic activity.

On the unemployment front, I’d like to see the federal government relax the verification rules for states. We have all these new groups for unemployment, like gig workers, and a lot of these people haven’t even been able to file yet, because states haven’t figured out how to administer that part of the program (It wasn't until last week that Wisconsin allowed this through the PUA program). And one of the reasons why they’re slow about doing it is because the feds have basically said, “You’re responsible for the verification, and if people get on who shouldn’t get on, you’re going to have to pony up the resources.” So it gives states this really strong incentive to slow-roll this process. But we don’t have time for that right now.

One other thing I’d say is that the process of getting people help is being hindered by these verification requirements that require people to check in every week to say that they’re still unemployed. But that absorbs a ton of staff capacity right now and we could easily stop doing that for at least a couple months. These are small things but they would make a significant difference.

If you believe in government efficiency and maximizing limited staff resources, maybe we should stop this increasing paperwork and instead combine duties within and across departments, with a customer service emphasis of giving relief with easily-completed and shared information.

But of course, righties don't really care about increasing efficiencies, because they'd rather pick on minorities poor people. And it's done to deflect attention for rubes away from the failing economic system that causes so many people to require assistance in times of full employment, let alone the massive number of people who now need help in our current COVID-19 recession.

Plus, if government programs work easily and give people security, then that means government spending is worthwhile, and GOP ideology of "government is ineffective and wasteful" is a fraud. That isn't an acceptable outcome to these guys, so therefore, you get these barriers thrown in the way of everyday Americans, and leaving them (and our economy) worse off.