John,
Where do I begin? Let?s start with our points of agreement, because the common ground offers some hope for progress. While we may differ on what to do with the savings, our shared opposition to wasteful business subsidies is important and worth emphasizing. See our NC Policy Brief from last December?s corporate incentives legislative session for additional details.
We also share a common commitment to reduce costs, where possible, in social spending. The only difference is that while you would apparently look first to reducing or freezing services, we would look first to keeping reimbursements for powerful providers in check ? particularly the pharmaceutical industry.
On the facts, I think you make an important error when you attempt to argue that HHS spending is out of control because of fuzzy applications of the official poverty level. As has been documented on many occasions, the federal poverty guideline (FPG) is widely understood to be obsolete. Most North Carolina families would have an extremely difficult time living on twice the FPG, much less what officially constitutes poverty.
Finally, your notion that ?government is not a charity? goes very much to the heart of the central philosophical divide between the Justice Center (which views progressive, democratic problem-solving as one of the best and most important achievements of the American experiment) and the Locke Foundation (which seems to view modern government ? at least when it comes to issues unrelated to societal security and personal morality and behavior ? as a necessary evil). I hope we can explore this more.
