This post is an homage to the famous line from Will Rogers, who died 80 years ago: “All I know is what I read in the papers.” And it tips its hat to Dolores Huerta’s statement, “Republicans hate Latinos.” Actually, Huerta didn’t assert that Republicans hate Latinos; she commented that based on the actions of Republicans in power, it sure looks like they do. I would never assert that Republicans hate children. They’re not monsters. But sometimes the actions of elected Republican officials make you wonder.

Here’s what I read in the papers.

In Friday’s Star: “Push to reduce number of uninsured kids in Arizona set.” According to the article,

Arizona’s rate of uninsured children is 10 percent, the third highest rate in the country—only Texas and Alaska are worse, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. The national rate of uninsured children is 6 percent.

The reason our uninsured rate is so high is, the legislature decided in 2009 that we couldn’t afford to keep children healthy.

[I]n a series of budget-cutting decisions, the Arizona Legislature decided to end coverage for KidsCare parents in 2009 and the following year froze enrollment in KidsCare. By July 2011, the KidsCare waiting list had grown to more than 100,000 children.

A temporary KidsCare program, KidsCare II, was created in 2013, but expired when most provisions of the federal Affordable Care Act took effect at the end of January 2014. Enrollment in KidsCare remained frozen and is expected to dwindle to zero.

Will Arizona restore the kids’ insurance it wiped away? The article says a bill is being drafted, but that’s a far cry from the bill passing through the legislature and making it to Governor Ducey’s desk. A statement from Ducey leads me to believe it ain’t gonna happen. Ducey say he’s OK with the idea of giving children health coverage—”receptive” is the term his spokesman used, a word which implies he isn’t eager to do it, but he’s willing to listen to people talk about it—but only if it’s “fiscally responsible”—which means in Ducey-speak, it can’t cost any money.

“The governor is receptive to ideas to improve coverage so long as the options are fiscally responsible and provide reliability and certainty in health-care matters,” [spokesman Daniel] Ruiz said.

We can’t let money for children’s health interfere with tax cuts for Ducey’s rich friends, now can we? It may be open to debate whether or not Republicans hate children, but there’s no question, they love them some rich donors.

Also in Friday’s Star: “Including teachers in reform efforts is key to retention, expert says.” The article is about a meeting of 500 educators, business leaders and community members in Tucson Thursday where teacher shortages and teacher retention were discussed. Lots of factors lead teachers to leave the profession, but with Arizona’s teacher salaries being so much lower than other areas, it’s especially hard to keep them here.

A look at median annual teacher pay in Tucson and metropolitan areas like Phoenix, Colorado Springs, Austin, Albuquerque, Denver, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, El Paso, San Antonio, Portland and San Diego found Tucson educators at the bottom, even with cost of living factored in.

“How do we keep our teachers in Tucson and Arizona when they’re better off in every single metropolitan area that we compared to on the map?” asked University of Arizona research economist Jennifer Pullen. “Their wages buy them more locally priced goods and services in every single area we explored on the map when compared to Tucson and Phoenix.”

Bringing our teacher salaries up to a level similar to other areas takes lots more money than we currently spend and more than will be generated by the Prop. 123 funding being pushed by Ducey and others—which, it can’t be said too often, is about 70 percent of what the courts say the state already owes the school, it’s not new money.

But it looks like many Republicans aren’t ready to spend any serious money from the budget to increase spending. Remember those tax cuts for Ducey’s rich friends?

In Wednesday’s Star: “Arizona lawmakers spar over education funding plan.” The Senate President, Republican Andy Biggs, doesn’t think there’s any connection between school funding and student achievement, so why increase funding? Here’s a statement he made, which, I have to admit, makes no sense to me.

“When your mantra is repeatedly ‘Not enough money,’ that money solves all problems, then you get kind of wrapped around the axle.”

There may be a straw man somewhere who has said “Money solves all problems,” but I’ve never heard a human being make that statement. And as for getting “kind of wrapped around the axle,” maybe it’s my lack of knowledge of car mechanics which makes the statement incomprehensible to me, but, huh?

Gov. Ducey, unlike Biggs, is willing to admit that money does matter, which is why he’s in danger of doing himself injury by patting himself on the back so often over Prop. 123 — which, it can’t be said too often, doesn’t even cover the money the courts say the state owes our schools. As the article mentions, Ducey has called Prop. 123 a “first step.” So what’s the second step? He’s not saying.

In pushing Proposition 123, Gov. Doug Ducey has called it a “first step” in education funding. But Ducey, who attended Wednesday’s event, was unwilling to make a specific commitment to add additional dollars this coming budget year, even with the surplus.

Is all this evidence that Republicans hate children? Maybe so, maybe no. Is it evidence that they hate, or don’t give a damn about, other people’s children? That appears to be a distinct possibility.

This article appears in Jan 7-13, 2016.

18 replies on “Do Republicans Hate Children?”

  3. I’m not sure about that. I’ve never heard anybody say “my fetus is in fourth grade.”

  4. Republicans generally don’t murder children in their mothers’ wombs, all the while attempting to preserve their body parts so they may sell them to the highest bidder. Democrats, however, generally do just that.

  6. Juli and Edward:
    You be sure and call the police if someone is murdering children, because that is against the law. I believe that people like you have been admonished already for using inappropriate words to describe a legal, medical procedure, thus leading people like Robert Dear to shoot up a women’s clinic and murder actual living breathing people. Just stop it!

    David, You’re right. As illustrated by the comments at your post, some extremists care more about a stranger’s fetus than a living, breathing child and his/her education and well-being. Andy Biggs, Publishers Clearing House winner of ten million dollars and his cohort in the lege, are the stingiest people in this state. This is Andy Biggs’ 14th yr in the AZ lege. Hasn’t he done enough damage to AZ? Someone needs to run against him.

  7. Sick and twisted liberal thinking. Should I also be admonished for excersizing my free speech? Listen to what you are saying. Can you?

  8. David W…. you just answered the question in David S’s article. We have to take care of children in all ways. Republicans fight abortion but also fight Planned Parenthood, education and social services for them. So keep them alive until they come out of the womb and then slowly kill them? I do not understand why PP is being demonized when the numbers show that abortions are significantly lower when Democrats and PP are strong. Republicans fight giving them healthcare and education. Our schools are now well segregated thanks to charter schools and how many poor people ( even some families with 2 parents working) cannot get their children to charters. The hypocrisy of the Republican party is palpable. I live in the real world in AZ every day. I see what I write about. Last but not least of course there is the factor of sending so many to prisons for profit in AZ for minor crimes. We then take away a wage earner and the other parent is demonized for needing food stamps and healthcare. Of course a single parent cannot get their child to a ‘school of choice’ as many are others can. Go out an volunteer in schools. Get to know the community. It makes a huge difference… so many have said to me, “I had no idea’. Neither do you David W.

  9. Republicans’ answer to everything to do with children. But, abortion.
    It’s a stupid argument.

    That said, Republicans don’t hate children, they hate paying for other people’s children. Can’t really blame them. Can’t afford ’em, don’t have ’em.

  10. @David W – you should be admonished for hate speech, yes. You may continue to say it due to your free speech rights, but you should still be admonished. And, yes, calling abortion “murder” is hate speech and leads to exactly the kinds of murders and intimidation we’ve seen.

  11. The biggest question is does obamanation hate all Americans and as for Republicans hating children, I would say no. They have to protect Americans so to prevent illegals from stealing from us by sneaking in to have anchor babies and draining us dry they have to limit what we spend. Get rid of the anchors and they might spent more. Blame this on obamanation so hate of Americans.

  12. I find that very odd because in a traffic accident a pregnant woman and her fetus were killed. The at fault driver was charged and convicted of two counts of vehicular manslaughter.

    I guess the courts didn’t accept your science either.

  13. Let me understand what Biggsie said: “When your mantra is repeatedly ‘Not enough money,’ that money solves all problems, then you get kind of wrapped around the axle.” So after years of cutting education monies, eliminating JTED funding, taking 100Mil out of higher education, eliminating funding for our large community colleges, being last in the nation for per student funding, he’s surprised that we keep talking about restoring the funding cuts? Imagine that!!!

  15. When did it become a crime to only care about American children, white or hispanic?

    The entire system is broken, outdated and corrupt, both Democrats and Republicans – they all have their hands in the Education cookie jar – look at the TUSD board and their shenanigans (raises/bonuses). Look at Ducey with the State land grab for short term education spending.

    You are transparent. You are a Democrat through and through, a mouthpiece for the party, and that really is unfortunate. Someone who graduated from college and was a teach for 20 years and you will be remembered as a partisan drone.

    But, once again, supposedly, it’s all about the children…..

  16. …and then Hillary could not explain the difference between a Democrat and a Socialist. Just sayin’ she sees no difference.

  17. With the inflammatory headline, I expected inflammatory comments, and they are here. But I think there is a wider perspective here. For whatever grand, complex, cultural reasons, people in the present day really do not care about others as they did in the past. It is so easy to decide to ignore painful realities, to jerk the knee and turn the back. And like it or not, it is obvious that “conservatives” on Fox News, Internet sources, and yes, also within the GOP political arena, have made lucrative careers out of mocking decent people who dare express concern for others.

  18. Could it be that liberals have failed to deliver and the realists amongst us are sickened by the facts?

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/19/rector-the-war-on-poverty-50-years-of-failure/

    This year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s launch of the War on Poverty. In January 1964, Johnson declared “unconditional war on poverty in America.” Since then, the taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson’s war. Adjusted for inflation, that’s three times the cost of all military wars since the American Revolution.

    Last year, government spent $943 billion providing cash, food, housing and medical care to poor and low-income Americans. (That figure doesn’t include Social Security or Medicare.) More than 100 million people, or one third of Americans, received some type of welfare aid, at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient. If converted into cash, this spending was five times what was needed to eliminate all poverty in the United States.

    Try to keep it in perspective the next time the Defense Dept is attacked for the cost of wars.

    You have won nothing.

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