Dear Tea Party: The Gov’t Shutdown is Hurting White People, Too

[kpete]

Dear Tea Party: The Gov’t Shutdown is Hurting White People, Too
Posted on 10/09/2013 by Juan Cole

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The primary concern of the Tea Party is that the working poor not benefit from Obamacare in getting access to health insurance. (Many of the poor already have access to Medicaid; the Affordable Health Care Act mainly benefits workers who aren’t paid very well and don’t get insurance via their employers). The reason that the Tea Party doesn’t want Obamacare is because they are convinced that it is ultimately a transfer of wealth from the white rich and middle classes to the minorities. This allegation is untrue, since in recent decades 3/4s of the working poor are white. Since the program is a government mandate that individuals buy private health insurance, moreover, it doesn’t actually cost the government much. Indeed, it very possibly will save the state money in various ways.

Of course, the Tea Party is a tool of rich backers such as the Koch brothers, and the billionaires at the center of the conspiracy to destroy the American social safety net probably don’t care much about the white poor, either. But I suspect that the rank and file of the movement is so easy to manipulate on this issue because of racial anxieties. Those anxieties are misplaced.

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