Lyons: Social problems are rarely free
Many are watching with anticipation what might happen to local social service agencies whose budgets might be slashed significantly as casualties in a state budget war.
If you’re not, you should be. Maybe you have never depended on state assistance for child care. That’s true of most of us.
Are there alternatives for a woman making $30,000 who’s paying more than $20,000 for day care when dad has left the house and is unemployed? Maybe for some.
Maybe you don’t have anyone in your family with a disability and who needs services. Maybe you’ve never had a relationship with an abusive partner. Hopefully, no one in your family has struggled with mental illness, alcoholism or drug addiction. Would it make you less a citizen of McHenry County or Illinois if you faced those issues?
Illinois, just like many other states, has real financial problems. A nearly $12 billion budget deficit is more than a political bogeyman.
And whether the problems listed above aren’t issues for your household, they are real issues in your county, your town, likely in your neighborhood. Some are temporary issues, such as child-care assistance. Others are lifelong battles.
I understand the resentment. Many work their behinds off to pay bills – medical and otherwise – put kids through day care, and try to make wise choices that won’t leave their family in dire straits. They put in extra hours, accept pay cuts and the loss of benefits. Some do everything they can without government assistance just to keep the bank from taking their house.
Those people always have been the backbone of Illinois. But economic circumstances have made it tougher. So if it’s tough for the middle class right now, imagine what it’s like for people struggling with other issues. It’s human nature to say, “Tough. Suck it up.”
You can’t mandate a bleeding heart. If you don’t feel sorry for people who are using government assistance, you don’t have to. When talking to adults, it’s tough to beat them over the head with a morality club.
There are two sides to that argument, too. It is moral to try to help your fellow man. But is it moral to set up circumstances where cunning people don’t have to work and can rely on the government and their neighbors’ tax dollars to get though life?
Sympathy aside, you should understand the real social and financial implications of indirectly forcing a single mother to stay home and collect welfare rather than work and get some assistance with day care for a few years.
You should understand that there are real social implications to untreated mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction, and adolescent behavioral issues.
None of that means you have to support a 50 percent income-tax increase. To say that it does, is well, immoral.
• Kevin Lyons is news editor of the Northwest Herald. Reach him at 815-526-4505 or at
kelyons@nwherald.com.
