By GARRY RAYNO, Distant Dome

The state’s social service safety net is fragile.

Just how fragile became very clear with the continuing government shutdown and the needed fast footwork of the Department of Health and Human Services to cobble together a plan to continue providing services to those on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP program.

Federal funding for the program ends Nov. 1 although some agencies may have some left over funding, but certainly not enough to continue the program got another month.

Currently there are about 75,000 New Hampshire residents on the SNAP program and 13,000 on the Women, Infants and Children nutritional program as well, although the state secured enough funding for that program to continue until Nov. 7.

The state is proposing to use $2 million of “surplus” Medicaid Enhancement Tax (Mediscam) revenues earmarked for provider payments for children’s behavioral health services under the Division for Children, Youth and Families.

The money would be used to increase stock to mobile food banks through the New Hampshire Food Bank for SNAP recipients to access food.

The plan will need to be approved by the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee Tuesday and the Executive Council Wednesday, and although it may appear to be a no-brainer, nothing is certain with the Legislature or the Executive Council these days.

The shutdown may be a war over subsidies for health care insurance premiums under the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplace, but if it drags on much longer the effects will be felt by 42,000 households in the Granite State who depend on the SNAP program to have enough to eat.

While that represents a little over 5 percent of New Hampshire’s population, it still is difficult to understand how that many people could go hungry in one of the richest states in the richest country in the world.

There are many in the legislature today who want to go back to the days before Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal which established the current safety net system to help those who are hungry or do not have a place to sleep or can not afford clothes or medical care for their children.

Before the New Deal, the poor, disabled and infirmed were dependent on church charity or trust fund organizations.

So ironically the state turns to Catholic Charities’ NH Food Bank to help those needing food help when the federal government fails to provide funding due to the shutdown.

Many of the billionaires who have taken over the federal government in the current administration believe that the old method of taking care of the poor is superior to losing a few of their billions of dollars to taxes to support the current system.

These same billionaires have been plotting the destruction of the federal and state safety nets for decades now praying they are decimated as quickly and thoroughly as the East Wing of the White House under the steam shovel presidency of Donald Trump.

Last session a group of libertarian/Free Staters proposed doing away with the state’s childhood vaccine program which has been in place since the 1990s and offers free vaccines for any child.

The program was established as a collaboration among several state agencies and insurance companies to provide vaccines free of charge for those not eligible for the federal vaccine program.

It has been touted as an example of “the New Hampshire way” where all sides came together and worked out a solution that gave everyone a little of what they wanted and made vaccines available free to all the state’s children.

But the libertarians, doing the bidding of far larger agendas, wanted to dissolve the association that administers the program which would also end the program itself.

Although the anti-vaccers said it was not about vaccines, the push to end the program was driven by an organization that seeks to end mandatory vaccines for children to attend public schools.

House Bill 524 passed the House on a 189-181 vote and was sent to the Ways and Means Committee for review before a final vote.

The committee decided to retain the bill and this week has a public hearing on an amendment that would require the association to return any unused funds annually to the state treasurer to be credited to a vaccine fund, while a committee is established to study the effectiveness of the program.

Had the bill passed, and although it costs the state very little in tax dollars, it would have shredded just a little bit more of the safety net that helps those who cannot afford to pay for vaccines for their children.

The advocates for doing away with such programs are the same ones who are trying to disrupt and ultimately to end public education which, despite years of efforts, continues to educate more than 90 percent of the state’s students.

Ending the safety net and public education has been the goal of libertarians for years since David Koch of the Koch Brothers, some of the richest people in the world, was the vice presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party in 1980 when the party received 1 percent of the vote.

He ran on a platform that sought to abolish Social Security, welfare, minimum-wage laws, corporate taxes, the Federal Reserve, all price supports and subsidies for agriculture and business and abolish a number of federal agencies including the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FBI and CIA and the Occupational Safety and Health Agency.

The Koch Foundation affiliates such as Americans for Prosperity and the Heritage Foundation that produced Project 2025, still seek to do much of what the libertarians wanted in 1980.

They seek to do away with public education except for the disabled and behavioral problem students, and privatize education for everyone else.

So you would receive the education you could afford and public education would no longer be “the great equalizer.”
The Koch Foundation’s affiliates have poured millions of dollars into New Hampshire House and Senate races over the last decade to ensure people who share their political beliefs are elected and they have been very successful.

The dismantling of government seen in Washington in the last nine months driven by the Project 2025 blueprint has been happening in New Hampshire for several years.

The advocates for their goals want to see the social service safety net shredded, so that government would no longer be responsible for taking care of the state’s most vulnerable, the hungry, the homeless, the uninsured, those living in poverty or with debilitating disabilities.

The next few weeks may be a preview of what that looks like if the additional $2 million for the New Hampshire Food Bank mobile program is not approved by the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee and the Executive Council.

If it fails, there will be thousands of people going hungry in New Hampshire, one of the wealthiest states in the wealthiest country in the world.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.