Attack of the baby kissers.

The Republican budget-cutters and their allies in congress are having a little public-relations problem. Slashing the federal school-lunch program isn't proving as popular with Americans as all that tough rhetoric about cutting taxes. It's one thing to talk about putting government on a diet, but it's something else to tell poor children they can't have lunch.

Newt Gingrich to the rescue. The House Speaker showed up at an urban grade-school recently to hand out books and rub elbows with teachers and students. Newspaper photos show Gingrich leering at a group of African-American children at Moten Elementary School in Washington, D.C. It was a media stunt reminiscent of George Bush's grandstanding with toddlers at a Head Start center, even as he refused to fully fund the Head Start program.

Whenever politicians go on a baby-kissing binge, watch out. The urge to pose with children is a good indication that our political leaders have reached some nadir of cynicism and hypocrisy.

Besides demonstrating his warm and fuzzy side, Newt gave poor kids at Moten Elementary a lesson in bottom-line Republican values.

"Baseball players go on strike to get more money, and rock stars sing to make money," The New York Times reported Gingrich as saying, "and we want you to work at learning how to read so well that some day you can earn a very good living."

With that, Gingrich kicked off his program to give kids at the school $2 for every book they read. He told reporters he wants to help adjust the attitudes of poor kids by getting them to learn for the purpose of making money: "It means that in public housing, you suddenly legitimize every second- and third-grader carrying books. You change the culture," Gingrich said.

Learning to work for bribes might be useful these days on Capitol Hill, but it's a cheap and demeaning approach to education. And Gingrich's lesson adds insult to injury for poor kids who may no longer receive free or reduced school meals thanks to the Republicans.

Maybe if they manage to read a couple of books a day, they can afford lunch.

The Republicans and their lobbyists are changing Tour culture all right. They are busy recalculating the cash value of every social good and liquidating government programs right and left. The big losers in this numbers game are poor people, many of them children, who lack money and political clout, and who depend on programs the Republicans are slashing.

Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, and Veterans' Affairs have so far been the targets for $14.9 billion out of the $17 billion in mid-year spending cuts proposed by House subcommittees. Meanwhile, the $260 billion military budget stands untouched.

One of the worst casualties is the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is slated to lose $7.2 billion from its 1995 budget.

The cuts to HUD would deprive 62,000 poor households of rental assistance this year, 27,000 mostly elderly or disabled owners of subsidized housing would lose their properties, and another 14,000 tenants would risk being evicted to make way for private developers, according to HUD secretary Henry Cisneros.

"I can't imagine leaders of this country so callous, so short-sighted," Cisneros said. "They would hurt the poorest of Americans who are already suffering in unimaginable conditions and put them into worse conditions so they can generate capital-gains tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans."

While they were at it, the Republicans voted to eliminate $90 million in HUD funds designed to clean up lead paint in subsidized housing--a huge health hazard that can cause brain damage in kids. They voted to wipe out $186 million in housing grants to persons suffering from AIDS. And they voted to slash $37 million in services for elderly residents.

In their haste to hack away at the poor, Republicans are committing a double assault: They are hacking away at people with disabilities, as well.

Elevating heartlessness to a new art form, House Republicans in committee have voted to approve cutting off cash assistance to tens of thousands of poor children with physical or mental disabilities. How, exactly, can the Republicans rationalize this one? Remember, when they go about scapegoating welfare recipients, they use the spurious argument that welfare creates poverty. But does it create disabilities, too? cathartic pseudo-experience that dissipates their radical energies, rendering them unthreatening.

Raymond Birt Bloomington, Indiana 

RELATED ARTICLE: Cart and Horse

Conspicuously absent from the discussion of political alternatives in the last two issues of The Progressive has been any mention of the Green political movement. U.S. Green parties, ballot-qualified in a handful of states from Maine to Alaska and organizing in many more, are part of a growing and successful international network. Green office-holders include the mayor of Rome and city and county council members in Hawaii and California. Matthew Rothschild ("Cart and Horse," Editor's Memo, February issue) is correct to note that an insurgent leftwing candidate who received 5 or 10 percent of the vote would gather attention and influence. New Mexico's Green gubernatorial candidate, Roberto Mondragon, was featured on the front page of The New York Times even before he polled 10 percent in the November election.

If the Greens, Labor Party advocates, and New Party proponents have any hopes for success, it will come from cooperation and coalitions. Not only is the what of the two parties dysfunctional, but the how is as well. We on the left do not need to re-create the centralized, monolithic, coast-to-coast, top-down structure of the corporately run Democratic and Republican parties. Let's honor our diversity and respect our bio-regional differences while uniting in coalitions which allow us to work together.

Blair Bobier Detroit, Oregon 

RELATED ARTICLE: Poorhouse Politics

Frances Fox Piven's article ("Poorhouse Politics," February issue) hits all the right notes if we limit our sights solely to the issue of welfare reform and current attempts to gut the welfare system. She does a very effective job in exposing the myths underlying the "rhetorical assault" by both Democrats and Republicans on the welfare system. Yet there is a lacuna in Piven's position regarding the limits of welfare reform, a failure to at least raise the possibility of going beyond the issue of "ending welfare as we know it" to ending the need for welfare as such for the poor. In short, is the need for a welfare system, addressed to the requirements of the poor, destined to be permanent? Is there no alternative that would eliminate this need?

Implicit in Piven's article is the assumption that the poor will always be with us and, therefore, we must constantly struggle to either improve existing welfare programs or resist attempts to curtail them. There is no suggestion that the existence of the present-day poor is perhaps a historical product of contemporary society, namely a capitalist society, which by its very nature necessitates some form of welfare. Piven herself makes this point in a book she co-wrote with Richard Cloward, Regulating the Poor. The Functions of Public Welfare.

The chief function of a public-welfare system, as stated by Piven and Cloward, is regulating the poor: "expansive relief policies are designed to mute civil disorder, and restrictive ones to reinforce work norms. In other words, relief policies are cyclical--liberal or restrictive depending on the problems of regulation in the larger society, with which government must contend." If so, does not the struggle for an acceptable welfare policy become in itself a Sisyphian task, a never-ending struggle with its ups and downs, rising and falling cyclically within the limits of the government's need to regulate the poor? Is there no exit from this perennial treadmill, no real solution to the problems of the poor? Should not one at least hint at the need for and the possibility of an alternative society, however defined, in which there will be no poor and therefore no need at all for a public-welfare system designed to regulate the poor?

Jack Farkas Forest Hills, New York

The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive. All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness.