If we cut spending, what gets fixed?

While working his first job out of graduate school in Texas, my husband came home with a story about a co-worker at the sheltered workshop where he was employed. This young man had married his high school sweetheart, and they’d recently had their first child. They were very traditional – while Tom was working, his wife focused on the home and child. Even back then, living on a single salary was a challenge.

Unfortunately for Tom, his wife’s parents had never placed any emphasis on her learning to manage money. He soon discovered while she knew how to spend it, she had no idea when the bills came, she and Tom were obligated to pay them. Instead, she thought if she threw them in the garbage, they would go away.

Needless to say, they didn’t. And by the time, Tom discovered what was happening, they had a serious problem. The marriage didn’t survive it either.

I was reminded of this young couple reading a New York Times piece by David Bornstein entitled, “When Paying It Forward Pays Us Back.” Bornstein writes: “But while it’s easy for budget hawks to call for the axe, we have to remember that cutting a program doesn’t make the problem go away. We’ll still have people who are unemployed, unskilled, aging, chronically ill, disabled, living in substandard housing and so forth. In many cases, their problems, if ignored, will become more costly for society over time.”

I’d add calling for more personal responsibility doesn’t make these problems disappear either.

But solutions are out there. Bornstein’s article focuses on the transitional care model (TCM) and its potential to cut Medicare costs for a projected savings of up to $10 billion per year – without cutting benefits. Transitional care saves money by preventing return visits to the hospital through home visits by specially trained nurses. According to the Coalition for Evidence-based Policy, multiple studies of TCM support its potential to not only save money, but effectively care for our seniors.

And the latter is what gets lost when policy matters are reduced to the budget. As a society, we’re too quick to evaluate programs and people based on numbers like a dollar amount or a test score — without looking at more qualitative measures. We want a simple or easy reference.

But people are not numbers. We remember that when it’s personal, but not when we’re talking about policy. Special interest groups have used this tendency to promote policies that have us fighting over crumbs instead of calling for policies that care for people.

As Congress gears up for the next round of budget debates, I encourage everyone to do their homework. Take a look at Bornstein’s article and the work of the Coalition for Evidence-based Policy. Ask yourself what outcomes you want your government to help provide instead of focusing solely on the costs.

Because if all we do is cut spending, nothing will get fixed.