Editor, Times-Union: The editorial cartoon in the Tuesday paper plays on the erroneous message sent by a viral video making the rounds. In it, a woman talks about voting for Obama because he gave her a cell phone. Lovers of conspiracies and haters of anything Obama have grabbed on to this to expose another supposedly wasteful Obama program.
However, the program, Lifeline, was originated in 1985 when Ronald Reagan was president. Lifeline was meant to be a program for the poor to allow them to have land lines so they could at least have a telephone. The program was expanded under President Clinton to include cell phones. The program continues to this day. As in any program such as this, misuse has crept in. Recently, at the behest of Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., the FCC identified misuses and instituted reforms leading to significant cost savings. Instead of pushing for reform, Rep.Tim Griffin, R-Ark, wants to stop the program but this would end up taking a valuable service from a very large number of low income people. Many of the readers of the Times-Union would find not having a cell phone a real problem.
About half of the recipients use Tracfone which is a pay as you go service using reasonably good but not fancy phones. Service for a year can cost about the same as many people’s monthly phone bill. Unfortunately, there are some web sites that make the program look as if it is an Obama originated program and only say in the fine print that this is a program that has been in existence since 1985. Running an editorial cartoon such as you did certainly does not help clarify the situation.
