by Richard A. Webster Staff Writer for CityBusiness

NEW ORLEANS - State Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, fears Louisiana may be headed toward an economic crisis if the percentage of people dependent on the government is not decreased.

His solution: pay impoverished women $1,000 to have their tubes tied so they will stop having babies they can’t afford.

The idea came to LaBruzzo after hurricanes Katrina and Gustav when the state was forced to evacuate, shelter and care for tens of thousands of people.

"I realized that all these people were in Louisiana's care and what a massive financial responsibility that is to the state," LaBruzzo said. "I said, 'I wonder if it might be a good idea to pay some of these people to get sterilized.'"

LaBruzzo said he is researching the issue, and if he finds that the number of people on welfare has increased on a dramatic and continuous basis over the past several decades, he may introduce a bill during the next legislative session promoting voluntary sterilization in exchange for monetary compensation.

"If both the welfare and Social Security system keep growing, one day we're going to have a small minority of people working to fund and finance everybody else who isn’t working or producing," LaBruzzo said. "Our kids, who will be working, will be the minority and any vote of theirs will be canceled out. If your livelihood is based on government handouts, why would you ever vote for somebody who is going to lower taxes? They never would. So once we reach that breaking point there's no return."

Reaction to LaBruzzo's proposal has been swift. It has been called racist and reminiscent of the genocidal policies of the Nazis.

Shana Griffin, interim director of the New Orleans Women's Health Clinic, described it as a modern day version of eugenics, a theory that promotes improving humanity’s future by decreasing the number of babies produced by people who are seen as physically, socially or mentally deficient.

It is obvious who LaBruzzo is targeting with this legislation by mentioning welfare recipients and those dependent on city-assisted evacuation — poor, black women, Griffin said.

"If someone doesn't have a car and needs to utilize city-assisted evacuation, that makes them a social burden? The fact that he feels so comfortable and entitled to make these statements is a reflection of our society, that we’re OK with the most vulnerable of our community being blamed for the social, economic and political crises that we’re experiencing,” Griffin said. “If we really want to improve the lives of people in our communities we would think about raising the minimum wage, holistic health care, improving labor laws, employment opportunities for all people and the educational system.

"Instead he wants to use a form of medical experimentation and forced sterilization on poor women of color, using their economic status as a way to make them more vulnerable to the offer.”

Tulane University criminologist Peter Scharf said LaBruzzo's idea is proof that Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" is alive and well. In the 1729 satirical essay, Swift proposed solving Ireland’s economic troubles by selling children as food to the wealthy. His essay is subtitled, "For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public."
It is not unusual during times of economic turmoil for people to lay the blame for everyone’s problems on the backs of the black underclass, Scharf said. But in this case, LaBruzzo is out on a raft by himself.
"We're about to go into a major recession or depression and no one economically is blaming it on the black underclass," Scharf said. "They're blaming it on Congress, George W. Bush or the captains of industry. The true victimizers of present-day society live in the corporate boardrooms, and very few of them are black. They’re the people running Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers and AIG.

"We're about to spend $700 billion in a week to save these welfare corporations who have ripped off society, and he's worrying about someone who might collect a welfare check 20 years from now? The irony given the world situation today makes me want to laugh."

But this is not about the problems of today, LaBruzzo said. It is about the future and whether the number of people dependent on the state will continue to grow to the point where the whole system crashes.

LaBruzzo said he is only considering the proposal for now while he conducts research. But backlash from various groups was to be expected, he said.

“The black community will say this is some sort of race-based genocide. And there will be tremendous push back from the ACLU. They'll try to say these people are incapable of making such a decision when their life is in turmoil. That if you're dangling money in front of them, of course they'll make a decision that will affect them negatively.

"My argument would be if they’re incapable of making a decision whether to cease reproduction are they capable of raising multiple children to be good citizens? And if they're incapable, maybe Social Services should take their children."
The church also bears some responsibility for failing to speak out more forcefully against economically challenged women giving birth to multiple children, LaBruzzo said.

"I'm sure many of these people aren't going to church every Sunday and many aren't married before having children and sex. But the church isn't condemning their lifestyle. They’re just condemning anyone who's trying to do something about it."

Despite the criticisms that have been leveled against him, LaBruzzo insists that voluntary sterilization has nothing to do with race.

"The majority of people on welfare in the nation are white. So the people making those arguments are less concerned with helping those people and more concerned trying to convince themselves that they're not prejudiced, that they're these wonderful, good people. The politically safe thing to do is to not touch this, but the train is potentially going off the cliff and everyone just wants to ignore the problem."
Griffin said it would have been to the benefit of everyone if LaBruzzo was the one ignoring the problem.

"Referring to people as social burdens is the same as referring to them as social degenerates," she said. "What he needs to keep in mind is that the people he's talking about sterilizing are the working class who keep this city afloat."•

LaBruzzo: Sterilization plan fights poverty
by Mark Waller, The Times-Picayune
Tuesday September 23, 2008, 9:40 PM

Worried that welfare costs are rising as the number of taxpayers declines, state Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, said Tuesday he is studying a plan to pay poor women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied.

"We're on a train headed to the future and there's a bridge out, " LaBruzzo said of what he suspects are dangerous demographic trends. "And nobody wants to talk about it."

LaBruzzo said he worries that people receiving government aid such as food stamps and publicly subsidized housing are reproducing at a faster rate than more affluent, better-educated people who presumably pay more tax revenue to the government. He said he is gathering statistics now.

"What I'm really studying is any and all possibilities that we can reduce the number of people that are going from generational welfare to generational welfare, " he said.

He said his program would be voluntary. It could involve tubal ligation, encouraging other forms of birth control or, to avoid charges of gender discrimination, vasectomies for men.

It also could include tax incentives for college-educated, higher-income people to have more children, he said.
LaBruzzo, 38, is white, married to a lawyer, has a toddler daughter and holds a bachelor's degree from Louisiana State University.

He is serving his second term in the Legislature, where he drew attention this year for advocating the controversial legislative pay raise and for trying to abolish the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway Commission and its Police Department.

His 81st House District runs from Old Metairie north to Bucktown and west along Lake Pontchartrain to the Suburban Canal. In a somewhat different configuration, it is the same district that sent white supremacist David Duke to the Legislature in 1989.

LaBruzzo described the tube-tying incentive as a brainstorming exercise that has yet to take form as a bill for the Legislature to consider. He said it already has drawn critics who argue the idea is racist, sexist, unethical and immoral. He said more white people are on welfare than black people, so his proposal is not targeting race.

LaBruzzo said other, mainstream strategies for attacking poverty, such as education reforms and programs informing people about family planning issues, have repeatedly failed to solve the problem. He said he is simply looking for new ways to address it.

"It's easy to say, 'Oh, he's a racist, ' " LaBruzzo said. "The hard part is to sit down and think of some solutions."

LaBruzzo said he opposes abortion and paying people to have abortions. He described a sterilization program as providing poor people with better opportunities to avoid welfare, because they would have fewer children to feed and clothe.

He acknowledged his idea might be a difficult sell politically.

"I don't know if it's a viable option, " LaBruzzo said. "Of course people are going to get excited about it. Maybe we'll start a debate on it."
. . . . . . .
Mark Waller may be reached at mwaller@timespicayune.com or 504.883.7056.

LaBruzzo idea at odds with welfare numbers
by Mark Waller and Jan Moller, The Times-Picayune
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 7:55 PM
State Rep. John LaBruzzo says the government should consider cash incentives for poor people to undergo reproductive sterilization, because society is careening toward a day when persons on public assistance outnumber taxpayers and the economy collapses. A look at Louisiana welfare numbers suggests his fear is unfounded.
Click here to view welfare statistics since 1990.
Figures from the state Department of Social Services show recipients of the main form of welfare, the Family Independence Temporary Assistance Program, have plunged from a monthly average of 280,177 people in fiscal 1990-91 to 13,504 people in 2006-07. The monthly grant to a qualifying mother with two children is now $240.
Total annual spending over the 16-year period dropped from $187.2 million to $16.5 million, less than legislators earmarked for pet projects.
The main reason for the decline, said Social Services spokeswoman Cheryl Michelet, is the 1996 federal welfare reform legislation signed by President Clinton. It put a five-year lifetime cap on benefits.
LaBruzzo said he continues compiling such data and that his idea of providing Fallopian tubal ligations and a $1,000 bonus to impoverished women was a brainstorming tactic prematurely made public Monday on a radio talk show, followed by Internet and printed reports.
"I've said repeatedly that this has been let out prematurely, before I had a chance to investigate it," LaBruzzo, a Metairie Republican, said Wednesday.
Other welfare numbers have not changed as dramatically, but they also have not spiraled out of control. The average number of Louisiana households receiving food stamps monthly has alternately risen and fallen over 16 years, from 258,768 in 1990-91 to 266,088 in 2005-06, according to the Department of Social Services. The average monthly benefit rose to $264.85, a 40 percent increase but not enough to keep up with inflation.
Louisiana is spending more money on health care through Medicaid, the state-federal program that pays medical costs for poor and disabled people. But the rising number of those recipients -- from 752,747 in 1997-98 to more than 1.5 million in 2006-07 -- is mainly due to the creation of the Louisiana Children's Health Insurance Program, which Congress authorized in 1998 to cover children in qualifying households. Total annual Medicaid spending during that time grew from $3.25 billion to $5.38 billion.
LaBruzzo acknowledged he has touched off a firestorm with the initial idea of fighting poverty by offering money to low-income women to get their tubes tied. He also suggested paying poor men to get vasectomies and creating tax incentives for college-educated, affluent couples to have more children.
"How can we get more people who rely on government to have fewer children who rely on government?" he asked Tuesday. "If there's fewer of them, we can do more for them."
He said his telephone and e-mail were jammed Wednesday with messages from supporters, critics and news media.
After further thought, LaBruzzo said, he has modified his position toward calling for financial incentives for temporary forms of birth control, instead of surgery. "That's probably a safe and better way to go," he said, acknowledging that poor women might decide at a later time, when they are in a better economic position, to have children.
Many observers called his ideas offensive.
"It violates the premise of bodily integrity and personal reproductive freedom," said Rachel E. Luft, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of New Orleans. "It's based on an economic fallacy that it's low-income people who are slurping up the resources of this country."
Luft likened LaBruzzo's plan to the eugenics movement that sought to engineer low-income and ethnic groups out of the population a century ago, based on the belief that some people are less valuable than others. Adolf Hitler later adopted some of the movement's principles in Nazi Germany, Luft said.
Some critics called LaBruzzo's idea a mean-spirited, misguided effort to eliminate poor people, instead of helping them with education, health care and economic development. Julie Mickelberry, public affairs director for Planned Parenthood of Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta, said LaBruzzo's plan ignores genuine solutions.
"Clearly Rep. LaBruzzo doesn't know a thing about prevention," Mickelberry said. "We know that offering bribes for sterilization won't do a thing."
Instead, Mickelberry said, providing access to health care and information about avoiding unintended pregnancies is more likely to help impoverished people.
"There are solutions out there, and there are programs that work," Mickelberry said. "Information is power, and the decision is really up to the individual."
Government subsidies are already available to help pay for birth control and other family planning services, Mickelberry said. She argued those programs need to be better publicized.
In stressing that his research is incomplete, LaBruzzo said he is willing to consider advocating more money for existing programs with successful track records.
Some of LaBruzzo's political backers, meanwhile, responded cautiously to his controversial pronouncements.
"It definitely caught me by surprise," said lawyer James Garvey, a member of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. He has given $1,000 to LaBruzzo's campaign treasury. "I guess I would say that Johnny is a really good guy and really bright guy and that he comes up with ideas that have not been thought of by many other people. Some are good. Some are bad."
Garvey said he had not given LaBruzzo's sterilization idea enough thought to take a position on it. "This might turn out to be a horrible idea," he said, "but you can't get his good ideas without getting some of his off-the-wall ideas."
Real estate developer Henry Shane, who has given LaBruzzo $2,000, also was noncommittal, saying he has not digested the proposal or talked to LaBruzzo about it.
"I'd have to know what he is actually proposing," Shane said. "It sounds like it might be unusual, but when you get into the details of it, it may make sense."  .......
Barri Bronston contributed to this report. Mark Waller can be reached at mwaller@timespicayune.com or 504.883.7056. Jan Moller can be reached at jmoller@timespicayune.com or 225.342.5207.