Tag Archives: greed

Darden Restaurants promises to keep prices low — by screwing over its employees

Posted on by

The company that owns Red Lobster and Olive Garden is feeling the effects of its well-publicized tantrum plan to not provide its employees — who get paid very low wages – with health insurance coverage. Of course we can expect that Darden’s owners / upper management will continue to receive outlandish salaries and bonuses, because that’s how American capitalism works.  But that has nothing to do with anything… right?

How not to succeed in business: Promise to dodge Obamacare mandates – Darden began testing a plan under which it would hire more part-time employees in October, who would work fewer than 40 hours a week. That would exempt the company from the health law’s mandate to provide health insurance coverage to all full-time workers. Separate research from YouGov suggests that other restaurant chains that have recently criticized the Affordable Care Act have seen their favorability dip shortly thereafter… As much as Americans have negative opinions about the larger health-care system, they also tend to have pretty positive views of their own health insurance. Politifact has sifted through this data before, and found that polls that ask Americans whether they’re satisfied with their health-care plan can find upwards of 80 percent of respondents agreeing with them.

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Darden Restaurants Inc. shares fell 9% in premarket trades on Tuesday after it said it expects adjusted second-quarter profit of 25 to 26 cents a share. The Orlando, Fla., operator of Olive Garden and Red Lobster eateries was expected to earn 46 cents a share, according to a survey by FactSet.

Welfare Queen Business Model: Walmart is ‘the largest recipient of public aid in the country’

Posted on by

No wonder the Walton family’s personal wealth is equal to the combined wealth of 40% of American families. Walmart is the anti-American dream… it’s the American nightmare. Why would any American shop at Walmart?

“Representative-elect Alan Grayson (D-FL) said Monday that he will put mega-retailer Walmart squarely in his sights during the next Congress for the company’s liberal use of public assistance programs to supplement their workers’ wages… Grayson called Walmart “the largest recipient of public aid in the country,” saying their low wages force workers to take food stamps, housing assistance and Medicaid just to get by.

“The taxpayer pays for the earned income credit,” he said. “The taxpayer pays for Medicaid. The taxpayer pays for unemployment insurance when they cut hours down. And the taxpayer pays for other forms of public assistance like food stamps. I think the taxpayer is getting fed up of paying these things when, in fact, Walmart could give every employee its got, even the CEO, a 30 percent raise and still be profitable.”

He added that while the health care mandate in the Affordable Care Act will help, “that’s just the start. In state after state after state, Walmart employees represent the largest group of Medicaid recipients, the largest group of food stamp recipients, and taxpayers shouldn’t have to bear that burden,” Grayson said. “It should be Walmart. So, we’re going to take that burden and put it where it belongs: on Walmart.”

— Continue reading…

And this is a GREAT point: 

abaldwin360: It goes even further than this, those Walmart employees who make so little that they need to be on food stamps more than likely spend their food stamps at Walmart.

In fact, Walmart and other retailers make a killing off of food stamps.

Related: 

Costco: the anti-Walmart

Posted on by

You won’t find Costco employees having to rely on food stamps and other taxpayer-subsidized programs like health care and housing, subsidies which Walmart employees must use. Costco is a net positive for any community, with employees who can afford to actually add to their local economies and support growth — Costco is the antithesis of Walmart and the greedy plutocrats who own it.

“But not everyone is happy with Costco’s business strategy. Some Wall Street analysts assert that Mr. Sinegal is overly generous not only to Costco’s customers but to its workers as well.

Costco’s average pay, for example, is $17 an hour, 42 percent higher than its fiercest rival, Sam’s Club. And Costco’s health plan makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish. One analyst, Bill Dreher of Deutsche Bank, complained last year that at Costco “it’s better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder.”

Mr. Sinegal begs to differ. He rejects Wall Street’s assumption that to succeed in discount retailing, companies must pay poorly and skimp on benefits, or must ratchet up prices to meet Wall Street’s profit demands.

Good wages and benefits are why Costco has extremely low rates of turnover and theft by employees, he said. And Costco’s customers, who are more affluent than other warehouse store shoppers, stay loyal because they like that low prices do not come at the workers’ expense. “This is not altruistic,” he said. “This is good business.”

He also dismisses calls to increase Costco’s product markups. Mr. Sinegal, who has been in the retailing business for more than a half-century, said that heeding Wall Street’s advice to raise some prices would bring Costco’s downfall…”

— How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart – New York Times


image: recall-all-republicans-2012

Related: 

The high price we all pay for low-wage workers

Posted on by

The consumer is the true job creator — not the one-percent business owners who hoard their profits instead of fairly compensating their workers.

“The more that we can have a conversation about the employer role, it takes business, it takes government, it takes individuals to sort of create a social contract, a middle class in this country, and employers have simply walked away from that bargain,” and from accountability, said Heather McGee, vice president of policy and outreach of Demos. She claimed one Demos study found that increasing minimum wages at the biggest retailers to $25,000 year would create 130,000 new jobs by putting more money in the pockets of the “real job creators in this country, the low-wage workers who spend every dime that they get.” It would also “lift a million and a half people out of poverty or near poverty” and that if the retailers passed the entire cost of those wage increases to consumers, it would cost an additional thirty cents per shopping trip, she said. —  The real job creators are ‘low-wage workers who spend every dime that they get’

According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the average full-time retail worker earns between $18,000 and $21,000 per year. But if retail workers got a raise, would consumers have to pay higher prices to make up for it? A new study by the think tank Demos reports that raising the salary of all full-time workers at large retailers to $25,000 per year would lift more than 700,000 people out of poverty, at a cost of only a 1 percent price increase for customers. And, in the end, retailers would benefit. According to the study, the cost of the wage increases to major retailers would be $20.8 billion — about one percent of the sector’s $2.17 trillion in total annual sales. But the study also estimates the increased purchasing power of lower-wage workers as a result of the pay raises would generate $4 billion to $5 billion in additional retail sales. — Robert Reich

Tax-paying consumers are paying a high price now:

The Black Friday shopping spiral of desperation

Posted on by

“Walmart has been shown to come into a community, pay lower wages than the traditional wage standard, and actually depress the wage standard in the area.” – Catherine Ruetschlin

On Friday, Americans by the millions will crowd into big-box retail shops to take advantage of bargains on wide-screen TVs and other electronics – necessities, as well as luxuries – all marked down in order to draw them in and have them line up outside in advance of the doors opening. And now, as we’ve learned, several chains plan to open at 8pm on Thanksgiving day itself.

The greatest irony of “Black Friday”, as it’s known, is that it’s seen as a celebration of consumerism, instead of a sign of desperation: when a Walmart worker was crushed to death by a Black Friday crowd in 2008, the news was accompanied with moralizing about American greed, rather than any discussion about low wages in the US.

Would people be so desperate for bargain shopping at already dirt-cheap places like Walmart if they themselves were making a decent living?

— Guardian: Walmart rattled by growing unrest ahead of Black Friday’s strike

“Stand up. Live better“

John Schnatter – @IAmPapaJohn: Greedy Bastard

Posted on by

Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter said he plans on passing the costs of health care reform to his business onto his workers. Schnatter said he will likely reduce workers’ hours, as a result of President Obama’s reelection, the Naples News reports. Schnatter made headlines over the summer when he told shareholders that the cost of a Papa John’s pizza will increase by between 11 and 14 cents due to Obamacare.

Here’s what Forbes had to say about Schnatter’s “11-14 cent” increase:

“So how much would prices go up, under these 50/50 conditions, if they were to fairly reflect the increased cost of doing business onset by Obamacare? Roughly 3.4 to 4.6 cents a pie.”

John Schnatter is lying to us — so he can rake in even more money.

By the way, guess how much money Schnatter just gave away with his 2 million free pizzas promotion? According to Forbes:

“In September, the company announced that it would be giving away 2 million free pizzas. That was, of course, a promotion designed to increase brand awareness and to invite consumers to try the brand… But just in case you’re curious, that would be the equivalent of $24 million to $32 million in pizza revenue.”

Schnatter will cut his employee’s hours so he doesn’t have to cover them under Obamacare, but he’ll give away up to $32 million in revenue for a promotion. Oh, and he’ll also raise the cost of his pizza by more than is absolutely necessary. Because he can.

Here’s where John Schnatter lives — it’s known as The Castle:

via: Google maps

Schnatter’s home is so fabulous it even made Mitt Romney gush when he was there in May for a private fundraiser for his campaign:

What a welcome, what a place this is. My goodness. Who would have imagined pizza could build this, you know that? This is really something. Don’t you love this country? What a home this is, what grounds these are, the pool, the golf course. You know if a Democrat were here he’d look around and say no one should live like this, you know? Republicans come here and say everyone should live like this, all right. This is a real tribute to America, to entrepreneurship. [VIDEO]

John Schnatter, a plutocrat like Mitt Romney, would be the first to scream “I built that!” regarding his home, his business, his fortune. FreakOutNation notes: “A [Papa John's] delivery driver makes a whopping $6.41 per hour.  It’s wonderful that this man has been able to realize the American dream — some of it, on the backs of his workers, who are insufficiently paid.”

Everything Schnatter owns has nothing to do with the people who work for him… the people who are on the front lines, dealing directly with the customers, correct? Why should The Help earn a living wage?

On an earlier post a commenter noted, quite accurately:

“So now we’re starting to see the real cost to those cheap meals. The company pockets a ton of profits, while leaving the healthcare of its employees in the hands of the tax payers.”

Just like uninsured low-paid Walmart workers, John Schnatter’s employees will get sick, get in accidents, and will need medical care at one point or another — and the rest of us will pick up the tab. We’ll do that so that Schnatter can continue to hoard most of his corporation’s profits for himself, and live in the home that’s pictured above — and is described as follows:

The house is 40,000 square feet and it resembles a castle. One interesting feature on this 16-acre estate is the 22-car underground garage, complete with an office for valet parking, a car wash and even a motorized turn table to move limousines. The home also has a state-of-the-art exercise suite and a huge 6,000 square foot carriage house.

America (along with the rest of the world) really needs to start seeing corporate greed as the abomination that it is, instead of something to be admired and emulated.

I wonder how many parking spaces Jesus would have in his underground garage…

Read more: Forbes • Freakoutnation • Celebrity Net Worth • Huffington Post

Veterans Day: Jon Stewart on the obligation to our veterans and Republican senators

Posted on by

  
  
  

Source: sandandglass

“40 Republicans senators thought it would be wrong to spend $1 billion on a bill to reintegrate veterans into the domestic workforce, partly because of the amount of money we had already gladly spent on wars that made them veterans in the first place.”

Screw Papa Johns (and Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Applebees, and Longhorn Steakhouse)

Posted on by

Consequences: free speech and the public’s right to boycott Pure Greed.


via: soupisnotameal

Huffington Post: Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter said he plans on passing the costs of health care reform to his business onto his workers. Schnatter said he will likely reduce workers’ hours, as a result of President Obama’s reelection, the Naples News reports. Schnatter made headlines over the summer when he told shareholders that the cost of a Papa John’s pizza will increase by between 11 and 14 cents due to Obamacare.

Gawker: Darden Restaurants Inc., the parent company of popular casual dining establishments such as Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and LongHorn Steakhouse, is no longer offering full-time work schedules to employees at “a select number” of restaurants in four markets across the country. Though details were scant, the company did say there were no immediate plans to expand the “test,” which is aimed at “help[ing] us address the cost implications health care reform will have on our business.” [...] Darden said in its statement that employees at restaurants where the pilot program was put in place will be limited to 28 hours a week. [...] Darden, which, ironically, bills itself as “the world’s largest full-service restaurant company,” made headlines last year when it started a “tip sharing” program requiring the waitstaff to share its tips with all other employees. According to the Associated Press, “That allows Darden to pay more workers a far lower ‘tip credit wage’ of $2.13, rather than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.”

Huffington Post: An Applebee’s New York area franchisee is the latest CEO to go public threatening drastic plans to avoid costs associated with the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.”We’ve calculated it will [cost] some millions of dollars across our system. So what does that say — that says we won’t build more restaurants. We won’t hire more people,” Zane Tankel, chairman and CEO of Apple-Metro, told Fox Business Network on Thursday. Apple-Metro, which runs 40 Applebee’s restaurants, employs from 80 to 300 people at each of its locations. Obamacare mandates that businesses with more than 50 workers must offer an approved insurance plan or pay a penalty of $2,000 for each full-time worker over 30 workers. Most small businesses with 50 or more employees already do offer health insurance, notes John Arensmeyer, CEO and founder of Small Business Majority, a national small business advocacy organization. But restaurant chains typically are among the sliver of businesses not offering insurance to workers. Other food chains have commented publicly that they would take strong measures to avoid the effects of Obamacare, but so far none of them have taken that action.

oinonio: “These restaurants have pledged to cut employees or work hours to avoid providing healthcare under Pres. Obama’s Affordable Care Act.  Ironic for restaurants that draw clients in with images of wholesomeness, family, and care. But you can push back by taking your appetite elsewhere.” 

These plutocratic CEOs have the right to hire, fire, and cut hours of any and all of their staffs for political reasons — and they have every right to crow about it in the media, as they’re doing. WE, the dining public, have the right to take our appetites elsewhere.

I mean, really. Does anyone NEED to eat at any of these places?

UPDATE * * * * * * 

Under Romney’s tax “reforms,” Sheldon Adelson could reap 9 times what he’s invested in Mitt

Posted on by

Think Progress reports:

“Romney’s corporate tax reforms would also provide Adelson’s casino company approximately $1.2 billion in tax breaks on overseas profits and $565 million from Romney’s proposed shift to a territorial tax system. Adelson’s share of that, the report says, would be upward of $900 million, nine times what he pledged to spend to get Romney to the White House.“

No wonder Adelson and the other billionaires consider the millions they’re throwing at Romney a sound business investment — Adelson stands to get NINE TIMES what he’s giving to Romney’s campaign. $900 million! Naturally, someone’s got to pay for Adelson’s windfall… and that will be you and me, the peasantry:

“While Romney’s tax plan would further enrich billionaires like Adelson, it would have to raise taxes on middle class families by as much as $2,000 if Romney were to keep his plan to maintain current levels of revenue.” 

Summary: if you’re a billionaire / millionaire looking to keep even more of your income by paying even less in federal taxes, then it makes sense that you’d vote for Romney. However, if you’re an ordinary working stiff who earns less than $250,000 and you want to vote for Romney, check yourself into the nearest hospital for a thorough evaluation. You’re obviously suffering some kind of head and/or psychological trauma.

think-progress:

  • Romney’s tax plan would personally save Sheldon Adelson a total $2.3 billion in taxes. 
  • It saves Adelson approximately $1.5 million in tax cuts on his CEO salary.
  • In one year, Adelson could more than earn back his $100 million in political donations, since Romney will save him $120 million on dividend taxes.
  • His casino company would get $1.2 billion in tax cuts. 
  • By eliminating the estate tax, Adelson would get a $8.9 billion windfall for his heirs.

Read more facts about Sheldon & Mitt at ThinkProgress

Don’t like the thought of the wealthy elite buying our the Republican Party and our elections? Guess what: you can do something about it. Vote.

Register to vote | Volunteer | Contribute

Whenever you sip a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, you’re tasting a little Bain Capital

Posted on by

And you’re tasting the Bain Capital success model, Mitt Romney’s business experience, and his ideas about American “job creation.”

In 2010, a year after the last round of Hertz layoffs, Carlyle teamed up with Bain to take $500 million out of another takeover target: the parent company of Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins. Dunkin’ had to take out a $1.25 billion loan to pay a dividend to its new private equity owners. So think of this the next time you go to Dunkin’ Donuts for a cup of coffee: A small cup of joe costs about $1.69 in most outlets, which means that for years to come, Dunkin’ Donuts will have to sell about 2,011,834 small coffees every month – about $3.4 million – just to meet the interest payments on the loan it took out to pay Bain and Carlyle their little one-time dividend. And that doesn’t include the principal on the loan, or the additional millions in debt that Dunkin’ has to pay every year to get out from under the $2.4 billion in debt it’s now saddled with after having the privilege of being taken over – with borrowed money – by the firm that Romney built.

— Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

Bain Capital: helping the CEOs in America’s private sector redistribute their companies’ profits away from unnecessary expenditures (like employees with living wages) and over to Bain Capital’s management fees and loan interest debt.

So don’t ever wonder what happened to America’s jobs. Bain Capital and Mitt Romney happened to America’s jobs.

Related: Greed and debt

What sort of person…

Posted on by


image: christopherstreet

This sort: The Republican Party, the tea party, the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Paul Ryan, Mitt and Ann Romney, John Boehner, CEOs of the most profitable corporations, and “Christian” leaders and the conservative voting base because ideology now matters more than their fellow citizens.

What the wealthy don’t know is that it only takes a difference of a few dollars in the average person’s paycheck to change their entire life dramatically — for good or bad. So shame on the conservative voting base because they know that all too well and still they turn on their own.

Believe it or not.

“Over a four years period from 2008 to 2011, Corning Inc. was one of 26 companies that managed to avoid paying any American income taxes, even though it earned nearly $3 billion during that time. In fact, according to Citizens For Tax Justice, the company received a $4 million refund from 2008 to 2010. That didn’t stop Susan Ford, a senior executive at the company, from telling the House Ways and Means Committee this week that America’s high corporate tax rate was putting her company at a disadvantage…” — Corporation That Paid Nothing In Taxes For Four Years Tells Congress It Pays Too Much In Taxes | ThinkProgress (via: diegueno)

And who wants to bet that the employees of Corning haven’t had a raise in pay or benefits that’s equivalent to the ever-increasing bonuses handed out to its CEOs?

One half of all jobs in the U.S. today now pay less than $35,000 a year

Posted on by

We were once a great country that proudly built things, exported goods, and earned a living wage—in large part because we had thriving labor unions. We also had a healthy public sector employment rate, which contributed to employment, the economy and America’s overall success. Over the past 30 years or more, we’ve been outsmarted with tax laws written to benefit the one percent, had our labor unions and government workers demonized by conservative ideology, and we were Bain Capitalized out of our manufacturing base—we were Bain Capitalized to death. The GOP and their wealthy benefactors have killed America’s middle class for nothing more than greed—and here we are today.

A report from NPR: How America’s Losing The War On Poverty:

According to a recent survey by The Associated Press, the number of Americans living at or below the poverty line will reach its highest point since President Johnson made his famous declaration of war on poverty in 1964.

Close to 16 percent of Americans now live at or below the poverty line. For a family of four, that’s $23,000 a year. On top of that, 100 million of us — 1 out of 3 Americans — manage to survive on a household income barely twice that amount. How is this poverty crisis happening?

[...] One half of all jobs in the U.S. today now pay less than $35,000 a year. Adjusted for inflation, that’s one of the lowest rates for American workers in five decades.

There’s a common perception that somebody who’s poor or living below the poverty level is lazy or simply living off government handouts. Edelman says the actual average poor person is working.

[...] Many economists say that when the economy does recover, a lot of the jobs that were lost won’t be coming back. That suggests the possibility of significantly high unemployment for a long time — maybe even a permanently large class of Americans who live in poverty. Blackwell says we can act to prevent that future. “And it’s not rocket science.”

“We know now that by 2018, 45 percent of all jobs in this nation will require at least an associate’s degree,” she says. “We could invest in the system of training — particularly focusing on community colleges and preparing people to go to four-year institutions and improving our high school education.”

“We actually have extraordinary infrastructure in this country, from the manufacturing base we once had,” she continues. “We need to retool it, we need to refit it, we need to make sure that it’s ready for the kind of advanced manufacturing that we’re seeing develop in other countries.”

What we don’t need is to be “Bain Capitalized” further — or more of those “great” ideas like outsourcing work that can be done locally in the public sector. To let Republicans find more ways to cut spending, more austerity cuts for 99% of us—just to give the wealthiest even more tax breaks—costs our society, and our people, in too many ways to count.


…

Romney economics: when a fair wage for American workers is considered ‘greed’

Posted on by

Fox News and Mitt Romney, as representatives for the one percent, rely on the Republican base voters to be not only dumb and uninformed, but self-hating as well. How else do you explain support (by people who aren’t wealthy) for the idea that fair wages and benefits for working Americans is “greed”? This morning, Ed Gillespie, an adviser to Mitt Romney, told Fox News host Chris Wallace that Scott Walker winning in Wisconsin would mean:

“I think the statement to big labor and to big government employee unions, government worker unions is that you can’t be too greedy,” Gillespie explained. “You need to understand that times are tough and a lot of these legacy costs that you imposed are due for some reforms and some restructuring.”

It’s interesting that Romney’s adviser calls it ‘greed’ when unions and workers want to preserve their wages and benefits. Especially when you consider the tactics of vulture capitalism, practiced by Mitt Romney during his time at Bain Capital, on long-term employees of companies acquired by Bain (fire them, hire some back at lower wages). Support for this kind of thinking will turn us into a third-world economy yet. Here’s proof: the WSJ reported this week that flat wages in the US are helping a manufacturing rebound:

The wage lag is a key factor contributing to the rebounding competitiveness of U.S. industry. A recent uptick in factory employment and the return of some production to U.S. shores from abroad both added jobs that probably otherwise wouldn’t exist. But sluggish wages also are squeezing workers’ incomes and spending. That, in turn, hurts retailers who target middle-income earners and restrains the vigor of the economic recovery. “The U.S. has held manufacturing wages in check while there has been strong wage growth in China and moderate wage growth in Mexico,” says economist Gordon Hanson of the University of California, San Diego, referring to two of the U.S.’s biggest lower-wage competitors.

China and Mexico’s wages are growing while U.S. wages are shrinking. Apparently that’s the only way corporations who got rich on American soil are willing to bring jobs back to American soil. Soon everyone will have a job, if they’re not too “greedy” and are willing to work for $1.00 a day.

Oh, and of course this is not greed.

“Somehow, firing people with jobs became the Republican strategy for job creation…”

Posted on by

“Somehow, firing people with jobs became the Republican strategy for job creation. People who taught our children; policed our streets; picked up our garbage; put out our fires; built and maintained our parks, libraries, and roads for a living wage became the scapegoat for the impoverishment the private sector imposed on workers. Instead of organizing to win back their own living wages and lost benefits, people were convinced that taking away those of government workers would somehow make them better off. Divide and conquer politics. The politics of fear, hate, greed, envy and spite. The race to the bottom. Orchestrated by plutocrats, executed by conservatives, allowed by Democrats.” – John Atcheson

via: christopherstreet

Our dying Empire

Posted on by

Welcome to the Asylum | Chris Hedges – On the endemic political cynicism of dying empire:

When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life. Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on hedonism, accumulate vast fortunes through exploitation, speculation, fraud and theft. Reality, at the end, gets unplugged. We live in an age when news consists of Snooki’s pregnancy, Hulk Hogan’s sex tape and Kim Kardashian’s denial that she is the naked woman cooking eggs in a photo circulating on the Internet. Politicians, including presidents, appear on late night comedy shows to do gags and they campaign on issues such as creating a moon colony. “[A]t times when the page is turning,” Louis-Ferdinand Celine wrote in “Castle to Castle,” “when History brings all the nuts together, opens its Epic Dance Halls! hats and heads in the whirlwind! Panties overboard!”

The quest by a bankrupt elite in the final days of empire to accumulate greater and greater wealth, as Karl Marx observed, is modern society’s version of primitive fetishism. This quest, as there is less and less to exploit, leads to mounting repression, increased human suffering, a collapse of infrastructure and, finally, collective death. It is the self-deluded, those on Wall Street or among the political elite, those who entertain and inform us, those who lack the capacity to question the lusts that will ensure our self-annihilation, who are held up as exemplars of intelligence, success and progress. The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression—which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide. Welcome to the asylum.

Read the whole thing →

Political contributions to the death of our Empire: The “PRO-LIFE” Ryan-Republican-Romney budget proposal:

The House budget for fiscal year 2013 tasks congressional committees to “reduce lower-priority spending” to avert military cuts.

When they say “lower-priority spending”, they mean spending on programs that nourish children and provide safety nets, like foster care or child abuse prevention.

Source: americanprogress.org