The story started out as that perfect piece of pop-culture fluff that the media swoons over: “American mommy gives birth to healthy octuplets.”
Cue the predictable, dizzy motorcade of daytime TV interviews, the Star Magazine family photo exclusive and a TLC documentary mini-series. The whole affair was boning up to be slightly more boring and obvious than the Grammy Awards.
The only thing that saved this story from the stale ashtray of insipidness was the octuplets’ mother, Nadya Suleman. As facts about her started to trickle out into the media, it slowly dawned on anyone paying attention that Suleman’s oddball obsession with babies and her overly-plastic-surgeried face approached Michael Jackson-level weirdness.
Here was a 33-year-old single mom of 14 – the octuplets plus six older ones – who had conceived all of them through in vitro fertilization (IVF). She was also an unemployed graduate student who lived with her parents and her legion of fatherless children in a cramped, three-bedroom house in
Once Suleman began doing TV interviews, her story officially went from cutesy to creepy. On the TODAY Show, the “Octomom” – as the New York Post so aptly renamed her – told Ann Curry that “all I wanted was children. I wanted to be a mom. That’s all I ever wanted in my life.”
Suleman wanted them so bad, in fact, that she didn’t bother waiting until she had enough money to support them.
According to financial planner Stacy Francis, it will cost at least $1.5 million to raise all 14 children until the age of 18. And that’s not factoring in the cost of extras, such as toys, entertainment or college. At the moment, three of Suleman’s older children have disabilities, and it is likely that some of the octuplets may suffer from this as well.
But don’t worry, the fiscally responsible taxpayer is there to help her out.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Suleman, “is receiving $490 a month in food stamps” in addition to federal assistance. Somehow, despite being unemployed, the single mom has also been able to afford regular manicures, a publicist, a $500-a-week nanny, a nose-job and lip surgery to make her look like her idol, Angelina Jolie.
Remember, this was not a woman who unexpectedly discovered that she was carrying Octuplets after a night of haphazard intimacy with a boyfriend. She deliberately and selfishly had herself impregnated with multiples, knowing that she couldn’t financially care for them and could barely support the other six children she had at home.
And taxpayers not only have to respect her irresponsible decision, they have to finance it as well.
Now take the amount of money Americans are paying for Suleman’s children and multiply it by billions. This is what the country is spending to subsidize equally irresponsible and selfish state politicians.
Instead of asking for handouts, Gov. Deval Patrick should be cutting unnecessary institutions like the Turnpike Authority. Last year, state Republicans called on Patrick to dissolve the Turnpike Authority, calling it a “stream of fiscal mismanagement and wasteful spending.” The government agency is in an enormous amount of debt, and drew the ire of tax reformers after it was revealed that its toll-takers were earning over $100,000 a year.
Even before the recent stimulus package was passed by the
The people who are going to lose the most from the new government stimulus program are taxpayers in states with responsible budget management. They are the ones who will end up paying higher taxes in order to bail out the states mired in wasteful spending.
Not only is the stimulus unfair to the sensible taxpayers, it also refuses to hold states accountable for their problematic spending practices.
Why should the mature, dutiful taxpayer be expected to be accountable for the irresponsible decisions of others?
Heedless and self-absorbed people like Suleman believe that taxpayers have an obligation to pay for their flighty exploits. On Suleman’s website, professional photos of her eight preemies are colorfully displayed beneath a large “Donation” button – allowing people to send money directly to her bank account via credit card or PayPal. This is a woman on federal assistance who could never understand what the average family goes through: the budgeting and saving, and quietly going without unnecessary indulgences – no vacation this year, or bagged lunches for work every day so their kid can have a new pair of sneakers.
Will Suleman ever even know how much eight pairs of sneakers cost? Or will her burdens always be passed onto the shoulders of someone else?
Somehow, at some point, younger people in this country stopped holding themselves, their fellow citizens and their elected officials accountable for their personal actions. Welcome to the new generation, the bailout nation.
Alana Goodman is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at angoodma@student.umass.edu.
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