Posted on 12/16/2014 8:43:16 AM PST by Kaslin
If government anti-poverty programs focused on individual outcomes, the results would be those like Lance from Michigan. His father on death row and his mother a prostitute, Lance wandered into Florida and lived behind a dumpster at a 7-11. Hungry, dirty and homeless, he later found a place to live, became sober, got a job and will go to college on a scholarship. We don’t hear stories like that attributed to government assistance.
That is because there are over 90 government welfare programs ranging from cash payments to housing and nutrition that are projected to cost $14 trillion over the next decade. There are so many programs that policymakers cannot even agree on a precise number. Impossible to measure outcomes coherently, this complicated web of spending is a mystery in terms of effectiveness. Here is something that can be measured: so-called “deep-poverty,” or those making less than 50 percent of the poverty level, is at record highs according to the U.S. House Budget Committee.
Welfare reform is urgent if our nation is to see more stories like Lance’s and less statistics that suggest long-term economic decline and mission failure. The last major overhaul of welfare occurred in 1996, replacing Aid to Families with Dependent Children with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Among its major provisions was imposing a time limit on benefits and a work requirement. Before that it was Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty 50 years ago that created the foundation for the modern welfare state. President Bill Clinton famously said in 1996 that “we are ending welfare as we know it.” Yet through the decades we’ve only tinkered with the welfare state as we know it.
The programs must be consolidated and coordinated. Someone like Lance, who was at the bottom of those considered in the throes of deep poverty, is not going to seek out and understand 24 education and job training programs scattered among seven different federal departments and agencies. Moreover, front line workers are trained in following bureaucratic procedures, not developing life-changing solutions based on individual needs and circumstances.
Reform these programs from a system-wide perspective. It is critical to identify barriers to employment including substance abuse, health issues, education, homelessness and poverty itself. The current stove-piped approach makes no sense. In school we learned about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. At the bottom of the pyramid are food and water and realizing one’s full potential is reached at the top after successive needs are met. When someone is hungry they are thinking about their next meal not job training. When someone is addicted to drugs they are thinking about how to get high not food. The types of assistance these people need are inextricably linked, and their lives will remain broken unless all of them are realized.
In this era of record debt and spending, and expected scrutiny on federal budgets, there must be a return on investment. That will remain unknown unless officials develop consistent metrics around core programs. How many people find solutions to housing, hunger, employment and substance abuse? Determine which programs are effective and which ones are not. Replace bureaucratic jargon with meaningful information so elected officials can determine what’s going on. For example, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which is still lauded for its reforms, is a relic of government-speak. Don’t expect to hear how many people this program helped get a job with data tables entitled, “average monthly number of work-eligible individuals engaged in work activities for sufficient hours for the family to count as meeting the all-families work requirement.”
Finally, we must recognize that government will never be able to do certain things. It is well- documented that poverty grips those who come from broken families the most. The non-profit organization I lead in Southwest Florida enables our residents to develop relationships with others going through similar difficulties. Oftentimes, this becomes the family they never had. I look at my job as being a father figure as much as a CEO of an $11.5 million organization. Washington D.C. or Tallahassee provides no guidance on how to fulfill this role, nor can they.
Our organization does not take a penny from the government. Instead we rely on investors. In a given year, our shelters house 1500 individuals and 75 percent of those secure permanent jobs. They invest to transform lives and make the community stronger. Government programs should be no different. Reforming our nation’s anti-poverty programs must result in more success stories, not more government.
No, America is in urgent need of politician reform.
We had Welfare reform — bi-partisan Welfare reform enacted by the 1990s Republican Congress and supported by Bill Clinton, and continued by George Bush. Obama undid a lot of it with a stroke of his pen with he executive orders and expansion of Food Stamps to the middle class and, of course, Obamacare.
That he did. Another one of his executive orders.
Welfare doesn’t need reforming it needs to end.
The net result of the billions the federal government has unconstitutionally spent on anti-poverty programs like LBJ’s “Great Society” has only created more poverty. No matter. Since when did a failed government program ever stop the government from expanding the program and enlarging the bureaucracy?
There’s only one proven Anti-Poverty Program that ACTUALLY WORKS: THE VOLUNTARY COOPERATION OF THE MARKET ECONOMY FREE FROM GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE.
Under the free market economy, more are made wealthy, fewer are poor or below the poverty line with a steady stream moving up from the lower class to the middle class which is strong and from which many continue to move into the upper class, and government has nothing to say about it and doesn’t impede the upward mobility of the people.
The free market economy: THAT’S the welfare reform we need.
Ya think?
Too bad this won’t happen until after CW-II.
Anymore, anything with “reform” attached to it spells trouble.
The problem with “poverty” is what it is compared to. In America, compared to Liberia; there is pretty much no poverty here.
“Poverty” in America will ALWAYS exist as some politician will always latch on to the lower 20% earners as impoverished and blame “the rich” even if said 20% have 50 inch flat screens in their living room, furniture and a roof over their heads. It matters not what anyone earns, in America there will ALWAYS be those that earn less than others and their will always be politicians telling them they are poor and promising to get that stash for them.
As someone up thread said, we have a politician problem.
“Welfare reform” =>
no gov’t charity. Period.
Let the churches do it.
The biggest alteration I would make to the various welfare programs is that anyone applying for welfare should submit to sterilization or castration. It’s patently obvious that for fifty years or more many millions of people have deliberately shunned improving themselves knowing that just having a kid can get them “free” stuff for life. Time to stop it.
We had welfare reform. Obama admitted during the 2007 campaign that he was at first against it, but had since then seen the advantages of the reforms and supported them.
However, within the first months of office, Obama decided to “ignore” most of those reforms.
When Obama leaves the next President can just go back to “normal.” If it happens a whole bunch of people are going to be in for a shock.
Obama is a lying sack and his lawless government will haunt us for a generation.
Why do we need reform? We have a Federal Reserve that can print all the money the money the government needs and suppress interest levels to make it all affordable.
Faith based and private community programs do a much better job of outreach to the needy than the government does.
I’ve got a better, failsafe, permanent improvement:
END WELFARE NOW.
This was the solution followed by the United States during her first 160 years, and it contributed towards America becoming the economic powerhouse that it is today, and it is the ONLY LEGAL solution under the US Constitution.
http://www.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/fr32/speeches/su35fdr.htm
Funny how they omitted this FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) quote from the media:
Approximate 26th Paragraph of his speech
{FDR stands for Franklin Delano Roosevelt - 32nd POTUS, cousin of the real President Roosevelt, Theodore (Teddy) 26th POTUS.}
“The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole our relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of a sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America. Work must be found for able-bodied but destitute workers.
The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief.”
For those who may not know, the word "relief" as used above, would be replaced today 2014, with "welfare."
As I understand, Obamacare members have to ‘re-enlist’ every single year.
How come Welfare recipients don’t have to undergo an annual review for eligibility????
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