Posted on 02/25/2007 1:56:05 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - The welfare state is bigger than ever despite a decade of policies designed to wean poor people from public aid.
The number of families receiving cash benefits from welfare has plummeted since the government imposed time limits on the payments a decade ago. But other programs for the poor, including Medicaid, food stamps and disability benefits, are bursting with new enrollees.
The result, according to an Associated Press analysis: Nearly one in six people rely on some form of public assistance, a larger share than at any time since the government started measuring two decades ago.
Critics of the welfare overhaul say the numbers offer fresh evidence that few former recipients have become self-sufficient, even though millions have moved from welfare to work. They say the vast majority have been forced into low-paying jobs without benefits and few opportunities to advance.
"If the goal of welfare reform was to get people off the welfare rolls, bravo," said Vivyan Adair, a former welfare recipient who is now an assistant professor of women's studies at Hamilton College in upstate New York. "If the goal was to reduce poverty and give people economic and job stability, it was not a success."
Proponents of the changes in welfare say programs that once discouraged work now offer support to people in low-paying jobs. They point to expanded eligibility rules for food stamps and Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor, that enable people to keep getting benefits even after they start working.
"I don't have any problems with those programs growing, and indeed, they were intended to grow," said Ron Haskins, a former adviser to President Bush on welfare policy.
"We've taken the step of getting way more people into the labor force and they have taken a huge step toward self-sufficiency. What is the other choice?" he asked.
In the early 1990s, critics contended the welfare system encouraged unemployment and promoted single-parent families. Welfare recipients, mostly single mothers, could lose benefits if they earned too much money or if they lived with the father of their children.
Major changes in welfare were enacted in 1996, requiring most recipients to work but allowing them to continue some benefits after they started jobs. The law imposed a five-year limit on cash payments for most people in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, or TANF. Some states have shorter time limits.
Nia Foster fits the pattern of dependence on government programs. She stopped getting cash welfare payments in the late 1990s and has moved from one clerical job to another. None provided medical benefits.
The 32-year-old mother of two from Cincinnati said she supports her family with help from food stamps and Medicaid.
Foster said she did not get any job training when she left welfare. She earned her high-school equivalency last year at a community college.
"If you want to get educated or want to succeed, the welfare office don't care," Foster said. "I don't think they really care what you do once the benefits are gone."
Foster now works in a tax office, a seasonal job that will end after April 15. She hopes to enroll at the University of Cincinnati this spring and would like to study accounting. She is waiting to find out if she qualifies for enough financial aid to cover tuition.
"I like data processing, something where it's a bunch of invoices and you have to key them in," Foster said. "I want to be an accountant so bad."
Shannon Stanfield took a different, less-traveled path from welfare, thanks to a generous program that offered her a chance to get a college education.
Stanfield, 36, was cleaning houses to support her two young children four years ago when she learned about a program for welfare recipients at nearby Hamilton College, a private liberal arts school in Clinton, N.Y.
"At the time I was living in a pretty run-down apartment," said Stanfield, who was getting welfare payments, Medicaid and food stamps. "It wasn't healthy."
The program, called the Access Project, accepts about 25 welfare-eligible parents a year. Hamilton waives tuition for first-year students and the program supplements financial aid in later years. Students get a host of social and career services, including help finding internships and jobs and financial assistance in times of crisis.
About 140 former welfare recipients have completed the program and none still relies on government programs for the poor, said Adair, the Hamilton professor who started the Access Project in 2001.
Stanfield, who still gets Medicaid and food stamps, plans to graduate in May with a bachelor's degree in theater. She wants to be a teacher.
"I slowly built up my confidence through education," Stanfield said. "I can't honestly tell you how much it has changed my life."
Programs such as the Access Project are not cheap, which is one reason they are rare. Tuition and fees run about $35,000 a year at Hamilton, and the program's annual budget is between $250,000 and $500,000, Adair said.
In 2005, about 5.1 million people received monthly welfare payments from TANF and similar state programs, a 60 percent drop from a decade before.
But other government programs grew, offsetting the declines.
About 44 million people — nearly one in six in the country — relied on government services for the poor in 2003, according to the most recent statistics compiled by the Census Bureau. That compares with about 39 million in 1996.
Also, the number of people getting government aid continues to increase, according to more recent enrollment figures from individual programs.
Medicaid rolls alone topped 45 million people in 2005, pushed up in part by rising health care costs and fewer employers offering benefits. Nearly 26 million people a month received food stamps that year.
Cash welfare recipients, by comparison, peaked at 14.2 million people in 1994.
There is much debate over whether those leaving welfare for work should be offered more opportunities for training and education, so they do not have to settle for low-paying jobs that keep them dependent on government programs.
"We said get a job, any job," said Rep. Jim McDermott (news, bio, voting record), chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees welfare issues. "And now we expect them to be making it on these minimum-wage jobs."
McDermott, D-Wash., said stricter work requirements enacted last year, when Congress renewed the welfare overhaul law, will make it even more difficult for welfare recipients to get sufficient training to land good-paying jobs.
But people who support the welfare changes say former recipients often fare better economically if they start working, even in low-paying jobs, before entering education programs.
"What many people on TANF need first is the confidence that they can succeed in the workplace and to develop the habits of work," said Wade Horn, the Bush administration's point man on welfare overhaul.
"Also, many TANF recipients didn't have a lot of success in the classroom," Horn said. "If you want to improve the confidence of a TANF recipient, putting them in the classroom, where they failed in the past, that is not likely to increase their confidence."
Horn noted that employment among poor single mothers is up and child poverty rates are down since the welfare changes in 1996, though the numbers have worsened since the start of the decade.
Horn, however, said he would like to see local welfare agencies provide more education and training to people who have already moved from welfare to work.
"I think more attention has to be paid to helping those families move up the income scale, increasing their independence of other government welfare programs," Horn said.
"The true goal of welfare to work programs should be self-sufficiency."
On the Net:
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/acf_services.html walia
Medicaid: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/home/medicaid.asp
Food stamp program: http://www.fns.usda.gov/fsp/
Supplemental Security Income:
http://www.ssa.gov/notices/supplemental-secur ity-income/
The Access Project: http://www.hamilton.edu/college/access/index. html
. "I don't think they really care what you do once the benefits are gone."
Actually, "they" didn't care while you were getting benefits/hand-out....
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Yeah, let's hear it for 'Rats and RINOs.
Government wants people to be dependent up upon it for food, shelter, and security. Sadly that's where it now derives its power.
Import a million plus fertile, uneducated third worlders every year and then wonder why the welfare rolls keep climbing.
NY Legislature Cuts Gov's Medicaid Cost Reductions
"At a cost of more than $45 billion per year, New York State spends about 43 percent more on Medicaid than Texas and Florida combined, despite having a total population only about half the size ..."
"If you want to get educated or want to succeed, the welfare office don't care," Foster said. "I don't think they really care what you do once the benefits are gone."
No, Ms. Foster, YOU have to care.
Dammit, you can drag a person to opportunity but you just can't freaking make them think.
For 11 years I worked for the Alaska dept. of Labor. Much of the work was with getting welfare recipiants to work. You would not believe the lengths people will go to in order to avoid getting a job and off the public dime. It finall began to work when we began reducing the monthlyhandout amount if they failed to show up for appointments. Many would/will sit around on their ass thinking the system will change back to the way it was in the good old days before they reach the time limit and only get serious when they finally realize that, yes indeedy, they WILL be cut off when the time expires. The fact is, most states will bend over backwards to give you money for training/eduction. But they have to want it.
This thing burns me up so bad.
I had a fantastic opportunity to go to college, which I did for both standard and summer sessions, 21 units a quarter, no partying, no boyfriends, no friends, so I could make full use of what I had.
My husband didn't do well enough in high school to go to university, so he joined the Marines, saved his money, took correspondence courses, and is now working full time and going to school full time to get his engineering degree.
It simply makes me furious that silly bitches like those in this article are whining about how they're not being GIVEN enough, how people aren't MAKING them get educations, how they're not having opportunity handed to them on a silver platter while people like me are going without and delaying having children and working really freaking hard to make a life while they crap out babies and await their handouts.
I'm going to go breath deeply away from the computer for a while now.
Jeez...a Mexican illegal comes here and moves rocks for a landscaping contractor, saves his money, buys some machines, and applies what he's learned running his own business; while the welfare guys bitch and moan about having to move rocks, and buy intoxicants to take the edge off the humiliation. And they got well paid, self-appointd advocates making their case, that they oughta start at the top....or advance based upon the time on a job doing sub-par work...or calling in sick. Sheesh.
An education doesn't appear to be all that important, as we can clearly see that you don't need one to work for the AP.
No, we expect them to become self-sufficient. The minimum-wage jobs you so disparage are just the first rung on the ladder. As they gain work experience and training, they can do better.
People will never become self-sufficient if the government steps in and pays them for not working. Hence, the best thing we can say is, "Get a job, any job."
Sad state of affairs. It is only going to get worse. I will be glad when Atlas Shrugs. I hope I get to live and see it happen. Personally I am tired of working for the State.
If you want more of something, subsidize it.
When the economy tanks and people lose their jobs, homes, and savings, they become dependent on government handouts and eventually become addicted to government. And, like drug addicts who keep going back to their dealers for a fix, government addicts will likewise keep going back to THEIR dealers. That would be the Democrat politicians.
The Democrats don't care about the war or any other issue peripheral to their agenda of turning America into a French-style, secular-socialist welfare state, except insofar as that issue can be spun for political advantage. Their ultimate (and ultimately unreachable) goal is to finally create what old-time Austrian economists called "the socialist man", and a society in which all men will ALWAYS put the good of the community (or "village") ahead of their own welfare. In short, the socialist "true believers" actually think they can short-circuit nature itself. (Perhaps this is why Democrats have such an affinity for unnatural people and acts, and hate religion so much?)
And, of course, the reason the Democrats have relentlessly pursued this agenda since FDR is because it is their means to a selfish end of attaining and holding political office. (There's lots and lots of perks, power, and priviledge that comes with high elective office, you betcha!) The Democrats are pushers of the drug known as "government" and they naturally want to create as many addicts ("base voters") as possible.
Unfortunately for this once great nation, they have been winning (oh-so-gradually, but surely winning) for quite some time now.
It makes me mad, too. I have a very close relative who is a single mother on welfare. I have offered many times to tutor her to get her GED and offered to pay for the GED fee (so she can qualify for some training). She is just not interested. I feel bad sometimes that the government pays for her. It's not that I want her not to have benefits. But, as long as the government will pay her housing and a little food, she will not do anything to be self-sufficient, and consequently is teaching her children to perpetuate this kind of life. The government should absolutely require welfare recipients to complete GED classes and then at least spend a few hours a week earning some money so they can develop job skills.
So a former welfare queen bettered herself, yet pontificates that it can't be done. Does anyone but me see the irony here?
Good post. My own story is very different, but I've reached the same conclusion about the culture of entitlement.
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