Comments and queries after specific sections:
----- Original Message -----
From: Margaret Coleman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Michael Perelman's question about the changes in welfare laws in reprinted
below.
Actually, the welfare laws changed more in the summer of 1996 with the
passage of PROWRA
(I forget the exact name, something like personal responsibility and work
recovery act)
than they have since welfare was instituted under the Roosevelt
administration.
Basically, PROWRA set up a few loose federal guidelines within which states
are allowed to
pass their own welfare laws. The states receive block grants for welfare,
and once they
have followed the minimum federal guidelines, they get to keep the 'extra'
money (within
some limits) to use as they want. The basic rules are now:
COMMENT:
Isn't the ability to keep "extra" money an invitation to cut back welfare
and use the block grants as
a means to fund programs quite unrelated to helping those needing welfare?
This is perverse.
1. There is a lifetime cap on cash benefits (now called TANF) of 5 years.
Once you have
collected 5 years of benefits, you are entitled to no more, no matter what
the need.
COMMENT: So what happens to those in need who are ineligible. Do they turn
to crime? Might as well.
2. You have to be working within two years to collect benefits.
COMMENT: I gather this is a minimal requirement. States can make the
regulations more stringent but not less.
I assume this means not that the person must be working to collect benefits
for more than two years, not that if the person is not working after two
years that the benefits must be paid back!
That sounds pretty simple, but with every state passing its own laws, there
simply is no
nationwide welfare program any more. For instance:
** more than 2/3 of all states require work within less than two years, with
1/3 requiring
immediate work. (so, in NYC, if you don't push that broom for the parks
department, you
don't get benefits)
COMMENT: Well I see nothing wrong with the state providing jobs rather
than welfare, it is the rates of pay that would be significant. I gather too
that in some cases welfare workers are doing work for minimal pay that used
to be done by unionised workers. What of persons who are not fit to work for
whatever reason? Or persons who require child care?
**About half of all states (including California with the largest caseload
in the nation)
have passed family caps. So recipients who have additional children are not
entitled to
benefits for those children.
COMMENT: I assume that this is so poor parents will not become rich
through having children!!! It is a wonder they have not thought of making
benefits contingent upon getting tubes tied or whatever after x number of
children.
To get a sense of the complexities, The Urban Institute has an excellent
welfare rules
database which lists all the state by state permutations of the new rules.
Essentially,
the system is now so complex that hundreds of Ph Ds are studying them
nationwide and can't
make head nor tails out of who's collecting, who's eligible or what. So one
of the
legacies of the Clinton administration is a perfect bureaucratic smokes
screen which
completely covers the extent of poverty in this country.
COMMENT: This is an interesting phenomenon in a country where politicians
continually make bleating noises about the necessity to cut down on bloated
bureaucracies. At least this keeps some academics feeding from the public
trough of research funds as well as generating jobs for bureaucrats.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
