Ken Hanly wrote:
> 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.
>
Yes, this is the way block grants (as opposed to federal entitlements) work.
When money goes to the states freed of most federal strictures, other, more
powerful groups are likely to get their hands on it, if it is spent at all.
> COMMENT: So what happens to those in need who are ineligible. Do they turn
> to crime? Might as well.
>
The five year limit will be tested in the next recession. In
fact, since the law was implemented in 1997, some recipients will reach their
five year limit next year. When that happens, there will be a significant
increase in homelessness, emergency food lines, and perhaps crime 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?
>
The act exempts 20% of the rolls in each state. It also says that by 2002,
50% of all one parent families and 90% of all two parent families must
participate in work activities.
> 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.
>
>
Under AFDC, a welfare mother in the median state got a $70 a month "raise" for
her third child. This difference of $840 a year is roughly equivalent to the
value of a $2650 deduction for another dependent that other parents get. The
difference is that cash for the poor is stigmatized, while benefits received
through the tax code are not.
> 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.
>
Yes. Like the privatization of social security, the phenomenon of 50 different
welfare bureaucracies under the new law is infinitely more complex than any
administrative mechanism ever associated with AFDC.
Joel Blau
