3/18/2002
On Monday night, as it happens, I attended a panel discussion on welfare law, so I'm a good bit more educated on the subject than I would be usually. Let's see what I can remember.
Welfare started in 1935, in the face of the Depression, when unemployment rode as high as 17% nationally at one point. In 1996 the single biggest alteration in that history was made to it. It was a disaster--if one interprets welfare law as intended to help poor and unemployed people, keep them fairly safe and healthy, and with luck get them financially on their feet again and happily self-supporting ever after. Fierce limits were imposed on aid, so that it no longer functioned as a safety net--you could only receive aid for so many months in your life, and after that you're on your own, that kind of thing. Not to mention, as was angrily pointed out Monday night, much of the money that was allocated wound up sitting idle all year, at least in New York state. Governor Pataki's man defended this as "saving it for a rainy day," (honestly I'm quoting him) as if today were somehow not rainy enough, as if the money would go further if used on some later date.
You don't see anybody saving highway money for a rainy day, Miriam pointed out when I got home. But of course; SUV drivers complain loudly about money not spent on them. Nobody complains much at all in the name of poor people.
Anyway, the 1996 "reform" is up for renewal now. Bush regards it as a failure as well, but only in degree; he'd like a reform to cut more yet. Why? His own stance is that it only encourages parasitic "welfare mothers," good-for-nothing wastrels who weigh down the public. He's also down on giving welfare to immigrants--even fully naturalized citizens. He says the best thing for welfare recipients is to get to work.
Mind you, and I hadn't known this, when we talk about welfare we're talking about women--not just a majority, but ninety or ninety-five percent of welfare recipients are women. I don't know what percentage have kids. But the Republicans seem to be downright irritated at the idea of tax money being spent on kids who didn't result from decent Christian marriages, so Bush proposes to load the next round of welfare law with marriage incentives--making it financially advisable for women who have quite frequently dragged themselves out of abusive relationships to enter into them again. Meanwhile, many more hours of work are to be required for aid to be given--and remember that studying is not to be considered work. This last was underscored by a college professor on the panel who had previously been on welfare. In 1996 she got a PhD; many other women she knew were forced to drop out of school only months before earning undergraduate degrees.
What Bush would count as work, though, is work performed for less than minimum wage. That was the original proposal; it's been hastily recanted now, under fire.
Do we believe that working menial jobs for dirt pay will be more helpful to welfare recipients in the long term? Do we believe this is what will help them out of the welfare cycle for good, more than higher education might?
I do not. I can't help but notice, though, that there are some in the world who might indeed profit from an increase in the availability of desperate people left to choose between working for almost nothing and starving on absolutely nothing.
Others dislike George's proposals, which happily are taking a beating. Here's a substantially better idea.
This is only one program; the proposed budget is a bonanza of cuts, against which the Democrats seem little disposed to take a stand. The EPA, of course, is to be cut savagely--and again that should be a pleasant boon to the world's richest and most voluminous polluters. Not only does it save them the hassle of fighting in court for the privilege of leaving their industrial messes for others to clean up, it also shackles their chief foe in bold new ventures like opening [Alaska] to oil drilling--and all the permanent settlement and development that goes with it. I'm coming to that.