Welfare-To-Nothing

[Guest guest]

Welfare-To-Nothing

 

Heather Boushey

 

July 10, 2006

 

Heather Boushey is a senior economist for the Center for Economic and Policy

Research.

 

Last week, while most of us were preoccupied by what to bring to the Fourth

of July barbeque, the Bush administration quietly made a number of rule

changes that will make life harder for the poorest among us. The

administration

claims that the new rules will promote “self-sufficiency,†but it is

probably

closer to the truth to say that they will make harder for poor, single mothers

to balance work and family needs.

 

The new welfare rules set down by the Department of Health and Human

Services last week establish uniform definitions of what constitutes work or

work

preparation activities for welfare recipients, limiting states’ ability to

make these determinations. For example, the new rules require that a welfare

recipient who is in school cannot count their study time towards their work

requirement unless it is done in a supervised study hall. States have no leeway

in interpreting this rule if, for example, the student has small children and

needs to study at home at night after the children go to bed.

 

The administration claims that limiting state flexibility in implementing

work requirements will help families become more self-sufficient, but, in

reality, their actions work in the opposite direction. To be independent,

families

need to be able to be able to work and provide care. Denying families access

to help when they need it most does not make them self-sufficient, it means

they go without.

 

The new rules follow other changes to federal welfare policy that increased

the share of welfare recipients required to participate in work. The Deficit

Reduction Act signed into law in February requires that 50 percent of adults

on welfare are in work activities, which is higher than in earlier

legislation.

 

The administration's move to limit state flexibility implies that the states

have been lax in moving families off welfare. Yet, the truth is that

caseloads have fallen dramatically. In 1994, welfare caseloads hit a height of

14.2

million equal to 5.5 percent of the U.S. population. Since then, caseloads

have fallen to less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, where where they had

been in the late 1960s, before the welfare rights movement.

 

Many mothers who left welfare found employment and the employment rate of

single mothers is now at an historic high. Most who found jobs have a higher

income than they had (or would have had) on welfare, but now, the families left

on welfare are often the hardest to serve. More often than not, these

families need extra help with, for example, getting a high school degree or

learning

English or coping with a disabled parent or child. The new rules gloss over

these barriers to work and mandate a “one size fits all†set of work

activities.

 

It is striking that the Bush administration claims to care about the

integrity of the family but cannot see the harsh realities facing families—

especially millions of poor families—as they try to balance an inflexible

work

environment with their families’ need for care. This administration has

sought to

increase work requirements and touts vapid notions of self-sufficiency, rather

than promoting changes that would make balancing work and family easier on

poor mothers.

 

One of the most glaring examples of this has been the administration’s

reluctance to pair higher work requirements with significant increases in

funding

for childcare. Without access to safe and enriching childcare, where are the

children of poor working mothers? Welfare policy should help and encourage

mothers to be good at both their paid and unpaid jobs.

 

To date, workers in the United States have no statutory right to paid or

unpaid time off when they or their children are sick. The Bureau of Labor

Statistics reports that just about half of service sector workers report having

paid sick days. Without the right to paid sick leave, what happens when a

working mother’s child gets the flu? Employment policy should help workers be

good

parents, not stand in their way.

 

In an Orwellian fashion, the administration refers to the increased work

requirements as increasing self-sufficiency and reducing dependency. But a

parent who must show up in study hall rather than do her homework with her

children around the kitchen table is not less self-sufficient, not more. A

parent

who cannot take a day off to care for a sick child is not meeting her

family’s

needs. It’s time this administration stopped talking about self-sufficiency

and sits down to look at the actual, rather than imagined, lives of working

families and developed policies that—sufficiently—foster a workable

balance

between work and family.

 

 

_http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/07/10/welfaretonothing.php_

(http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/07/10/welfaretonothing.php)

 

 

" To be nobody-but-myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to

make me everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being

can fight, and never stop fighting. " -e.e. cummings-