Welfare fight on the radar

In August 1996 President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, thereby repudiating the federal government's 60-year commitment to provide for the well-being of the nation's poor children.

His action ended the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, enacted as part of the Social Security Act in 1935, and gave the right wing its first victory in its continuing attack on the Social Security system.

Under the 1996 "reform" AFDC was replaced by Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF). Gone was any pretense of entitlement as states were given carte blanche authority to establish eligibility requirements, benefit levels and administrative practices - even whether to use the federal money for TANF.

Since then, caseloads have dropped by more than half in 29 states, as more than two million families have been driven off the public assistance rolls and forced into low-paying jobs. As a result, the welfare poor have been added to the ranks of the working poor. Millions of poor families have become even poorer.

Sometime between now and Sept. 30, 2002, Congress will review and revise the 1996 legislation - a process known as "reauthorization." Already the debate has begun over what - and if - change is necessary.

On the one hand are those who opposed the changes in 1996 and charge that the main accomplishment of "reform" has been to drive millions of poor families into the ranks of the working poor while doing little to reduce poverty.

On the other side are the supporters of the present system who point with pride at its "success" and urge even more draconian measures.



Those against

Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund, spoke for those who refuse to measure the success of TANF by the number of families lopped from the public assistance rolls.

"We have nothing to brag about," she told a congressional committee Aug. 1.

"More than 12 million children live in poverty and are more likely to be poor today that they were 20 or 30 years ago. The overall poverty rate was 3 percent higher in 1999 than in 1969. These are not acts of God but are the result of moral and political choices."

Although they do not discount the number of new entrants to the labor market, critics warn that the 1996 reforms took place in a unique set of economic circumstances - the longest post-war "boom," an increase in the minimum wage and expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit - and, therefore, have not been tested.

But, they warn, that test is coming as another unique set of circumstances - the five-year lifetime limit on TANF, combined with growing layoffs in the low-wage service industries - looms on the horizon as the economy sputters and threatens an even steeper downturn.



Those for

But none of this bothers the true believers, among them Robert Rector, a policy analyst for the right-wing Heritage Foundation, who appeared before a congressional committee discussing welfare reauthorization last March.

Rector responded to critics of the 1996 law with his ideological guns blazing. Charging that the War on Poverty had "created an expensive welfare system that encouraged dependence and penalized work and marriage," he urged that states be even more ruthless in reducing the number of families on welfare.

Unlike welfare advocacy organizations that credit the economy of the 1990s for much of the reduction of the welfare rolls, Rector was adamant in giving the 1996 reforms full credit.

"It is welfare reform, not economic conditions, that has produced the huge decline in dependence in the mid-1990s," he said. "Declines in dependence are directly and strongly linked to the rigor of state workfare policies."

Rector was aggressive in pushing another favorite right-wing theme: "Out-of-wedlock childbearing and single parenthood are the principal causes of child poverty and welfare dependence," he said, blaming all of society's ills on the children of never-married women.

Rector said reauthorization of the 1996 program should encourage marriage, require work and control costs. "In the future," he said, "five to ten percent of federal TANF funds should be allocated to pro-marriage programs."

He said reauthorization legislation should require states to have 90 percent of their adult TANF recipients engaged in work activities and off the rolls by the year 2010 (The present requirement is 50 percent.) Rector capped his testimony by calling for a 10 percent reduction of future TANF authorization levels.



Cut at all costs

It matters not if reform should be credited or blamed for the present situation. One fact is undeniable: Reduction of the public assistance rolls was high on the list of the right wing when its representatives crafted the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.

With that as the measure, it has succeeded beyond all expectations - and for good reason. If applicants were admitted to the program, many of them later became victims of the "if you can't keep 'em off, kick 'em off' philosophy of TANF administrators and were "sanctioned" off the rolls later.

State welfare offices became, in effect, employment offices. In New York City's "Job Centers" applicants are encouraged to look for work or to seek support from relatives or other sources.

Those who persist in applying for benefits are required to participate in a rigorous 30-day "job-readiness" program. As a result, fewer than half of those who apply are enrolled in the city's TANF program.

More often than not, those with the fortitude to persist come up against the "hassle factor" - arbitrary policies and practices meant to discourage families from remaining in the program: Scheduling appointments during working hours and penalizing those who don't show by denying all or part of the family's cash benefits.

Failure to inform applicants who are denied TANF benefits that they may still be eligible for food stamps, childcare, Medicaid or other benefits. Failure to provide an interpreter for applicants needing assistance.

According to a Texas survey of former recipients, about one-quarter said important factors for leaving the program were "unfriendly caseworkers" or "new program requirements."

About 60 percent of those responding to a South Carolina survey said they felt "hassled" and 13 percent said that is why they left. About a third said the state's program "wants to get rid of people, not help them."

A recent report by the California-based Applied Research Center said that "There is strong evidence of discrimination" in the administration of TANF.

"People of color routinely encounter insults and disrespect as they seek to navigate the various programs that make up the welfare system. Women are subject to sexual inquisitions in welfare offices, and sexual harassment at their assigned work activities.

People whose first language is not English encounter a serious language barrier when they have contact with the welfare system, in spite of federal protections designed to lift that barrier. Eligible immigrants and refugees are often told to go back where they came from when they try to get help for themselves or their U.S. citizen children."

The report's authors said, "Significantly more people of color than white respondents were required to perform 'workfare'" (i.e., to work not for wages, but for a welfare check.).

"More than a third of all women experienced personally invasive behavior from welfare office officials, especially in regards to the applicants' sex lives," they said.



The way it is

Luz Santana, a leader of Vecinos Unidos (Neighbors United) in Hartford, Conn. and mother of two pre-teen boys, knows all about the indignities heaped on mothers who have to battle to keep their families together and their children fed in the harsh world of today's public assistance system. "We have to fight," she said. "After all, we are mothers - it is our children who suffer."

Santana spoke bitterly of questions such as "why don't go back where you came from?" often asked of those born in another country. "They seem to think that just because we have a green card they can vent all their prejudices. People do anything they can to avoid these indignities, even going to a church food bank for food instead of submitting to the hassle of applying for food stamps."

Santana said the State of Connecticut had conducted a study of the income required for a family to reach a "Self Sufficiency Standard" - the no-frills cost of adequate food, clothing and shelter required for a family to live without public assistance.

"It would require a job paying .00/hr. for a single mother with two children who lives in Hartford to meet that standard. If she lived in Stamford where all those rich people live, it would take .00," Santana said. "Most of the women who leave public assistance and do get a job are only making - an hour with no benefits. Only a very few get as much as - and it takes ."



Then and now

The right wing had carefully and patiently laid the ground for their 1996 attack. Former New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan set the stage for what was to follow with his 1965 book Beyond the Melting Pot.

Next came President Nixon's Family Assistance Plan in 1969 that would have replaced AFDC by giving each family a yearly grant of ,600. That was followed by Ronald Reagan's attack on "Welfare Queens" who drove Cadillacs and used food stamps to buy vodka.

By 1996, the political atmosphere had become so polluted that only Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn) of the seven Senate Democrats up for reelection voted "No" when the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act came up for a final vote in the summer of 1996 and there was little public outrage when Clinton signed the legislation into law.

But that was then and this is now. For the past two years, welfare rights organizations have been organizing and reaching out to allies in preparation for Congressional review in 2002.

Today the welfare rights movement is bigger, broader and better organized, as witnessed by the "Hear our Voices - Reduce Poverty, Not Caseloads" briefing set for Sept. 11 in Washington.

The briefing, to which members of Congress and their staff have been invited, is sponsored by the AFL-CIO, GrassRoots Organizing for Welfare Leadership, the United Church of Christ, National Immigration Law Center and the Applied Research Center.

Sponsors also include the Congressional Progressive and Hispanic Caucuses and the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support. A host of organizations from across the country will participate in four days of meetings and lobbying preceding the policy briefing.

According to organizers, the briefing will outline demands for TANF reauthorization including:

Access to benefit programs regardless of race, gender, disability or immigrant status and federal monitoring to assure compliance with civil rights laws, fair labor standards and health and safety protections.

Family support, without regard to marital status, an end to sanctioning families headed by single parents and by allowing two-parent low-income families to qualify for TANF.

Replace workfare with education and training opportunities.

The Sept. 11 event is part of a strategy for mobilizing the troops during the reauthorization process. Organizers are already planning town hall meetings in key congressional districts later this fall.


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The facts of the matter

While public assistance rolls have declined by more than 50 percent since 1996, the child poverty rate fell by only five percentage points, from 21.8 percent to 16.9 percent during the same period.

In 1994, 62 percent of poor children were receiving AFDC assistance; by 1998 only 43 percent of poor children were receiving TANF assistance.

Nearly one fifth of families who were cut from the rolls were never employed and only about 60 percent are working full-time.

Median wages for those leaving welfare average .61/hour.

Studies show a 58 percent poverty rate among "leavers."

The average income of the bottom 20 percent of female-headed families has declined since 1994 because losses in public benefits - food stamps, childcare and Medicaid - have been as large or greater than gains in earnings.

More single mothers than married mothers are working today, many with infants less than a year old.

The teen birth rate dropped by 20 percent between 1991 and 1999, a record low for the nation.

At its height, combined state and federal spending for AFDC never exceeded billion, less than 4 percent of all federal expenses.

In 1997, the Fortune 500 companies had total profits of 5 billion. They also collected billion in corporate welfare from the federal government in the form of tax breaks and subsidies.

The average monthly AFDC benefit declined from 3 in 1970 to 7 in 1995 as measured in 1995 dollars.

In 1996 some 1,429,000 people in Illinois were living in poverty. Five years later that number had declined by only 54,000, despite the fact that 113,000 households had been driven from the ranks of those receiving TANF assistance and, supposedly, into the workforce.

Cash benefits can be reduced - or even denied - to families in 37 states for minor infractions of arbitrary rules.