Just another socialist accomplishment for Obama to hang his hat on:
Prior to reform, the federal government simply gave the states more money for every family they added to the welfare rolls. The predictable result was that the states worked hard to maximize their welfare caseloads in order to maximize the amount of federal funding they could therefore claim. The system had zero incentive to help people make the transition from welfare to work and independence—in fact, the states were financially punished for doing so. The Clinton-Gingrich reforms replaced that bounty-hunter system with a flat rate for each state, based on population and other factors. That gave state-level welfare authorities a better set of incentives, encouraging them to use their resources in the most effective manner and to reserve them for the truly needy.
The results were successful—spectacularly so. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act was followed by reductions in both the number of families on welfare and the rate of poverty. Single women entered the workforce in substantial numbers and the household incomes of former welfare recipients went up. In other words, the incentives to reduce welfare dependence and help people to find work, worked.
Obama, in what is plainly a sop to ACORN and the rest of the “community organizing” gang, is overturning those reforms. Under the provisions in the stimulus bill, states will once again be paid a bounty for expanding their welfare rolls. As reported by Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, the federal government will now pay states 80 percent of the cost for each new family they sign up for welfare. That means that states will get $4 for every $1 they spend. This will leave the main welfare program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), with a funding mechanism similar to the one that supports Medicaid. As Brian Blase argues here, Medicaid’s funding ratio, which gives states $1 to $3 for every dollar they spend, has caused state Medicaid spending to skyrocket. If Medicaid’s dollar-for-dollar model has proved ruinous, Obama’s new $4-to-$1 ratio for welfare will prove, in all likelihood, four times so.
~~~Given that the states will receive $4 from the federal government for every $1 they add to their welfare budgets, even conservative governors will feel pressure to inflate their welfare rolls in order to wring every dollar they can out of Washington. And there are early rumblings about removing the already weak work requirements that rounded out the Clinton-era reforms.
The Democrats are stuffing years’ worth of legislation into their “stimulus” bill. They are operating in the legislative shadows, evading scrutiny and debate, while enacting an expansion of the welfare state that would never survive a more considered process. Obama’s right-hand man, Rahm Emanuel, put it bluntly if cynically: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”
And it all starts Tuesday:
The bill-signing, an unusual event outside of Washington, will be Tuesday at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science in City Park. The president also will give a speech about the economy.
Attendance at the midday event is by invitation only, and all invitations have been distributed.
CNN reported that a senior administration official cited a desire to get “away from the politics of Washington.”
All part of the plan. Working folks being required to subsidize those who do not.
Ch…ch…change!
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Welfare reforms is part of the reason the economy was so robust in the 90s. And today, it is all about getting people on the dole. They need government checks to ensure votes.
have a sister and good friend who work at the local wefare office, they ahve heard some of their “clients”, god forbid we call them leeches, talk about how obama was gonna get them more money. this is such a waste. one “client” was flipping out at my friend because she told her she had been overpaid in childcare benefits for 6 months and that while they wouldn’t seek repayment for the overpayment, they were cutting her from the program. she screamed and yelled and asked what a single mother was to do, told my friend who herself is a single other that she had no idea what it was like to try to work and raise childrent on her own. my friend gets no child support because she and her ex came to an agreement that he would pay all medical and extra curriclar expences and all that kind of stuff, she has the lkids 3/4 of the time. she manages her money and has never had to get the same assitance that she helps others to receive. the lady, if you could call her that, screamed that she would just quit her job and get tanf also, she would go and get her section 8 housing and everything else she was “entitled” to. that is the problem, they think they ar eentitled to the money. crazy and it will only get worse.
I grew up relatively poor. My father spent most of his adult life in prison. My mother worked while I was young, but later decided to become a welfare recipient, playing the victim.
She collected welfare through my 6th grade through high school years. She was also on section 8. Her only real decisions in life were around being near the prisons my father was sent to.
I lived in low incoming housing and housing projects for the poor. I can recall hearing girls talk about turning 16 and getting pregnant to collect a check.
For me, it was the exact opposite. I was so ashamed of where I lived and the fact that my mother was on welfare. To me, it was the driver to get above and beyond where I was. I hated it.
So, fast forward some 20 years later. I live in a nice home. I have a wonderful wife and three beautiful children. I have given back to my community.
And how was this possible? Education. I went to a university. And while I didn’t get my degree due to leaving for the real world, I have done quite well. I paid off my student loans, built a decent savings account and retirement account.
And here we are, subjugating people to the will of the State. The greatest disservice to poor people is welfare. It keeps them in the bottom and makes it hard to get out.
I am surprised that “community leaders” are always about putting people on the government dole. It only creates dependency and not a will to do well on your own. I know, I have been there.
Chipset: WAY TO GO
I grew up as a sharecropper’s son in rural Mississippi, I remember not having a great deal of money, but can never remember being poor. My dad’s oft repeated quote, “Being poor is a state of mind, being broke is just a temporary inconvenience for anyone willing and able to WORK” still rings true..
chipset, you are a fine example of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. good job. i hope some happiness finally came to your mother.
my mother loved her welfare also, she would find every excuse in the world to stay on everytime they tried to cut her off. finally she got a job, when i was 10, then met a guy and married him and turned into a disability slob. i went to live with my dad and stepmom when she remarried. best thing that could have ever happened to me, they taught me hard work and personal accountability were good things. i have a nice house, good husband, great kids and no contact with the sloth who gave birth to me. she is a lazy selfish woman who feels the government owes her. i let her have no conatact with my childrent because i don’t want her choices thrust on them. she loved the welfare, loves the disability and thinks everyone else should pay for her life.
Congratulations to both chip and luva. Well done!
Luva, I have no doubt that you were taught that hard work and personal accountability was your ticket to success. Just reading through your posts I pick up energy, bet you are at full speed at all times.
OT, Worried for Curt. Sheesh!
http://www.the-two-malcontents.com/2009/02/14/will-las-gangs-be-redeemed-with-24-million-mayors-plan/
@Missy: sometimes its fullspeed sideways…lol. i may not be college educated, but i read alot, retain info, and have alot of lofe experiences. makes for fun.
I had the pleasure of encountering an able-bodied minority youth that was reportedly selling narcotics. He had 3 one hundred dollar bills in his pocket and food stamps. I asked him what the stamps were for and he said to me like I was idiot that it was for food. I then asked him what the 3 one hundred dollar bills were for. He told me ‘other stuff’. The irony was lost on him.
Another able-bodied minority narcotics possessor told me when I inquired about the food stamps and the pocket full of cash that, and I quote: EVERYBODY GETS FOOD STAMPS. Maybe in his world, but I don’t get any food stamps. When i told him that he looked at me in confusion.
My parents never had a lot of money, but my dad worked hard and was the only person in his family to go to college, back in the ’50s. My mom never went to college, but worked as a cashier and as a secretary wherever she could. My parents weren’t perfect, but they were great examples for me and my three brothers. All of us have gone to college; one is a System’s Analyst, one a pediatrician, and the other (still in school) an electrician. I worked as an electrical engineer for 28 years until having to go on disability four years ago due to inactable chronic, severe head pain.
My wife is a public school teaching assistant for Special Education (which pays just enough to cover medical insurance for us and our two kids, with literally a few hundred dollars left over per month. Basically, we live frugally on my Social Security and Disability Insurance payments, and manage to save a very little bit of money most months.
I hate it! If I were feeling just a little bit better, I would go back to work, even in significant pain. In fact, the last two to three years I worked were spent in serious pain, often with an ice pack stuck to my head most of the day. But even with that difficulty, I’d much rather be working and contributing to society instead of being a parasite.
Obviously, I speak only for myself, and I understand how some people have been beaten down by life to where they see no future. But throwing money at poorly run systems infested with corruption at multiple levels is both an easy way out for politicians, and also a politically expedient method for ensuring votes come election time.
Our political system has really let me down, but I’m not going down without a fight! I have been making a pest of myself at the offices of my elected officials with phone calls and emails. It may not make a helluva big difference in the grand scheme of things, but seeing my two teenage kids taking an interest in “carrying the torch” at least allows me to sleep at night, secure in the knowledge that they’re learning to question politicians’ actions critically and with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Jeff
Cut and pasted from another comment thread because it makes so many good points.
If you examine it you really have to work hard to be in dire straits here.
At the lowest income levels people still eat and cloth and maintain their life far above the standards in third world countries.
Where is the socialist mandate that all should be equalized. Did the person with more wealth keep you from eating today or going to a movie or watching your tv show you chose.
Wasted class envy.
I will tell you what I see via my church assistance programs.
You walk into a rented house that would have to be organized for two weeks to compete with the county dump. Something somewhere in the place crawled up an died under a bed or couch and hasn’t been dealt with. An open bucket with 20 or so disposable diapers and flies and cockroaches having a picnic. Sometimes just a cardboard box the latest new video game machine came home from the store in.
A brand new monster sized microwave or two, a flat screen tv or two 30 inches minimum and likely larger. At least one half a room filling projection tv with a couch 2 feet away for ‘good viewing’, Satellite TV and Cable to have ‘all the options’ milk crates stacked against the wall with about 500 to a 1000 cds and dvd’s minimum.
A stove and refrigerator with more grease and oil than my auto service shop has.
Just momma and granny and daughters and a bunch of stair step kids and multiple video game machines for all the bedrooms and tennis shoes that run the price of a modest prom gown.
But they are on the receiving end of food supplements weekly ,since their food stamps never seem to go far enough. Momma is telling the 12 year old daughter how she needs to get with the program birthin babies to bring more money into the house.
A couple of days later you make a stop by a little store down the street to gas up and buy a pack of smokes and a gallon of milk and momma and three of her daughters are outside the store offering a pay for play bed and breakfast family package special group flight discount. Buy two days and get one free!
Thanks Luva and Missy.
For me, my mother was the perfect example of how not to be. In the end, she found her “calling” if you will. She worked for the Federal government. You know, do as little as possible for as long as possible. She also had a stint at the DMV. You know, big lines, time to go to lunch.
She passed away about 2 years ago. And right before that it was all about trying to get paid for staying home for a disability she had. Of course, my thoughts were a little different than hers. But, I am thankful for the time she got to spend with my boys before she passed away.
I am am forever grateful for the lessons she inadvertently taught me.
As a side note, my first knowledge of politics was in second grade, as Ronald Reagan won in 1980. My mother let me stay up to watch the returns. She asked who I was rooting for. I told her, “Reagan”. She couldn’t quite, for the life of her, figure out why I would want that old man for President.
I couldn’t answer her at the time. But, I believe the world is a much better place because of Reagan.