Let’s learn more about welfare

It is Caregiver.com Weekends once again. This essay was written by one of the few people I look up to, love, and respect in both the world of politics and in my personal life. She's not just a good friend but my muse as her opinions have often crept into my posts from time to time. She's a tireless activist for the rights of women and their right to be treated as equals in all facets of life. She's a liberated woman in the sense that she recognizes that caring for ones child or family members, as women often do, is just as important work as those whom work in the professional fields of medicine, law, computers, etc. I can't say enough good things about so I might as well let her essay do the talking. Without further ado, my friend and fellow social activist, Diane Pagen:

This week’s lesson: the absurdity and cruelty of welfare benefit amounts

Since the average American gets his scant information on the welfare program (official name TANF—Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) from the news media, and sound bytes of government officials, his overall impression may be that welfare helps people by giving them money to survive and helping them to find jobs. But what is really going on is quite different from what you may have gleaned. We’d like to give you some information to help you create a more informed opinion.

The average monthly welfare benefit of a single parent and two children in New York City is $577 per month (not everyone gets that much). Let’s see, $577 x 12 months= $5, 924. The federal poverty line for a family of three (one adult, two kids) has been drawn at $15,260. So, welfare policymakers aim to help a family, and expect them to get on the road to “self-sufficiency,” living on 35 percent of the poverty level. It has to be noted as well, that the official poverty line is considered by most to be grossly inaccurate because it assumes that housing costs alone use up only 25-30 percent of a families income—that is hardly accurate in 2004 in the United States.

How can one reasonably be expected to live on $5, 924 a year with two children? Let’s say you get some food stamps too, which come once a month but are only roughly sufficient to buy two weeks of groceries (most food stamp recipients report that their families go without food during the last two weeks of every month). I am a one person household and will make $40,000 this year. 35 percent of $40K= $14, 000. If I had to live on $14, 000 per year, even with a few hundred dollars for food stamps, I’d be down and out and homeless too, and I’m not even taking care of and feeding two children! Yet policymakers and experts in social welfare tell you, the public, that welfare recipients are poor because they are spendthrifts who buy things they really can’t afford and they can’t manage their money. I once had a teacher in social work school tell the class in all seriousness that poor people can really benefit from service programs that teach them “how to budget their money.”

Are you kidding me?

In Ohio, to take an example, the maximum combined welfare check and food stamps for a family of three (two kids, one adult) is $667 per month. The Ohio benefit has lost 38 percent of its purchasing power since 1970 (it’s like the dollar in your pocket is suddenly worth only 62 cents). In Ohio this past September, $431 million intended to run programs and services for poor people sat in the state budget unspent and outcry and embarrassment ensued. Jack Frech, who is the human services director of Athens County Ohio suggested using the money to give families a significant increase the cash payment to families. He stated,

“These folks are making ungodly decisions everyday between these kinds of basic necessities in life while the state of Ohio sits on a huge pile of money that Congress specifically sent down here to help these families…This is heinous. I don’t know what difference the difference is between child abuse and this.”

But Tom Hayes, the director of the Department of Job and Family Services, attempting to defend the state’s refusal to use at least part of the money to raise Ohio’s benefit amount, told the press, “giving a few more dollars to a TANF family is not going to help them.”

Gee, I guess Amartya Sen, the Nobel prize winning economist was wrong, Mr. Hayes. He’s the one that said, “the cheapest way to help a poor man is to give him a dollar.” Maybe we should take away his Nobel and give it to Hayes, who can’t even fulfill Ohio’s agreement with the feds to use Ohio’s windfall millions to create dead end jobs and job “training” programs (for women who already have unpaid work taking care of their children). Heaven forbid we should make that money available to poor mothers (who would use it better than any bureaucrat like Hayes) to feed their children, clothe them and get safer housing, instead of spending it to create more “programs and services.” It is likely that Mr. Hayes earns way more than the mothers on welfare who he forces into jobs that do not lift their families over the poverty line.

Let’s right now do an exercise that will help us understand the cash crunch of families who receive welfare. Take your weekly salary, and figure out what 35 percent of it is. Now, try to get through the week spending only that amount. For example, if you make 52, 000 a year, that’s $1,000 per week. 35 percent of that is $350 per week. See if you can get by on that by cutting out the non-essentials (lattes are a non-essential). If you are single and have no kids, try to buy stuff for you and two children instead of just for yourself (you can always find a grateful mother in the neighborhood to give the kids stuff to). Keep in mind, while trying to stretch the $350 per week to cover three people, that poor mothers are allotted an average of $144 a week to buy what you are failing to buy with $350. Are you getting the picture?

No, I am afraid that there is no one of us “self-sufficient” people who could do it either. If anything, mothers on welfare would do far better than any of us, because they are used to going without, making choices between rent and food, as Jack Frech of Ohio pointed out, and generally stretching every dollar as far as possible.

This lesson is brought to you by Social Agenda, Inc., a women’s think tank and advocacy group that seeks recognition for the economic value of women’s unpaid labor and wants a more human centered society in the 21st century.

All dollar amounts and statistics were taken from Green Book 2004, a guide to all government programs within the jurisdiction of the Committee on Ways and Means.