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Politics and Poverty: A Story of Denial
Last month marked the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the 10-year anniversary of President Clinton’s signing of the Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act, better know simply as welfare reform. Poverty and renewal were, once again, hot news topics. The most revealing story, though, is this country?s persistent lack of commitment to helping those in need — much like President Bush’s fleeting flirtation with confronting the poverty of New Orleans with “bold action.”
Welfare legislation radically changed the nation’s welfare program for families which had begun in 1935 along with social security. Modeled after states widows pension programs and spearheaded by FDR’s key advisor Harry Hopkins, the legislation clearly broke with the idea that combating poverty was the province of private charities and states and localities.
It was bitterly opposed not only by conservatives but also by charities and social workers who argued that federal involvement would make welfare a “right” and reduce the likelihood that the poor would adopt the moral values and work habits to raise themselves out of poverty.
By 1996, welfare had become a whipping boy of both the right and left, with the right not surprisingly arguing that it fostered dependency and squandered public funds and the left arguing that the family grants were too meager and provided in a demeaning way. The right wanted legislation that emphasized work requirements and punitive measures, while the left stressed the need for higher minimum wages, educational and training programs, guaranteed child care, and continued health care coverage upon leaving welfare.
The legislation as passed reflected more of the former rather than the latter so much so that two of Clinton’s top welfare advisors — Mary Jo Bane and Peter Edelman — resigned in protest.
Recently there have a number of articles and op-eds touting the success of welfare reform, including pieces by Bill Clinton and Douglas Besharov (Besharov’s requires registration). Both of these essays gloss over the hardships caused by welfare reform. Besharov even advocates more stringent measures to cut dependency on such programs as food stamps even though he admits that it is difficult for a mother to raise a family while working full-time for only $16,000 a year. He provides one more example of why right-wing think tank scholars have never been accused of suffering from a surfeit of compassion or sensitivity.
No one denies that since welfare reform the rolls have been dramatically cut — by almost 60 percent. But there is much debate as to whether poor people are materially better off or only marginally better, if at all, now that they are working for meager wages rather than receiving a “handout.”
It should be pointed out that the reduction in the welfare rolls was also a result of the soaring economy of the last half of the ?90s. Furthermore, it was not only that recipients moved off welfare but new applicants faced a far more difficult time getting on welfare and, once on, faced stringent work requirements and time limits for receiving aid.
Other articles indicated the problems posed by welfare reform, especially for those, as The New York Times reports, whose “lives are simply too troubled by disabilities, turmoil, and bad personal choices.” To make matters worse newly added changes to the law will put more pressure on states to increase the percentage of recipients working and further reduce the rolls.
One thing that hasn’t changed is that in the past 10 years the federal budget for welfare has remained static, approximately $18 billion a year, less than half Bill Gates’ net worth.
Are we likely to see any attempts to assist poor people through more education, training, subsidized housing, etc.? Highly unlikely. Poverty was not part of the debate in 2004, it is not in the coming fall election, and will not be in 2008.
Tragically now that the welfare rolls have been dramatically shrunk, America has turned its back on its poor.
Posted at 10:09 AM | Permalink | | 
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September 5, 2006 at 2:48 pm
Hello Tony and all,
Here’s some pivotal knowledge (wisdom) so you and others can stop focusing on symptoms and obfuscatory details and home in like a laser on the root causes of and solutions to humanity’s seemingly never-ending struggles.
Money is the lifeblood of the powerful and the chains and key to human enslavement
There is a radical and highly effective solution to all of our economic problems that will dramatically simplify, streamline, and revitalize human civilization. It will eliminate all poverty and the vast majority of crime, material inequality, deception, and injustice. It will also eliminate the underlying causes of most conflicts, while preventing evil scoundrels and their cabals from deceiving, deluding, and bedeviling humanity, ever again. It will likewise eliminate the primary barriers to solving global warming, pollution, and the many evils that result from corporate greed and control of natural and societal resources. That solution is to simply eliminate money from the human equation, thereby replacing the current system of greed, exploitation, and institutionalized coercion with freewill cooperation, just laws based on verifiable wisdom, and societal goals targeted at benefiting all, not just a self-chosen and abominably greedy few.
We can now thank millennia of political, monetary, and religious leaders for proving, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that top-down, hierarchical governance is absolute folly and foolishness. Even representative democracy, that great promise of the past, was easily and readily subverted to enslave us all, thanks to money and those that secretly control and deceptively manipulate all currencies and economies. Is there any doubt anymore that entrusting politics and money to solve humanity’s problems is delusion of the highest order? Is there any doubt that permitting political and corporate leaders to control the lives of billions has resulted in great evil?
Here’s a real hot potato! Eat it up, digest it, and then feed it’s bones to the hungry…
Most people have no idea that the common-denominator math of all the world’s currencies forms an endless loop that generates debt faster than we can ever generate the value to pay for it. This obscured and purposeful math-logic trap at the center of all banking, currencies, and economies is the root cause of poverty. Those who rule this world through fear and deception strive constantly to hide this fact, while pretending to seek solutions to poverty and human struggle. Any who would scoff at this analysis have simply failed to do the math, even though it is based on a simple common-denominator ratio.
Read more here…
September 5, 2006 at 8:24 pm
Have you looked at the budget of any state or local government lately? If you have, you certainly would say we have a “persistent lack of commitment to helping those in need.”
September 5, 2006 at 10:29 pm
While the United States wages war in Iraq and rebuilds the infrastructure we at home are dieing. Just this weekend six children died in an apartment fire that threatened the lives of not only the nine people that lived in the apartment but all the inhabitants of the building. The cause of the fire was a candle used to light the rooms so nine children could find their way around in the dark. The fire chief was appalled and actually handed out smoke detectors through-out that neighborhood.
What good is a smoke detector if you can?t see to get out of the building?
The real cause of that fire was poverty ? that dirty little word that is hushed in the halls of the white house, congress, and our senate. The electricity had been shut off by Con-Ed; not conned, Con-Ed, the power company that turned their backs on the 10 people who were trying to live in that apartment.
We need to remind our congress, our senate and legislators that without heat and electricity food is not refrigerated, food can not be cooked, clothes are not washed or dried and candles may be used to compensate for the lack of lighting. Without gas people freeze or starve to death. Not just in India or Iraq but here in the USA.
The world has lost track of it’s poor, only to be reminded when a Katrina or an apartment fire kills it’s innocent victims.
September 6, 2006 at 10:42 am
I think that S. Derobbs and Kevin are right on target. The war in Iraq in addition to being a horrible and unnecessary loss of lives and a tremendous blow to any moral authority the United States may have had is also draining billions of dollars that could have been used here to make our citizens’ lives a little better; furthermore, states in general have either not been willing or able to develop effective and humane policies to addess poverty.
As for Seven Star Hand’s analysis and suggestions re world currencies my only response is what planet is he on? Assuming there is some validity in what he is saying, what can realistically be done about it?
September 7, 2006 at 5:21 am
There is no suprise that so little comparative progress has changed on the anniversary of Katrina. We see reports that a majority of people currently living in Houston are considering staying in the State of Texas.
Because this state has put comparatively more money into it’s education sysytem, is it any wonder?
Even with a comparatively smaller and less frequent mass transit system in Houston, the evacuees know that Houston potentially provides residents–and them–with a higher standard of living. Ontop of this, why would they return to a ‘home’ actually structurally worse than before?