How Reforming Welfare and Gutting Programs for the Poor Became a Bipartisan Platform

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/labor/how-reforming-welfare-and-gutting-programs-poor-became-bipartisan-platform



The Romney camp's new attack line on the Obama administration--that he “gutted” the work requirements imposed on families receiving public assistance--has been widely debunked as a distortion of a mundane policy memo. But the real scandal here isn’t what Obama did or didn’t do to “workfare”; it’s that both parties have gutted the welfare system as a whole to conduct a cruel social experiment on impoverished families.

As many watchdogs have pointed out, the memo in question from the Department of Health and Human Services basically offers states more flexibility to meet mandatory targets for moving people off of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and into gainful employment. This program, administered jointly through federal and state agencies, is the central plank of Clinton-era welfare reform , and its principal political aim has always been to reduce the statistical presence of the poor, not alleviating their poverty.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), as welfare reform approaches its Sweet Sixteen, TANF's track record contrasts bitterly with that of its predecessor, AFDC, which Reaganite conservatives had savaged as undeserved entitlement:

'Over the last 16 years, the national TANF caseload has declined by 60 percent, even as poverty and deep poverty have worsened. While the official poverty rate among families declined in the early years of welfare reform, when the economy was booming and unemployment was extremely low, it started increasing in 2000 and now exceeds its 1996 level.

These opposing trends — TANF caseloads going down while poverty is going up — mean that a much smaller share of poor families receive cash assistance from TANF than they did prior to welfare reform.'

This punitive approach to poverty has driven poor mothers of color further to the margins of the economy, making them even more politically invisible.

[HiPointDem]

1. kr

[Douglas Carpenter]

2. unfortunately much of the sales pitch of today's Democratic Party goes something like "we bash the

poor, trash the needy and shoot, kill and bomb just as well as the Republicans - but we are smarter about it."

[nxylas]

4. It needs to be said again and again

The DLC is just as much a Koch Brothers creation as the Tea Party.

[Vincardog]

15. The DLC is just as much a Koch Brothers creation as the Tea Party.

[nxylas]

16. Say goodnight, Gracie

[KG]

3. 'reduce the statistical presence of the poor, not alleviating their poverty.'

[Douglas Carpenter]

5. can anyone imagine a campaign ad like this running in swing states today?

[xchrom]

6. i remember that ad.

it was amazing then ... it's amazing now.

i'm of the mind we will never see it's like again.

[PONTING12]

7. Spam deleted by Violet_Crumble (MIR Team)

[dkf]

8. link from the article...3 in 4 recipients who find jobs lose them within 6 months

The training is wholly inadequate with participants sitting around for hours doing nothing. The failure to comply penalty is rampant, requiring participants to start over.

http://www.cvhaction.org/sites/default/files/Missing%20the%20Mark%20-%20Executive%20Summary.pdf

[dixiegrrrrl]

13. Been that way for as long as I can remember

and my memory goes back to late 1950's...

Several of the courses I took when getting my degree as a Social Worker covered the history of the
Social Welfare.
Most of the money spent on "fighting poverty" never got to the people who needed help,
but instead supported a huge bureaucracy.
Or, to put it in more radical terms, as Frances Piven did, "we need the poor"

[Douglas Carpenter]

9. recalling a different era

[xchrom]

10. ...

[Dustlawyer]

11. How do you like your "Freedom" now?

The Powers That Be want the money that went to the poor, and the poor do not vote much. Now that voter registration drives are all but gone, they will continue to get their wish!

[a2liberal]

12. K&R (n/t)

[Heather MC]

14. "The poor have shitty lobbyists." John Stewart

[limpyhobbler]

17. k/r nt