>From Mother Jones:
CHART: Welfare Reform Is Leaving More In
Deep Poverty
—By Stephanie Mencimer
| Wed
Oct. 23, 2013 3:00 AM PDT
The economy is picking up in some parts of the country, but that
hasn't translated into any new serious efforts to help those suffering the most
hardship. In fact, for those on the lowest rung of the economic ladder, life
may be getting even harder. A new report from
the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) looks at cash benefits
provided under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program,
commonly known as "welfare." It finds that the value of monthly
cash benefits that make up the fragile safety net for the poorest families with
children has continued to decline steadily since the program was
"reformed" in 1996.
Back then, benefits weren't exactly generous, but they did manage
to keep a whole lot of kids out of really deep poverty. Today, those benefits
are almost nonexistent. The lucky few who are able to get cash assistance
aren't getting enough to pay rent or keep the lights on in most
states, and the value of the benefits has declined precipitously since
1996—even more so since the recession started. According to CBPP, there is not
a state in the country whose welfare benefits are enough to lift a poor single
mother with two kids above 50 percent of the poverty line, or about $9700 a
year. In many southern states, TANF doesn't provide enough money to get a poor
family much above 10 percent of the poverty line. What's especially troubling
about these figures is that, as CBPP reports, TANF benefits are often the only
form of cash assistance poor families receive. They may be getting food stamps,
which definitely help their situations, but you can't buy diapers or pay the
rent with food
stamps.
People like President Bill Clinton and then-Speaker of the House
Newt Gingrich claimed they'd be doing welfare recipients a favor in the 1990s
when they reformed the welfare program to impose work requirements and make it
more difficult for people to get benefits. The idea was that welfare recipients
were just lazy and that their government checks were keeping them from working,
making them dependent on the government. When the reform legislation passed,
with Clinton's signature, some people in the administration quit in protest,
arguing that cutting off cash assistance for poor families would push millions
of children into poverty. That didn't happen, at least not right away. But
funding for the TANF block grant hasn't increased since 1996, meaning
that in real terms, what the country spends to help poor families in the
program has fallen 30 percent overall since welfare was
"reformed," and benefit levels have fallen even more in some
states that cut benefits after the financial crisis started in 2007. Not
surprisingly, since
1996, the number of families with children living in extreme poverty—that is,
on $2 a day or less—has gone up nearly 130 percent.
The US Census Bureau reports that the number of
Americans suffering significant hardships, such as having utilities cut off,
getting evicted, or suffering food shortages, has escalated sharply during the
recession. Between 2005 and 2011, nearly 7 million additional people were
unable to make a mortgage or rent payment, suggesting that as the nation's
last-ditch safety net for people in really dire straits, TANF, is not working.
Given
that science is now showing just how damaging the stress of poverty is to
children and their
health and intellectual development, maybe it's finally time for welfare reform
to be reformed in a way that gives poor kids a fair shot at a decent future.
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