What The Right Doesn’t Want You To Know About Welfare: 9 Myths Exploded

[xchrom]

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/07/20/what-the-right-doesnt-want-you-to-know-about-welfare-9-myths-exploded/


Would anybody like to guess who makes up the single largest group on welfare? Children. One in every four children in the U.S. receives welfare benefits. Image @ PortlandStateUniversity

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Myth: “People on welfare are lazy and sit at home collecting it while the rest of us work to support them.”

Fact: The welfare reform law that was signed by President Clinton in 1996 largely turned control over welfare benefits to the states, but the federal government provides some of the funding for state welfare programs through a program called Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF). TANF grants to states require that all welfare recipients must find work within two years of first receiving benefits. This includes single parents, who are required to work at least 30 hours per week. Two-parent families are required to work 35 to 50 hours per week. Failure to obtain work could result in loss of benefits. It is also worth noting that, thanks to the pay offerings of companies such as Walmart, many who work at low wage jobs qualify for public assistance, even though they work full-time.

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Myth: “People who go on welfare stay on it forever.”

Fact: According to statisticbrain.com, the vast majority of TANF recipients, 80.4 percent, receive benefits for five years or less. (The site still refers to the program by the old name of Aid To Families With Dependent Children. AFDC is the program that seems to be most often identified with the term “welfare.” AFDC programs were replaced at the federal level by TANF in 1996, but it is still common to hear the program referred to as AFDC.)

Myth: “There’s a woman in Chicago. She has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards. … She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income alone is over $150,000″ – Ronald Reagan

Fact: Ah, the “welfare queen.” Ronny loved to tell his stories, and his welfare queen story is one of the most popular. The only problem is, the woman he talked about didn’t exist. There is some evidence that elements of this story may have been based on facts, but the descriptions of abuse by an actual woman were wildly exaggerated by Reagan.

Myth: “Welfare recipients keep having more kids so they can get more benefits.”

Fact: According to a 2010 report released by the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the average family receiving TANF benefits has 1.8 children, which is about the same as the national average. Half of the families receiving TANF benefits only have one child. In fact, the average size of families receiving welfare benefits has declined from 4.0 in 1969 to 2.4 in 2010. Also, some states, such as Delaware and Georgia, make it clear to those who sign up for TANF benefits that their benefits will not increase if they have additional children. Taken from the Delaware Department of Health and Human Services website:

[Arkansas Granny]

1. Another common myth is that you live quite well on welfare and all you have to do is

quit your job and go apply for benefits. Then you never have to work again and live in luxury on their tax dollars.

[leftyohiolib]

2. There is some evidence that elements of this story may have been based on facts

well that was a quick brush off, why no details?

[shraby]

6. If you've ever had to apply for food stamps or medicaid, you'd know which are not facts.

They want everything but your shoe size to figure out if you qualify.

[Hydra]

7. And most of the time they'll tell you that you "make too much"

Amazing how people who have never had to go through the process are such experts on how people game it.

[Orrex]

8. Damn--you said that exactly right.

I lived in public housing from 2010 through late 2011, and we're still on SNAP because we qualify based on income.

Yet I routinely overhear a pair of twenty-something cubemates howling about the unchecked greed and corruption of welfare recipients. They have no idea what they're talking about, but their ignorance only makes them more and more confident that they know it all.

[abelenkpe]

3. K&R

[brewens]

4. I had diversity training at my job a few years back. What got me was this Jeopardy style

exercises they put us through. This is a blood center. It's a very progressive company and we have quite a few more women working for us.

The put us in small groups and we played this Jeopardy game. We got the question, which group has more people on welfare: White, African American or Hispanic? I told them it was white and it wasn't even close but was overruled and we blew the question! I don't remember which wrong answer they gave now. It amazed me that in a group of four people at this place, how could not one of the other three not agree with me? There are so many more white people nationwide, it couldn't be close, even if you put the other two minorities together.

Then we got, what percentage of people in the U.S. are gay? I don't really know but told them the figure I see all the time is 5%. Enough to say that seemed at the time to be the accepted figure. That was one of the choices along with 1% and 10%. Once again, I was overruled. They went with 1% and blew it. What kills me is that everyone knows we have at least four openly gay employees and there was one of them in that class of about 20! The openly gay people make it well over 1% of our workforce, close to 3%. So I suppose you could imagine we'd come in at around 5% here.

It shows you just how biased some people can be, even when the evidence is all around them. We live in an area that is almost all white. I'd bet that if you asked the same people that blew the Jeopardy question if they think we have a problem with too many people on welfare, they would say yes.