Welfare Limits Left Poor Adrift as Recession Hit

[groovedaddy]

PHOENIX — Perhaps no law in the past generation has drawn more praise than the drive to “end welfare as we know it,” which joined the late-’90s economic boom to send caseloads plunging, employment rates rising and officials of both parties hailing the virtues of tough love.

But the distress of the last four years has added a cautionary postscript: much as overlooked critics of the restrictions once warned, a program that built its reputation when times were good offered little help when jobs disappeared. Despite the worst economy in decades, the cash welfare rolls have barely budged.

Faced with flat federal financing and rising need, Arizona is one of 16 states that have cut their welfare caseloads further since the start of the recession — in its case, by half. Even as it turned away the needy, Arizona spent most of its federal welfare dollars on other programs, using permissive rules to plug state budget gaps.

The poor people who were dropped from cash assistance here, mostly single mothers, talk with surprising openness about the desperate, and sometimes illegal, ways they make ends meet. They have sold food stamps, sold blood, skipped meals, shoplifted, doubled up with friends, scavenged trash bins for bottles and cans and returned to relationships with violent partners — all with children in tow.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/us/welfare-limits-left-poor-adrift-as-recession-hit.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120408

[arikara]

1. Good ol' Bill Clinton

I guess he's pretty proud of himself, this result could be totally foreseen by anyone except a moron and I don't think Clinton is that.

[emilyg]

2. Let's fund more wars.

[Igel]

3. I always distrust this kind of editorial.

It puts limits on its data and then uses general terms without repeating the limits.

"Cash welfare" becomes just "welfare." Even as "other programs" are expanded, "welfare" is cut in AZ: The only likely inference being that non-welfare programs were expanded, the inference most people will draw and the writer almost certainly wants us to draw. Yet since the claim is that only "cash welfare" was cut, it's not a valid--just a possible--inference.

Yup. The writer probably wants us to conclude a falsehood is true.

Same with "those dropped from cash assistance." It's entirely unclear to me why somebody who was on welfare and, presumably, unemployable or unable to find work, should be forced to any greater extremes during a recession than in the week before it. Or why the real breaking point, if there was one, would only occur to those losing their jobs during the recession and not those already on welfare. You'd expect that those on welfare would exit on cue while new people were coming on board. In other words, the numbers reflect the size of a changing set, not the number of people always in that set.

Most readers would busily emote instead of reason. Many of those who reason would stop here, having uncovered enough red herrings for a decent meal.

Of course, this avoids the real question: Before the recession there'd be the unemployed on welfare, unemployed whose welfare benefits had expired (and would expire, recession or no), and those who were employed. The employed wouldn't have gotten much more cash welfare when they became unemployed; while they'd have qualified for non-cash assistance they'd also get unemployment benefits. In other words, it's unclear why cash welfare should matter that much, with long-term unemployment benefits going on for a long, long time.

Emotion is good. But it doesn't help you solve the problem. It may help motivate people to solve it, but usually emotion demands haste and emotional distress. You wouldn't want your car to be rebuilt by an emotionally distraught, rushed mechanic, and that's just a car--it doesn't work, one person is inconvenienced and out perhaps $1000. How would it work for a social safety net? It doesn't work and a few million people are more than inconvenienced and the taxpayers are out perhaps $100 billion.

[groovedaddy]

4. FYI - This was written as news article and not as an opinion piece. n.t