The growth of deep poverty after "welfare reform"

[Hannah Bell]

For several years, Detroit has had the highest poverty rate in the country... With real unemployment of 50 percent, many households rely on the completely inadequate social safety net. Even the term “poor” is no longer adequate to describe the desperate conditions in Detroit... a new term, “deep poverty..." describes a vast and growing population of US families whose income has fallen to a fraction of the official poverty level.

Michigan League for Human Services reports that since 1979 the value of the maximum public assistance grant has dropped from 23 percent below the poverty threshold to 66 percent below the poverty threshold. Thus a Michigan welfare or Family Independence Program (FIP) recipient today often lives at just 34 percent of the poverty level, a situation dictated by the very design of the program.

The current FIP grant is about $492 a month for a family of three... Furthermore, because of onerous qualification requirements imposed after the Clinton administration’s welfare reform in the mid-1990s, and because of changes made in Michigan welfare rules in the past decade, only one-third of families below the poverty level who live in the state are now receiving any cash benefits.When unemployment was last over 12 percent in Michigan, in the early 1980s, there were over 240,000 welfare caseloads in the state. Today, there are just 72,500...

Earlier this year, an analysis of state data by the New York Times found some six million Americans—one in 50 people in the US — living on no income outside the $100 or $200 a month in food stamps. In Michigan, this situation was made possible by the elimination in 1991 of General Assistance, a paltry monthly amount once provided to individuals without children. But even for families with children, many receive only food stamps, especially after the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) was passed at the federal level in 1996...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/pove-m31.shtml

[Luminous Animal]

1. I've said it before... The passage of Clinton's mean penury welfare reform

was the greatest heart break of my activist life. I wasn't surprised that Clinton signed it. I was surprised and outraged with how many economic justice proponents and activists abandoned principle for party. That is when I unregistered as a Democrat. Fuck over the least of us, you fuck over me.

[Hannah Bell]

2. it's been one hit after another for the last 30 years, mostly under the radar for everyone but

those immediately affected.

now = harvest

[Luminous Animal]

4. The poor are all but forgotten even though there are more now than most of us...

can remember in our lifetime. Every now and again, there is, on DU, an "outrage" that denizens of tent cities are rousted but there is little outrage that, in the *most spectacular country that ever existed*, the *greatest democracy in human history*, the "richest nation in human existence* would allow tent cities to even exist.

[leftstreet]

3. +1

[eridani]

5. Didn't Clinton promise to "fix" it after it passed?

Oh, wait.......

Any bets the same isn't going to happen with HCR?

[blindpig]

6. k&r

[Boxcar Johnson]

7. Inequality is non-partisan which is to say it's bi-partisan

Inequality is non-partisan. The pace of inequality has grown steadily over three decades, under both Republican and Democratic administrations and Congresses. The Gini index, the global measure of inequality, grew as quickly under President Clinton as it has under President George W. Bush. Widening disparities in the U.S. are the result of three decades of bi-partisan public policies that have tilted the rules of the economy to the benefit of major corporations and large asset owners at the expense of people whose security comes from a paycheck.

[zbdent]

8. Something you really don't hear from the overly biased "liberal media"

how much would it have been better under McCain?

November 19, 1993, on NAFTA (it's in the Congressional Record) ...

McCain: "Wednesday, over three-fourths of the Republican Members voted for NAFTA. Considerably fewer than half of the Democratic Members followed their example. By any fair reckoning, Newt Gingrich and his fellow Republicans deserve more than half the credit for NAFTA's approval in the other body. And, I am confident that well over half the support which NAFTA will receive in the Senate will come from Republican Members."

Of course, when it's something bad, it's Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid/Obama ... but when it's something good, it's George W. Bush/The House&Senate Republicans ...

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3188232

[Hannah Bell]

9. k

[Starry Messenger]

10. k & r