Welfare used to be a nasty word. Some folks were ashamed to apply for it, much less admit they were receiving it. But now, for many, it has become a way of life.
Photo Ryn Gargulinski
And why not. If someone handed you money every month to sit on your couch and watch soap operas, would you bother to go look for a job?
Neither would 60 percent of Arizona welfare families who have at least one adult in the house who is able to work, according to a news release from a Goldwater Institute. And those stats are from 2007.
Not only is that adult able to work, but he or she is supposed to be out finding work, as per the welfare-to-work reforms Congress passed in 1996.
These reforms dictated that states must try to get people off their couches and into job training or at least a part-time job.
Yes, we know. Now is not the greatest time to get a job. But folks have a better chance of nabbing one if they at least go through the motions.
The welfare-to-work program had great success in its first nine years – reducing welfare recipients from 4.4 million to 1.7 million across the nation. Arizona even cut its welfare rolls by 50 percent.
“But once the state reduced its welfare enrollment by half,” the release said, “the federal government no longer held Arizona accountable for additional progress.”
Please pass the remote. Days of Our Lives is starting.
We need to start a fire beneath the recipients, give them a little motivation to get off the couch.
Just as some folks busted for DUI have had a breathalizer attached to their ignitions, welfare recipients should have a block on their TV sets. Unless they can enter the secret code they receive after spending a reasonable amount of time (i.e. more than 30 minutes) each week in training or trying to get a job, their boob tube won’t function.
Now the only boobs are the tax payers who merrily fund all this television viewing.
Using that same secret code should also be the only way they can pick up their welfare checks.
Other ideal solutions come from The Heritage Foundation’s Katherine K. Bradley:
· Set higher targets for getting welfare recipients into jobs or training. Hold staff at Department of Economic Security accountable for reaching those benchmarks.
· Require able-bodied recipients to immediately begin a four-week job search program. Recipients should report daily to a training site and log at least 30 hours a week of job search and training activity.
· Deny an entire welfare check the first time someone fails to report for work or job training.
· Require all parents of children receiving welfare payments to work. Illegal immigrants aren’t eligible for TANF checks, but their U.S.-born children are. U.S. citizens and immigrants alike should be required to work to support their children.
· Rely on private employers and community groups to manage work training and job placement.
The Heritage Foundation also points out some simple math: as more and more people depend on welfare, fewer and fewer are paying taxes to fund government programs.
“Despite the famed 1996 Welfare Reform Act and the more recent welfare adjustments in 2006, 60.8 million Americans remain dependent on the government for their daily housing, food, and health care,” the Heritage Foundation said. The latest prediction on Social Security gives us less than six years to fix this mess:
“Starting in 2016, Social Security will not collect enough in taxes to pay all of the promised benefits – which is a problem for all workers, but especially for the roughly half of the American workforce that has no other retirement program.”
Call it a cynical view, but perhaps some welfare recipients not only see welfare as a way of life, but as a badge of honor: “Just look at what I can get away with.”
When does Bold and the Beautiful go on?
[tnipoll]
What do you think?
Do you agree with the solutions put forth? Can you think of others?
Have you ever been on welfare? Are you still on welfare?
Do you know anyone on welfare who should be out looking for work?
Do you know anyone who is honestly trying to get off welfare?
Oh boy, Ryn. I have to go to work right now, as I am gratefully still employed, but upon my return I expect to see many posts here. And I will add to the number.
have fun at work, lefty. i, too, have been working – since i was old enough to have a job. look forward to your input.
thought it was a fairly timely topic.
Mornin’ Rynski…boy, jump right into the fire on Monday, good for you.
I had to vote other. there are two distinct ways of looking at this subject.
I know that when I have needed this resource a couple of times, it was extremely helpful between jobs, and I was lucky enough to get a job before my benefits ran out.
Cheats on the other hand hurt us all.(love your TV lockout idea) 🙂
I know that social services are always hardest hit when it comes to layoffs and cutbacks, but it would be nice if there was enough manpower to check up on all folks receiving public assistance.
It does trouble me that some see this as a cash cow, while the rest of us see it like sand in the hourglass… 😉
hiya radmax,
you have an even-handed view on the topic – that’s a good thing. i think i am just disgusted, in part, because it’s tax season and i look at the big chunks that get taken out and i have to wonder for what.
the few times i have been out of work i got creative about it – cleaned house/ran errands in exchange for rent, traded artwork for a sandwich. so i am from the ‘earning my keep’ camp.
i agree, though, if people honestly honestly honestly need some help it’s awesome they can get it.
p.s. i applied for some type of public assistance (don’t even remember what…food stamps?) during hard times in nyc when only one household member was able to work. nope. didn’t get it.
You know, I screwed up on my comment. My circumstance was unemployment insurance. Sorry about the confusion…must be Monday.
😉
…or as Emily Litella would say, “never mind”. 🙂
ok – yes, unemployment is a different ball game.
What you taxes are paying for is incredibly easy to find out. In fact it is in your tax documents. Not that I like welfare cheats either, or even agree with welfare, but that is not where our money is going. Every single developed society is expensive, no exceptions. It is beyond my comprehesion, though, how the USA has the crappiest public infrastructure in the developed world bar none.
hi erinj,
thanks for input. but does not social security chunk my check weekly? i am frustrated by all money taken out.
Sorry for the late reply, anyway in answer to your comment, I am too, but Social Security is not normally considered welfare. Thats an entitlement program everyone benefits from. And yes, it is expensive, since like education we spend about 1/4 of our lifespan benefitting rather than contributing. I don’t even want to think about what a universal medical entitlement will cost.
The Heritage Foundation. Hmmmm….. Ryn, you now need to read the other side of the story. The Heritage foundation is the super conservative “think tank” that spews out the lovely Republican talking points. I think they write policy papers for John Kyl.
I don’t doubt there are cheaters out there milking the system, but remember that our current recession actually started in 2007. And the first people to be hit by job loss were people with no skills and no education – the ones who end up on welfare.
I don’t think this is the right time to be talking about throwing people off welfare and telling them to get out and find a job. What does the Heritage Foundation support in the way of funding for job training programs and education? Their solution is tax cuts for everybody.
“I don’t think this is the right time to be talking about throwing people off welfare and telling them to get out and find a job”.
When would the ‘right time’ be?
I agree…also, it’s Ryn’s blog and she has the freedom to use whatever information she wants, and people can agree or disagree.
hi medicare blogger –
thanks for input – and thanks for good question, radmax, and comment, azmouse.
i agree this is not a ‘good time’ for a lot of things – but i also agree with the idea that welfare recipients who abuse the system – or are able to work instead of get a free ride – need some form of motivation to change.
too many seem to be steeped in a sense of entitlement or the idea that a free ride is the only ride.
not professing to know where money would come from – or to agree with every tenet or idea set forth by heritage foundation.
i am agreeing, however, with some of the solutions and the fact that action needs to be taken.
Hey Medicareblogger:
My memory isn’t what it used to be, but maybe the Tipstersaid in one of his previous posts that it wasn’t Kyl that the Heritage Foundation wrote policy papers for, it was der Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler. And only his most odious ones at that.
How low can John Kyl sink?
Gee Rynski – you continue to confuse replaying right wing propaganda with reportage. The Goldwater Institure and the Heritage Foundation ?
A new low for yellow journalism 😉
Post the ‘welfare is good for us all’ side Tip. It’s a free country…mostly.
😉
I’m not an expert on this – just expert enough to know that the Goldwater Institute and Heritage Foundation are right wing liars and it is irresponsible to repeat anything they say without a fact check.
And I don’t have time to research the subject – a quick google search comes up with this from BEFORE “wekfare reform”:
(2) The myth that most welfare recipients are cheaters; studies are said to show that only four-tenths of one percent are fraudulent.
(5) The myth that hard work is the answer to the welfare problem; the Department of Health, Education and Welfare are said to have reported that less than one percent of the nation’s welfare recipients are able-bodied men–13.4 percent are of old age, 0.5 percent blind, 7.6 percent permanently and totally disabled, 51.1 percent children, 0.9 percent unemployed fathers, and the remaining 26.1 percent mothers. (Author/JM)
Who’s studies? Betcha dollars to doughnuts I can find out why they don’t have higher fraud stats from right here. “We don’t have the manpower” to check up on this. Typical bureaucratic song and dance.
So Tipster, which is it? “I’m not an expert in this,” or . . . “Just expert enough?” I’m confused.
I’ve never known you not to be an ‘expert’ on anything that you’ve weighed in on, whether it be quantum mechanics or trout fishing the the Sahara Desert.
As usual, you’ve got the ‘facts,’ real or imagined, to back up everything that you say.
Good for you. Now that the doctors have poor Dion and his many Gods under heavy sedation again, you’re the one person on this board that I can really trust. Keep up the good work.
Yer pal, Ferrari Bubba
I dont think things are the way you said that they are. Now remember I live in Indiana so things might be different here. This is my example. My sister in law and her husband got on food stamps. For a few weeks her husband was able to do some odd jobs under the table, and they thought they had it made because they didn’t have to report it to food stamps. Well one day she got a letter in the mail saying that her and her husband had to go to IMPACT. Impact is where food stamp recipients have to go to look for work. They help you to make a resume, teach you how to look for employment, discuss job interviewing and such. Then they tell you that to continue getting your food stamps you HAVE to got to 3 places week to apply for jobs and you have to report where and when you went and what the response was. Just like unemployment does. She was mad! Well her husband did not go to his Impact appointment, and guess what happened? They lost their food stamps for a year. They got penalized. A year has gone by now and she complains that they need food stamps.Now she doesn’t want to re apply even though a year has gone by….because she doesn’t want to have to go through Impact again!
Rynski – Look at you busting out the news and controversy all in one post :-). One of the biggest probs with welfare to work is that most work these people get doesn’t pay enough for child care so then you’ve got unsupervised kids ripe for gang-joining…. of course, on the other hand, alot of people who abuse welfare don’t give a hoot about their kids, so that argument wouldn’t hold in those cases.
hiya renee schafer horton –
very good points!
i think your example runs along the lines of the problem i ran into when i applied for funds – i had a job, my roommate did not and was injured, could not work. my job paid crapola – but, according to whatever gauge was being used, it was not low enough to qualify for assistance.
do you know we actually sat there and contemplated if quitting my job would better benefit us so we could get assistance? get to stay home, too. that mind set is way too scary for me.
cost of child care is huge issue – thanks for bringing it up.
Back in 1986 when I was a new, twenty-two year old Mom, things were tight. I was in line behind a woman that was a little older than me who I thought had it made. She was beautiful, make-up and hair perfect, with very fancy new clothes and lots of gold jewelry. She had a cart packed with goodies…me, I had baby supplies and top ramen. I admit, I was a little envious in my salvation army clothes.
I was shocked when she paid for her groceries with food stamps. She wasn’t someone I had envisioned needing welfare.
I was even more confused when I went out to the parking lot and saw her loading her groceries into a brand new, shiny white Cadillac, as I walked to my 1967 Ford Falcon I was so happy to have just purchased for three hundred dollars.
I didn’t know her situation, but it all didn’t add up and left a negative impression, I have to admit.
We all need help from time to time. After my husband died, I had to get a cheap, no car payment car, got rid of the boat, and bought a smaller house. I also had to get a second job cleaning apartments after people moved out of them. When that wasn’t enough, I found a third job working as a secretary for a karate instructor, who couldn’t pay me very well, but gave my kids lessons for free to compensate.
I would save my loose change all month so me and the kids on the first of the month could go to Eggee’s and geta a ‘flavor of the month’ Eggee drink. Honestly, I never even thought of getting any kind of welfare, although I probably would have been elible. We made it through, though. I’ve always wanted to help my neighbors, and society, not add to their burdens.
wow – you are a trooper – and have a work ethic that is admirable and also a shining example for others.
these days it sometimes feels ‘work ethic’ is the new dirty word – haha.
also hear ya on the fur coats/shiny new car/food stamp people. i’ve seen them too, lined up for benefits in brighton beach, bklyn.
I have to admit looking back, the hard times are now really good memories.
they are also a way to see what we’re made of – how much we can really accomplish.
what a way to build character and strength.
i always call them “the lean years” – hhaha – and sometimes i think they are ongoing.
Brighton Beach? Isn’t that were the street signs are printed in both English and Russian?
I lived in Hacienda Heights, Calif. until I moved to the Old Pueblo in 1985, and the signs were in Korean by that time. And the old saying, ”walking the dog’ became ‘woking the dog.’
Sad but true. Yer pal, Ferrari Bubba
ha – boo hiss on your dog joke, ferrari bubba – hahah.
and yes, brighton beach is also known as ‘little odessa.’
Hey Rynski: Sad to say, it’s no joke. When I was on early morning patrol with APD, I used to see these little old Vietnamese mamasans in black pajamas, wearing cone hats with plastic garbage bags slung over their shoulder walking the neighborhoods.
Probable cause, plus search and seizure laws protected them from me asking what was inside the bags, but we never saw any stray dogs or cats or road-kill after 1975 or so. You figure it out.
Book ’em, Dano — Officer Bubba
oh, yuck. well…at least they only preyed on strays and roadkill…
Gross!
It does remind me of one of my friends who named her cat ‘Stir-Fry’.
Ryn: This article is right on the money, the system is definitely abused and i too am tired of people taking advantage of it just because they are too lazy to work.
Why work when it is available for free. If most of these people put as much effort into finding a job as they do towards beating the system, the job might even be easier and less time consuming, they might be able to watch more t.v. then. Yes most of them have way too many children, but then again you get more benefits that way.
The unfortunate part about all this is the individuals who actually need the service temporarily get penalized because of all the free loaders on the system using the service all year every year.
Welfare is a pretty non-specific term. Are you talking about the food stamp program, social security retirement income, bank bail-outs, SS survivors benefits, unemployment insurance, payments to Halliburton, AHCCCS; what?
Whatever it is that you’re all talking about, according to the figures above 1.7 million people out of 307 million people is about 0.5%.
The capitalist system requires about 5% unemployment to function efficiently. Since 1950, the unemployment in the US has never been below 2% in the best of times. Prior to the depression the percent unemployed was about 3%, rising to 25% at the height of the depression. Yes, this figures covers only people actively looking for work. So, since we will never, ever, see full employment in this country, are we ready to see the working poor and the unemployed go without food, clothing, medical care and shelter? How about their children? One and one-hlf million hungry people with hungry children in a country overrun with guns? OK, I guess I am on board for that.
If it’s your FICA tax that bothers you Ryn, you should know that this money is used for retirement benefits, disability payments and survivors benefits. You should also know that your payments are only half of what determines your future benefits. The other half is paid by your employer. None of this money goes to pay for food stamps or direct cash assistance.
Ha! Thanx Lefty! I always wondered what FICA was an acronym for, now I know; Future Income for Communist Ass..istance. 😉
Now, let’s talk turkey. You have no problem with able bodied workers not doing their fair share for the greater good of themselves and the state, helping to ease the burden on their working comrades? You can spout and rant to anyone who will listen about your ‘fellow man’ platitudes, but when it really comes down to it, your just as bourgeois as the next guy.
How would your comrades V.I. and Uncle Karl look upon a shirker?
The gulags were not only for wrong thinking intellectuals.
You have no problem with able bodied workers not doing their fair share for the greater good of themselves and the state
If you re-read, I think he was perfectly clear that it is the capitalist system which requires unemployment in order to function.
Just answer the question Tip. I’m sick of duplicity. Since when is it prerequisite that there be unemployment? Theory? If we need unemployment to function as a society…hell, that is so ridiculous that I won’t even bother.
Heavens,Rad. Who dookied in your Wheaties this morning?
Skirting the issue again eh? Oh, I’ll answer your question; Marx, Keynes and the entire Bolivian air force. I gotta tell ya, this has really put me off the breakfast of champions…
Stop and think for a minute – if unemployment reaches 1 percent, then employers need to raise salaries in order to attract employees – resulting in spiraling wages resulting in inflation and decreasing profits, resulting in …..
Our system cannot function with full employment.
If you are interested in theory you might try The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
Tip. Think about it. Tough row to hoe eh?…not enough drones, too much honey. I think I’ll put my ‘full employment’ theory up against yours all day. 😉 Besides weren’t we supposed to meet this overabundance of jobs with not enough workers conundrum some time back?…according to ‘some’ PHD’s. An education is a terrible thing to waste on an agenda, or just to hear the magnificence of your own voice.
Lefty could also open his Latin American floodgates too. Everybody wins.
😉
Oh they are open – in order to keep wages down and unemployment up, as business wishes it.
You sound positively protectionist Tip. Surprising.
However, many of the innovations introduced by The General Theory continue to be central to modern macroeconomics. For instance, the idea that recessions reflect inadequate aggregate demand and that Say’s Law (in Keynes’s formulation, that “supply creates its own demand“) does not hold in a monetary economy. President Richard Nixon famously said in 1971 (ironically, shortly before Keynesian economics fell out of fashion) that “We are all Keynesians now”, a phrase often repeated by Nobel laureate Paul Krugman.
Ugh! Tip, I should have known. 🙂 Your theory seems to be in some dispute… 😉
I think I’ll put my ‘full employment’ theory up against yours all day.
You are welcome to do so – I’m sure that future generations will hail you as economist of the century 🙂
For those of us living in the present, and reality instead of your alternate universe however, I’m afraid you will be ignored 😉
Let the chips fall where they may, my friend. 😉
BTW-How many are living in this Hell we call the present/reality who are looking for answers beyond the norm? Got a clue? Or are you fixated on a pre-programed course of inaction.? 😉
Rad, there has never been full employment in this country since the time when agriculture ruled the economy. If you think this is not necessarily the way it must be, well, I’d have to call you a utopian; an idealist; a dreamer of a better world. Welcome to the club.
Lefty, the crux of this has been twisted, tangmentalized, 😉 distorted and discombobulated way beyond comprehension… 😉
Just a simple question;
“You have no problem with able bodied workers not doing their fair share for the greater good of themselves and the state, helping to ease the burden on their working comrades”?
Tip you right, of course, you need some slack in ALL inputs of production *INCLUDING* labor, or they introduce a negative feedback on growth. Welfare recipients, however, are not the “slack” needed. The 5% “normal” unemplyment rate is composed mostly of people who have quit/fired/laid off and looking for a new job. These are not welfare reciepients. Welfare recipients are chronically unemployed/unemployable.
Agreed, there are the truly needy, those with severe medical problems, kids who need clothes and food, the totally disabled, etc. And then there are society’s parasites who compose the bulk of the remainder.
Why should the taxpaying workers have to shoulder the cost of supporting the nation’s parasites?
I agree, let’s go to Wall Street and the Pentagon, drag the parasites out and burn the places down. Glad to see you get with the program, ado.
I have no problem with that, remembering of course, the biggest parasites feed at the public trough everywhere, the most notable being the federal bureaucracy which produces no product, yet it continues to grow like a cancer, paid for by the working taxpayer.
Ben Franklin hit the nail on the head when he said: ” When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
Hey Lefty: Why stop there? If we really want to rid ourselves of the true parasites that are are feasting on our life-blood, send a couple cruise missiles into both houses of congress while they are in session. That would be a good start-over. <g> Yer pal, Ferrari Bubba
I’m down with that. After all, could the start-over be any worse?
Don’t worry the next Governor from Arizona will take care of their problem. Major cuts for deabeats and illegal aliens. So why not give racial numbers of who is on welfare. Afraid. Guess you would be.
“You have no problem with able bodied workers not doing their fair share for the greater good of themselves and the state, helping to ease the burden on their working comrades”?
Let me make sure I understand what you’re asking. Are you asking me if I have a problem with healthy, unemployed adults being asked to contribute to the public welfare in some way as a condition of receiving unemployment benefits? In general, my answer to that question would be no. I can imagine some conditions of employment I would object to, but if the government were to be a temporary employer of last resort, I wouldn’t mind paying for that with my tax dollar. Now, if you’re asking me if it bothers me that someone might be getting public assistance who could potentially be working, I would say, “not much”. Here in AZ the maximum income to receive direct cash assistance is about $275/mo for a family of two. Even with food stamps on top of that, it doesn’t sound like much of a life to me.
All in all, even on the days when it’s hard to get up in the morning, I still feel lucky that I have a job; that I am physically able to work; that my job is fulfilling and, mostly, that I am self-employed (no half-brained boss).
You’re right, it doesn’t add up to much. But, add in 6 or 7 more kids and multiply it times the number of recipients, and you come up with a tidy sum.
It must be rewarding to be your own boss in a successful business.
You are the epitome of the American dream Lefty. 🙂
I doubt, though, that the private sector is going to allow any such program wherein the government acts as an employer of such a large portion of the population. Even assuming that the folks in question do not possess highly marketable job skills desired by private interests, I see no way that business is going to let a CCC-type program get through this congress.
Some where in all this I think I heard welfare being described as a “cash cow?” Well, we’re talking about a cow with very little cash. I don’t know why every time we talk about so-called government “handouts” that we gravitate to the people who cheat, who take advantage of the system. Well, I’ll tell you from observation, not experience, that like the “cash cow,” taking advantage of the welfare system is like robbing a kid’s piggy bank. There’s no money in welfare.
Why can’t we look at it from the perspective of someone up against it, having found that that job at McDonald’s just doesn’t cut it, and has nothing ahead that seems the least bit promising.
I’ve seen, in my lifetime, far more people barely existing on what little welfare they get, losing that when they do manage to get a job that isn’t at all secure, trying to get their kids fed and to school, fighting obesity from the calories loaded in the fast food “whoppers”…
I’ve seen men try to be there for their families, working odd jobs to eke out a living, afraid to show up at home due to uncertain jobs endangering the funds the family can count on – the welfare check. Only the most creative and ambitious escape such living conditions as the system perpetuates itself.
Living on welfare doesn’t come close to being the “Life of Riley” and it doesn’t cost society anywhere near what the harm the banks and ruthless corporations have cost us, causing it all to come tumbling down. Anybody remember the conditions leading up to the “bailouts?” It upped the ranks of welfare recipients but it hasn’t broken us like the shenanigans foisted on us by the “pillars” of our society.
Getting angry at people who are down and out detracts from our ability to be compassionate. And without compassion, without an understanding of those among us who are struggling desperately to just hang on – well, we won’t survive and move on from our societal problems in constructive ways.
Hey Rad: Let’s not forget the Prophet Warren Jeffs, his scores of wives, kids, and the hundreds of followers who are on either welfare, ADC, food stamps, or any of the other types of taxpayer-supported aid.
They call it “Bleeding the beast,” as they laugh all the way to the bank.
On a happier note, I wonder why FedGovGo threw Chuck Berry in Prison for taking an under-age 17 year-old girl across state lines for ‘immoral’ porposes, while Jerry Lee Lewis ‘Married’ his own 12 tear-old cousin and took her on tour with him to 12 states and England with no problems from the Feds? <g>
Yer pal, Ferrari Bubba
On a happier note, I wonder why FedGovGo threw Chuck Berry in Prison for taking an under-age 17 year-old girl across state lines for ‘immoral’ porposes
You and I both know exactly why Mr. Berry was persecuted.
That said, there’s nothing worse than an immoral porpoise.
“immoral porpoise”…beneath contempt! 🙂
On a more somber note it seems you are correct. Public works programs to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure in this country is something tangible that I could really get behind.
Anybody out there got a good reason why we are still in Iraq. Geez, the politicians who favor this mess are even running out of excuses.
PS-I believe Jerry ‘the killer’ Lee Lewis ‘ cousin was 13; legal marrying age in Arkansas or Alabama some other southern fried state when they actually got hitched.
Hey Lefty: Have you ever been to a porpoise show and seen those horny devils at work? WOW!
I took my 9 year-old grandson to a show in San Diego once and might as well have taken him to the zoo to watch the monkeys play with themselves. Or the infamous Blue Fox nightclub in old Tijuana.
Yer pal, Ferrari Bubba
“Profit Warren Jeffs” 😉 Always someone with a hole in their lives FB, and more than enough pond scum shysters out there eager to fill the void.
Welfare, unemployment, and all forms of handouts other than the direct, physical distribution of food are wrong, foolish and undeserved. Within one generation, the promise of free money and help has produced an immense and permanent poverty class, high rates of illiteracy, and an attitude that people simply don’t have to work. They are clueless, because someone DOES have to work to support them. In the end it produces a failed state like America is failing now. It is not wars, nor corporate greed, nor political games that have caused this, it is the the fact that we encourage the growth of listlessness in our culture by funding it in increasing measure.