[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 11 (Tuesday, February 8, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: February 8, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
THE NEED FOR WELFARE REFORM IN AMERICA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Torkildsen] is recognized
for 60 minutes.
Mr. TORKILDSEN. Madam Speaker, tonight and over the next few weeks, I
will take the floor during special orders to talk about a subject that
is often emotional and always controversial. All the same, it is in
desperate need of action.
I am talking about the welfare system in the United States today.
We have allowed a program designed to assist those in need to become
a monster that too often turns into a long-term addiction. Instead of
helping families stay together through tough times, the welfare system
encourages families to split apart.
Instead of encouraging single parents to work to find jobs skills,
the American welfare system penalizes those who wish to work, and
discourages work from any parent who wishes to keep health insurance
while taking even an entry level job.
Reform is not enough; we need to completely overhaul the welfare
system.
Madam Speaker, a newspaper that circulates in my district--the
Pulitzer Prize-winning Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, MA and reporters Brad
Goldstein and John Gill, and editors Alan White and Dan Warner--
conducted a year-long investigation of the welfare system as it affects
the Merrimac Valley area of northeastern Massachusetts. The abuses
documented and the problems identified could happen anywhere in our
country.
I will read the series during future special orders to draw attention
to this massive problem. Today I want to focus on an overview to
problems in our welfare system, and to specifically mention one problem
which the Federal Government can quickly correct. The fact that
prisoners in jail for misdemeanors can still collect supplemental
security, or SSI, benefits.
Current law prevents felons from collecting SSI benefits, but not
those convicted of misdemeanors. This means that convicts serving up to
1 year in most States, and up to 2\1/2\ years in some States, can still
collect SSI benefits.
I have introduced H.R. 3251, with 14 current cosponsors, to end this
abuse. No prisoner convicted of a crime and serving time should be
defrauding the taxpayers by collecting SSI while in prison.
We must change the welfare system as we know it. I hope this series
will begin to outline some of the many problems in the current welfare
system, lead to quick action to prohibit SSI benefits for prisoners,
and begin debate on a major overhaul of the entire welfare system.
The first article I would like to read is entitled:
[From the Lawrence (MA) Eagle-Tribune]
When Welfare Is a Way of Life
(By Brad Goldstein)
A chasm of age and experience separates the worlds of Donna
Wrenn and Rosemary Ortiz.
Mrs. Wrenn, 45, is a high school graduate, divorced and a
grandmother. She is of German, Scottish and English
extraction. She lives on Prospect Hill in Lawrence.
Ms. Ortiz, 26, is Puerto Rican, a high school dropout who
went back for her high school equivalency diploma and a
single mother of four. She lives in South Lawrence.
Despite their differences, a common thread runs through
their lives.
Mrs. Wrenn and Ms. Ortiz have spent nearly 20 years each on
Aid to Families With Dependent Children, or AFDC.
Mrs. Wrenn said she started collecting welfare when her
marriage turned sour and her options ran out.
Ms. Ortiz was a child when her parents went to the welfare
system for help. Today she is a welfare mother herself.
Now the two women, for different reasons, are trapped in
the welfare system. They say they would like different lives
but they have no incentive to break free.
These women are part of the silent majority of welfare
recipients in the Lawrence area. They have seen a system of
temporary aid become a permanent way of life for them and, in
some cases, for their children.
Once every six months to a year, they go to the local
welfare office and speak to a social worker who inquires
about the children's education, their father's whereabouts
and the possibility of job training.
The only other contact comes when they receive a welfare
check in the mail every two weeks.
Names of welfare recipients are kept confidential but both
Mrs. Wrenn and Ms. Ortiz were willing to talk publicly about
their lives.
Ms. Ortiz said it didn't matter to her because people know
she is on welfare when they see her at the welfare office.
Mrs. Wrenn's monthly budget consists of her $538 check from
AFDC, which includes child support payments, $181 in food
stamps, $1,245 in state-funded foster care stipends for her
three grandchildren and a $500 monthly Section 8 rental
subsidy.
That is $2,514 a month, or $30,168 a year tax-free, the
equivalent of a private-sector job paying $45,434 in taxable
income. She also has free health insurance through Medicaid,
including dental coverage, for herself and five children.
``It's hard running a household with the income I
receive,'' Mrs. Wrenn said. ``My welfare check is only enough
for two of my kids. . . . I believe that's why people (on
welfare) are working under the table and not reporting it.''
Ms. Ortiz receives $686 a month in AFDC benefits, $268 a
month in food stamps, $200 in child support payments, a $339
Social Security check--for one of two asthmatic children--and
a $650 monthly Section 8 rental subsidy.
The total is $25,716 a year, tax-free, equivalent to
taxable pay of $38,730 a year.
For Mrs. Wrenn, the prospect of work is a nightmare. She
said her health, age and family needs all prevent her from
entering the job market. She has not been employed since
December 1980.
Ms. Ortiz, on the other hand, flatly refuses to work unless
the state provides her with day-care and health benefits. She
has held a job for only two weeks during the nine years since
she had her first child and joined the welfare rolls. She
quit that job when her son became sick.
Statistics made public by the welfare department show these
Lawrence women are typical in many ways.
Nearly 43 percent of AFDC recipients in the Lawrence area
have never held a job.
Department of Public Welfare statistics also show that one
in four AFDC recipients in Greater Lawrence has collected
welfare for more than five years, 7 percent above the
statewide average.
State Welfare commissioner Joseph V. Gallant and Mary
Claire Kennedy, director of the Lawrence welfare office, say
the main problem with the welfare system is it fosters long-
term dependency.
``Years ago, people were much more reluctant to go to the
welfare office. Not any more. One reason for that change is
there is a growing welfare mentality. A good number of people
are generational,'' Mr. Gallant said.
misfortunes led to welfare
Mrs. Wrenn said a series of personal misfortunes first put
her on welfare in the 1970s. Her ex-husband, who died last
year, was an alcoholic who refused to work, she said.
She took a job as a stitcher in a Lawrence shoe factory and
received extra income from the welfare department. When her
ex-husband threatened to kill her, Mr. Wrenn said, she left
him.
``It was a terrible relationship,'' she said. ``I basically
got married to get out of the house. I stayed with him for 14
years because I felt I had nowhere else to go.''
A short-lived relationship with a friend of her husband led
to two other children. She made an attempt to return to work
in 1980, but said she quit after suffering seizures and back
problems.
``I'm scared to go back into the work system at my age,''
she said. ``I find it easier for people to stay on welfare
once you're on because you get more benefits.''
Mrs. Wrenn said she sympathizes with irate taxpayers who
have supported her for years.
``They're working and we're not. They're working to pay for
people,'' she said. ``I did the same thing. Some people do
need the help.''
Without a job, there is no question Mrs. Wrenn needs the
help.
She raises five children, ages 2 to 12 years old, in a
third-floor apartment at the crest of Prospect Hill. She has
lived there for 14 years. Three of those children are her
grandchildren.
She took custody of them last year after her eldest
daughter, who was also on welfare, was convicted of
prostitution then disappeared from a court-ordered drug
clinic.
Mrs. Wrenn said she had learned her eldest daughter was
using the children's welfare benefits to buy drugs. Her
daughter is now serving a jail term at Framingham state
prison, she said.
Two-year-old Alicia, who calls her grandmother ``Mommy,''
has not seen her mother for any extended period of time since
shortly after she was born.
Mrs. Wrenn has not given much thought to the idea of
welfare dependency. But she said she hopes her other children
and grandchildren do not end up on welfare.
She blames drugs for causing her eldest daughter to turn to
welfare. ``At that time I felt it was the only thing she
could do,'' Mrs. Wrenn said. ``I couldn't keep her in the
house.''
``bored with school so i left''
Unlike Mrs. Wrenn, Rosemary Ortiz spent the first 10 years
of her life in a family supported by welfare benefits. The
youngest of six children, Ms. Ortiz said her father left home
when she was an infant. She has not seen him since.
Her mother still lives in Lawrence and went back to work
after her children were old enough to take care of
themselves.
Ms. Ortiz was a senior at Greater Lawrence Technical School
in 1984 when she became pregnant, dropped out and began
receiving AFDC and Food Stamps.
``I was bored with school so I left,'' she said.
The father was a married man who promised to leave his
wife.
``He even bought me an engagement ring,'' she said. ``I was
naive.''
When the father of her first child left, Ms. Ortiz became
involved with his friend. She had three children by the
second man in the past nine years. He has agreed to pay $50 a
week in child support.
Ms. Ortiz went back to school during the evening and
recently obtained a high school equivalency degree which,
along with her children's baptismal certificates, she
displays on her walls.
Her three-bedroom apartment is also decorated with large
color photographs of her children, Head Start diplomas and
other records of their achievements.
A television tuned into Sesame Street keeps her youngest
children--ages 2 and 3--busy enough for her to finish one of
the many loads of laundry she does in a day.
``If they were to cut my AFDC benefits off, I will
survive,'' Ms. Ortiz said. ``I read English. I speak two
languages. I've worked before. I am not afraid to go to
work.''
But she doesn't work, she said, because she fears losing
health care benefits and food stamps for herself and her four
children.
``It doesn't pay to work,'' Ms. Ortiz said.
Both Mrs. Wrenn and Ms. Ortiz said Gov. William F. Weld and
President Bill Clinton should aggressively pursue welfare
fraud before attacking their benefits, or setting a two-year
limit on receiving public assistance.
``There are people out there who need it and yet there are
others who don't and are on it,'' Mrs. Wrenn said. ``They're
the ones who are ruining the welfare system.''
Ms. Ortiz agreed.
``Many years ago, there was no way to cheat welfare. Now
it's a piece of cake,'' she said. ``The system is hard on
people who need it and easy on people who don't.''
{time} 1910
That article demonstrates what two single parents are trying to do,
trying to get off the welfare system, but finding that it does not have
the incentives, it does not reward work. It makes it more difficult to
take a job in the private sector and much easier to continue to stay on
welfare.
The second article I would like to read tonight deals with a very,
very different part of the welfare system. It deals with individuals
who are in prison, convicted of crimes, and yet are still receiving
benefits. It is entitled ``State Looks Other Way as Convicts Get
Welfare: Prison Convicts Get Welfare Behind Bars.''
Heroin and welfare.
For a while, they were Ivan Lebron's bread and butter.
Mr. Lebron sold heroin on the streets of Lawrence,
contributing his bit to the decline of a city.
He was arrested three times on heroin charges before he was
sent away to jail.
But he went back to work selling heroin after he got out,
police say.
For part of the time he was a heroin dealer, he had the
support of the Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare. He
got a monthly check, plus food vouchers, full insurance
benefits and a cover for his activities. He was supposed to
be disabled.
John Clough also had taxpayer support for his life of
crime.
By his own admission, he was on welfare because he was too
addled by drugs and alcohol to hold a job.
But he was fit enough to break into houses and attack and
rob an 83-year-old man.
Mr. Clough continued to collect his welfare benefits even
while behind bars, which is against the law.
Mr. Clough remains locked up. Mr. Lebron is on the run from
another heroin charge. Benefits have ended for both. But
there are others like them, perhaps hundreds.
An Eagle-Tribune investigation found:
Almost 300 criminals who did time in the county jail in
1991 and 1992 were already collecting some form of public
assistance out of the Lawrence welfare office when arrested.
These included drug dealers, burglars, armed robbers, drunk
drivers and child molesters.
More than 50 of the convicts on the Lawrence welfare rolls
continued to receive benefits in jail. More than 30 actually
served full terms with no changes in their benefits.
State welfare officials have ignored a 3-year-old study
recommending computer matches to catch prisoners on welfare.
The state provides benefits to people who claim
disabilities resulting from drug or alcohol abuse but it does
not require them to get help for their addiction.
The investigation included a computerized examination of
thousands of criminal records and other public documents, as
well as interviews with law enforcement officials and
criminals.
Lawrence officials have publicly claimed for years that
drug dealers and users and other criminals have taken
advantage of lax rules to get themselves on the welfare
rolls.
With no need to work and plenty of time on their hands,
they have wreaked havoc on the city.
Mayor Kevin Sullivan at one point ordered police to
confiscate welfare identification cards whenever they came
across them during a drug raid. Dozens were seized before a
court ordered the city to stop because the practice was
unconstitutional.
Nothing has been done to stop the welfare department from
subsidizing drug dealers.
Welfare officials do not check criminal records before or
after putting someone on welfare.
Mr. Sullivan, now an official in the state Transportation
Department, said he started seizing welfare cards because
drug dealers were ruining the city and ``we were paying them
to do it. We were subsidizing a drug culture.''
``These were mostly young males who were alleging they were
disabled.. . . The government was paying them to stand on
street corners and deal drugs.''
Essex County Sheriff Charles Reardon said he and his staff
also believe welfare helps fuel the underground economy of
criminals.
Criminals are already on welfare when they arrive in jail
and many continue to collect even behind bars, he has found.
For four years, he has attempted to have state welfare
officials address the issue. They have done nothing.
on heroin, on welfare
Ivan Lebron and John Clough are examples of what Mr.
Sullivan and Sheriff Reardon are talking about.
Mr. Lebron, 32, a former resident of Oxford Street in
Lawrence, was arrested on heroin dealing charges on May 16,
1990. He was arrested twice more for heroin while awaiting
trial.
His fourth arrest, on June 25, 1991, was for assaulting a
police officer. This time he was sent away for a year to the
Essex County jail in Middleton.
Mr. Lebron joined the welfare rolls in March 1991, in
between heroin arrests. A doctor's note saying he was
disabled entitled him to $339 a month in General Relief
benefits, plus food stamps.
Mr. Lebron's benefits stopped two weeks after he went to
jail, as they were supposed to.
A month later, he was moved to the minimum-security
Correctional Alternatives Center in Lawrence.
Despite his claim of being too disabled to work when he
signed up for General Relief, Mr. Lebron enrolled in a work-
release program at the CAC.
Records show Mr. Lebron worked at the Ogden Martin trash
plant in Haverhill from October to December 1991. His job:
shoveling trash into the incinerator. He made $6 an hour and
worked from 6:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., five days a week.
He had $1,106 in his prison bank account when he was
released on Dec. 5, 1991.
In January 1992, he was sent back to jail for a month on a
parole violation.
He went back on General Relief in April 1992.
While collecting, he was arrested for trespassing at a
public housing project where he had been known to sell drugs.
His welfare benefits stopped in September 1992 when his
eligibility ran out.
Three months later, State Police arrested Mr. Lebron and
two other men and charged them with running a major heroin
ring out of the Merrimack Courts housing project.
Police said addicts would page Mr. Lebron on his beeper,
punch in the number of bags of heroin they wanted and Mr.
Lebron would meet them at the housing project.
Police with drug-sniffing dogs found five bags of heroin on
Mr. Lebron, 45 bags inside a TV in the apartment where he was
staying and 180 bags in the heating system of his partners'
car.
Despite his record, Mr. Lebron was allowed to post bail and
walk away. He did not look back.
disability not an obstacle
John Clough has done time for a string of crimes, including
several burglaries, robbery and assault and battery.
Mr. Clough, 35, formerly of Haverhill Street, Lawrence,
started collecting General Relief in October 1990. He
switched to Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, the
following July.
While on welfare he was arrested twice for breaking into
houses. Police say he also robbed an 83-year-old Lawrence man
a few blocks from the welfare office.
According to the police report, Mr. Clough and an
accomplice confronted the old man and demanded money. They
knocked him down when he showed an empty wallet.
Mr. Clough snatched a bag containing some personal papers
and bolted. He was arrested three blocks away and jailed.
He was later sentenced to four years in Walpole state
prison. The charge of robbing the old man was filed. Mr.
Clough has since been transferred to the medium security
prison in Shirley.
SSI benefits are supposed to stop while the recipient is in
jail. But Mr. Clough's continued until at least September
1992, a full year after he had been locked up.
In a phone interview from prison, Mr. Clough said his
checks were sent to his home and cashed by the mother of his
child. ``Without the money, she would have been out on the
street,'' he said.
Mr. Clough said he was on SSI for a disability. ``I'm
chemically disimpaired,'' he said. ``I use drugs and alcohol.
I can't read or write, too.''
Welfare officials confirm people who are disabled as the
result of drug or alcohol abuse can collect benefits. And
there is no requirement that an addict or alcoholic get
treatment or job training to continue to receive benefits.
``There are still a substantial number of EAEDC recipients
who are addicts of one form or another,'' said Mary Claire
Kennedy, director of the Lawrence welfare office.
Emergency Aid for Elderly, Disabled and Children, or EAEDC,
is the program that replaced General Relief when GR was
eliminated because of suspected abuse by drug addicts and
criminals.
Meanwhile, Mr. Clough has filed a $100,000 lawsuit against
Lawrence police from jail. He claims officers entered his
home without a warrant, beat him and denied him medical
attention. He acted as his own lawyer, court records show.
ex-convicts can collect
Until recently, Massachusetts convicts were automatically
entitled to collect General Relief welfare for 60 days after
being released from jail.
Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the Massachusetts
Human Services Coalition, said that may have been unpopular
but it reduced crime.
``If you remember the old gangster movies they'd hand them
$50 and a new suit when they left prison. I guess we've
progressed to giving $600 to ex-cons,'' Ms. Weinstein said.
She said convenience store owners who might be targets of
holdups ``are thankful these people have some source of
income when they come out. Using this to tide them over is a
good investment.''
But The Eagle-Tribune found many criminals do not use
welfare just to tide them over after being released. They are
on welfare before going to jail, and they can continue to
collect indefinitely by claiming a medical disability.
One welfare fraud investigator told The Eagle-Tribune
disability certificates are easy to forge and never checked
by welfare workers because there are so many.
A computer match of jail and welfare records by The Eagle-
Tribune found 305 prisoners who spent time in the Essex
County House of Corrections between 1991 and 1992 had also
received some form of welfare benefits through the Lawrence
office during those two years. Of the 305, 296 were on
welfare before they were incarcerated.
Cross-checking found at least 54 inmates whose welfare
cases remained open even after they were jailed.
In 17 cases, as in Mr. Lebron's, their benefits stopped
after they were locked up. But 37 other inmates, including
Mr. Clough, served their entire sentences without losing
benefits.
Those estimates are on the conservative side as they
account only for inmates who received benefits through the
Lawrence welfare office, one of 48 across the state.
The sheriff's department has seized public assistance
checks sent to inmates collecting out of the Salem,
Newburyport, Haverhill and Lynn welfare offices.
The Eagle-Tribune also found at least two felons who
received welfare while in state prisons. One served a year
without losing benefits.
checks in the jail's mail
The Eagle-Tribune first reported that prisoners were
illegally collecting public assistance in 1989, after Sheriff
Reardon confiscated a handful of welfare checks found during
routine searches of prisoners' mail for contraband.
One burglar on General Relief told a reporter that
``scamming'' the state was common among his friends.
Two years ago, Gov. William F. Weld cut off illegal aliens,
ex-convicts and drug addicts from the General Relief rolls.
The state replaced the program with EAEDC. The Weld
administration also required all participants to undergo an
outside medical examination.
Thousands of recipients were knocked off the welfare rolls
and spending on the program was cut in half from more than
$200 million to less than $100 million.
But Merrimack Valley Legal Services filed suit and won a
ruling that the new medical standards were ``inherently
unfair, unjust and inequitable.''
As a result, thousands of welfare recipients will be
reinstated.
After The Eagle-Tribune expose four years ago, state
officials maintained only a ``very small'' number of
prisoners were collecting welfare. Then-welfare commissioner
Charles Atkins publicly said the state would start performing
computer matches of welfare and jail records to root out
those who were.
Sheriff Reardon, who continues to confiscate welfare checks
sent to the jail, said the matches were never done.
``I have never heard from them nor has any of my staff
heard from them,'' he said.
Computer matches were also recommended by a legislative
committee that studied the issue of convicts collecting
welfare after The Eagle-Tribune story.
As part of the 1989 study, state auditors performed a
sample match of welfare rolls against Essex County jail
rosters.
Social Security numbers of 364 inmates were checked. Forty-
nine, or 13 percent, were found to be on the master file at
the welfare department, indicating they were on welfare at
some point.
The study said 10, or about 3 percent, were fraudulently
receiving benefits behind bars. They were removed from the
welfare rolls. The study recommended continued computer
matches that would act as a deterrent and save as much as
$1 million each year.
The current welfare commissioner, Joseph V. Gallant, said
his department looked into conducting computer matches with
prisons and jails but dropped the idea because there is not
central registry of inmates. He also said he believed the
cross-checks would find only a handful of inmates on welfare.
``You have to weigh what it costs to do the matches to get
one or two people,'' Mr. Gallant said.
``They know how many we caught,'' Sheriff Reardon said.
``It's far greater than two or three.''
Based on the number of welfare checks confiscated at the
jail, he estimates close to 30 percent of the entire jail
population is on some form of welfare.
``They get enough from the public as it is from the jails.
And to have them collecting welfare on top of that is too
much,'' the sheriff said.
Sheriff Reardon said most inmates know the rules barring
them from collecting welfare while doing time.
``They know once they come to the jail the check will be
taken away from them,'' Sheriff Reardon said. ``So they send
it to a post office box, another address. Of course, they
aren't going to turn themselves in.''
Madam Speaker, to recap, the articles I've read tonight outline how
welfare has sadly become a way of life for many, both those who want to
get off the system, as well as those who callously abuse it. Also, they
point out how, despite the law, some felons have still collected SSI
benefits.
Tomorrow, I will outline how those convicted of misdemeanors still
collect SSI, how fraud often goes unpunished, and how many have cheated
the system and the taxpayers.
____________________