[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 178 (Friday, November 10, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2157-E2158]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         CONFRONTING THE MYTHS

                                 ______


                        HON. ANDREW JACOBS, JR.

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, November 10, 1995

  Mr. JACOBS. Mr. Speaker, how about a dose of reality? The following 
article by Prof. Fran Quigley was published by the Nuvo Newsweekly in 
Indianapolis.
  P.S. If the present welfare system as we mistakenly ``know it'' is so 
bad, ask yourself this question: Why did President Ronald Reagan sign 
it into law in 1988?

               [From the Nuvo Newsweekly, Nov. 2-9, 1995]

       Confronting the Myths--The Truth About Poverty and Welfare

                        (By Prof. Fran Quigley)

       ``Welfare as we know it'' is coming to an end. True to the 
     campaign promises of both President Clinton and the 
     Republican Congress, our country's system of providing 
     guarantees of federal income assistance to poor families 
     through the program of Aid to Families with Dependent 
     Children is being dismantled. In its place will be state-run 
     programs of assistance, including strict time limitations on 
     the receipt of benefits, mandates that parents work outside 
     the home and potentially a blanket denial of assistance to 
     children of teenage mothers.
       In Indiana, the changes to ``welfare as we know it'' are 
     even more radical. In June of this year, most Indiana 
     recipients of AFDC were notified that they would be subject 
     to new rules that limit their lifetime enrollment on the 
     program to two years and would be subject to a ``family 
     cap,'' where the state refuses to provide any additional 
     benefits to families for new children conceived while the 
     mother was enrolled in the AFDC program. In light of the 
     conventional wisdom that has the Democratic party as the 
     defender of the nation's poor, the irony of these stricter 
     state provisions is that Democratic Governor Evan Bayh has 
     sponsored and defended the two-year limitation and the family 
     cap, while many Senate Republicans recently rejected these 
     same provisions as too onerous for the poor.
       All of these changes have come as a result of immense 
     popular support for elected officials to change ``welfare as 
     we know it.'' But what exactly is welfare as we know it? It 
     turns out that once the programs and the people enrolled in 
     them are examined beyond rhetoric about ``lazy deadbeats'' 
     and ``welfare queens,'' that actual data show that many of 
     the assumptions of the welfare debate are incorrect.
       Some of these assumptions are so prevalent that they have 
     taken on the status of myths. It is a dangerous situation 
     when these myths have a place at the center of the welfare 
     debate and now the dismantling of the family safety net. In 
     order to take an informed position on the changes in our 
     government's role in assisting the poor, these myths need to 
     be confronted by the cold, hard, statistical truth:


myth no. 1: if poor people would just get jobs, they would no longer be 
                                  poor

       Truth: In 1990s America, poverty is now a problem for 
     working people and their families. In 1969, full-time 
     employment at a minimum-wage job provided enough income to 
     keep a family of three out of poverty. In 1992, full-time 
     minimum-wage employment provided only 76 percent of the 
     income needed to keep that same family above the federal 
     government's estimate of the poverty level, and only 50 
     percent of the income estimated to be necessary for a three-
     person family to live a safe and healthy lifestyle in 
     Indianapolis.
       Implicit in this ``get a job'' myth and much of the anti-
     welfare rhetoric is the notion that poor people are poor 
     because they are too lazy to work. However, noted welfare and 
     poverty researcher Joel Handler describes empirical studies 
     showing that poor people, including people receiving welfare, 
     usually a well-developed work ethic and, in fact, most do 
     work at jobs that simply do not pay enough salary to keep 
     their families out of poverty.
       Those who do not work outside the home usually are raising 
     families, and the financial difficulties of maintaining 
     employment, child care, transportation and health care are 
     often responsible for forcing single parents out of the 
     workplace. Also, any description of AFDC recipients as not 
     ``working'' ignores the reality that raising children is both 
     difficult and important work: Anyone who has raised children 
     must reject the ``lazy'' description for a single mother who 
     is raising kids in an environment of substandard housing, 
     violence and constant financial uncertainty.


  myth no. 2: once a person receives welfare benefits, his financial 
                           needs will be met

       Truth: Receipt of Aid to Families with Dependent Children 
     in Indiana provides a family with less than one-third of the 
     income needed to meet the federal government estimate of the 
     poverty level. A disabled adult's Supplemental Security 
     Income provides a little over 54 percent of the estimated 
     income necessary to meet the poverty level for a two-person 
     family. AFDC benefit levels vary among states, but the median 
     state AFDC maximum monthly benefit level for a family of 
     three was only $366, which is barely more than a third of the 
     federal poverty line. The grim implication of these figures 
     is that our streets and shelters are full of families with 
     children who are homeless and/or hungry, yet are receiving 
     the maximum welfare benefits allowed.


myth no. 3: women have babies in order to receive larger welfare checks

       Truth: Since Indiana's average AFDC monthly increase totals 
     only $65 per additional child, as contrasted with the federal 
     government's quite modest estimate of a $200-plus increased 
     monthly cost of living per child Indiana's welfare recipients 
     do not have any financial incentive to have babies. In fact, 
     most welfare mothers do not have a large number of children: 
     73 percent of all AFDC recipients have only one or two 
     children. AFDC recipients with more than three children 
     constitute only 10 percent of the total number of families 
     enrolled in the program.


  myth no. 4: most welfare recipients are african american, longtime 
                     dependents and teenage parents

       Truth: All of these descriptive adjectives are incorrect as 
     applied to AFDC recipients. African-Americans only make up 37 
     percent of all AFDC recipients (down from 45 percent in 
     1969), over half of all recipients leave the AFDC program 
     within one year, and only 8 percent of recipients are under 
     the age of 20.


 myth no. 5: programs to help the poor are too expensive for state and 
                       federal government budgets

       Truth: Don't blame the poor for budget deficits without 
     looking in the mirror first: All the direct aid to the poor 
     (AFDC, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and SSI) together does not 
     equal three of the tax breaks benefiting the middle class and 
     wealthy (deductions for retirement plans, home mortgage 
     interest deductions, and exemptions for employer-paid health 
     insurance premiums). Put another way, the AFDC program 
     consumes only 1 percent of the federal budget and 2 percent 
     of the average state budget.
       Also, government investments in the well-being of our 
     nation's poor, especially poor children, are cost-effective 
     because of the programs' prevention of future social costs. 
     For example, every dollar spent on Head Start programs is 
     estimated to save $4.75 in later special education, crime, 
     welfare and other costs. Similar estimates have every dollar 
     spent on childhood immunization or 

[[Page E 2158]]
     drug treatment saving $10 in later medical costs or social costs.


   myth no. 6: housing assistance is widely available to poor people

       Truth: There is often at least a two-year waiting list for 
     public or subsidized housing in Marion County if the housing 
     unit is even accepting applications, and these existing 
     programs are at risk of reduction or elimination by the 
     current Congress. Subsidized housing is vital to poor people 
     because the federal government's recommendation that people 
     pay 30 percent of their income on housing and utilities is an 
     otherwise impossible goal for most AFDC recipients. For 
     example, the 1993 fair market value for an Indianapolis two-
     bedroom apartment is $523, which represents 156 percent of 
     the monthly income of a three-person family receiving AFDC.
       In fact, most poor people in Indianapolis pay over 50 
     percent of their income in housing costs. Some of the 
     hypocrisy of the anti-welfare rhetoric based on allegations 
     of budget-busting is demonstrated by the government's 
     commitment to providing significant housing benefits for the 
     decidedly non-poor. For every dollar spent by the federal 
     government on low-income housing assistance, $3 of housing 
     assistance is provided to high-income persons (incomes in the 
     top 20 percent) through homeowner tax deductions.


 myth no. 7: Private charities can replace government programs to help 
                                the poor

       Truth: Private charitable programs currently spend only 
     about 1 percent as much as state and federal governments on 
     social services, and many of those private services are 
     provided by agencies heavily dependent on government funds. 
     The major charitable providers of social services, including 
     Salvation Army, Catholic Charities USA and Feed the Children, 
     have taken the position that government has a necessary role 
     in helping the poor. Leaders of these organizations predict 
     disastrous consequences for the poor if the government 
     significantly reduces its role in providing a social safety 
     net.


 myth no. 8: the united states provides the opportunity for persons in 
       poverty to simply pull themselves up into the middle class

       Truth: For most poor people, 1995 America is not the land 
     of opportunity. The gap between the rich and poor in our 
     society is the largest of any industrialized nation, and the 
     percentage of poor people who are able to move out of poverty 
     has steadily decreased in the last several decades. Even 
     though current efforts to solve the United States' poverty 
     problem focus on reducing or eliminating government programs, 
     it is the more generous and pervasive family benefit programs 
     that are generally cited as the source of the greater amount 
     of class mobility and lower amount of poverty in comparable 
     countries.
       Dire consequences are predicted as a result of changes to 
     our current welfare system, with poverty experts and service 
     providers predicting everything from widespread rioting to a 
     future where children sleeping on sidewalk heating grates 
     will be a common sight. The lesson to be taken from exposing 
     the fallacy of the myths that motivated these changes is that 
     the very survival of our country's poor families is put at 
     risk based on misconceptions and prejudices, rather than 
     clear-eyed examination of the effectiveness of the current 
     welfare programs. While it may not yet be clear what the 
     consequences of changing welfare will have for the poor and 
     for the rest of us, it is clear that we have eliminated 
     ``welfare as we know it'' when we did not really ``know it'' 
     in the first place.

                          ____________________