[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
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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.
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