Welfare as They Know It

[marmar]

Published on Saturday, August 27, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
Welfare as They Know It

by Lizzy Ratner


Fifteen years ago, on August 22, 1996, President Bill Clinton perched at a podium in the White House Rose Garden and signed the bill that would become known as welfare reform. Flanked by three former welfare recipients and looking glazed and smooth as a donut, he swept aside six decades of social welfare policy with a single triangulating stroke of his pen, reversing a course that had been set by Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the New Deal. In the process, he handed the law’s right-wing backers their first emboldening victory in a far bigger, dirtier, and still raging campaign to unravel the government safety net.

“Today we are ending welfare as we know it,” Clinton declared, the words “A New Beginning” emblazoned on the podium beneath him in case anyone missed the point. From that moment on, needy families would face a strict five-year lifetime limit for welfare assistance. They would have to comply with stringent work requirements. Handouts would be replaced by a hand up, self-destruction would yield to self-sufficiency, and dependency would give way to the starchy respectability of personal responsibility.

Or, as Clinton promised, “Today we are taking a historic chance to make welfare what it was meant to be: a second chance, not a way of life.”

Exactly fifteen years later, a handful of welfare recipients gathered in Harlem, just a few blocks from Clinton’s post-presidency redoubt, to describe exactly what Bubba’s “second chance” has meant for them. They had been brought together by Community Voices Heard, a grassroots group of low-income people forged out of the fires of welfare reform, and their stories crisscrossed the spectrum of welfare experiences. They were several women and one man, they were white, black, and Latina, they were young and they were older – and their verdict was as swift and final as a guillotine. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/27-7

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. And meanwhile, Republicans think it's okay for corporations to receive welfare...

The Export-Import Bank: Corporate Welfare At Its Worst

by Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

This country has a $6 trillion national debt, a growing deficit and is borrowing money from the Social Security Trust Fund in order to fund government services. We can no longer afford to provide over $125 billion every year in corporate welfare - tax breaks, subsidies and other wasteful spending - that goes to some of the largest, most profitable corporations in America.



One of the most egregious forms of corporate welfare can be found at a little known federal agency called the Export-Import Bank, an institution that has a budget of about $1 billion a year and the capability of putting at risk some $15.5 billion in loan guarantees annually. At a time when the government is under-funding veterans' needs, education, health care, housing and many other vital services, over 80% of the subsidies distributed by the Export-Import Bank goes to Fortune 500 corporations. Among the companies that receive taxpayer support from the Ex-Im are Enron, Boeing, Halliburton, Mobil Oil, IBM, General Electric, AT&T, Motorola, Lucent Technologies, FedEx, General Motors, Raytheon, and United Technologies.



You name the large multinational corporation, many of which make substantial campaign contributions to both political parties, and they're on the Ex-Im welfare line. Needless to say, many of these same companies receiving taxpayer support pay exorbitant salaries and benefits to their CEOs. IBM, for example, gave their former CEO Lou Gerstner over $260 million in stock options while they were lining up for their Ex-Im handouts.

THE REST OF THE ARTICLE FOUND HERE: http://www.progress.org/corpw30.htm


I think I'm going to make an original post out of this.

[Fearless]

2. +10000!

[jtuck004]

3. Half-assed efforts combined with an artificial cutoff into nothingness.

Jeez.

_______
"Perhaps the most desperately-needed change is a philosophical one, a shift in purpose and focus from welfare reform as an experiment in punitive behavior modification and deterrence to welfare as a genuine anti-poverty program."
___________________

It's a great approach if your purpose is to enlarge the numbers of the working poor. This approach sees people as an expense, not an investment. Need training - nuclear, solar, business, research, engineering, remedial reading and math - whatever it takes - something that has a potential of increasing personal wealth and security. A little support, and the removal of some barriers. These people will do the rest.

And maybe a better approach to disability and other issues that the above will never address.

What is described is just cruel, an institutionalized philosophy of giving a little hope, but not enough support to reach safety before the rescuer lets go of the rope.