From Tennessee:
Legislation to cut welfare benefits of parents with children performing poorly in school has cleared committees of both the House and Senate after being revised to give the parents several ways to avoid the reductions. …
The bill … calls for a 30 percent reduction in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefits to parents whose children are not making satisfactory progress in school.
Tennessee Democrats point out the obvious to their ideologically blinded opponents:
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Turner of Nashville said parents of children with “undiagnosed learning disabilities” could suffer because of the bill and, even if a child is performing poorly in school, “the kid still has to eat.”
Turner also said the bill apparently does not apply to home-schooled children and, “I guess a person who wants to get around this just can say ‘I’m home schooling my children’.”
Market fundamentalism has infected Republican heads:
“Nothing motivates people like money,” [State Senator Stacey] Campfield said. “We have done very little to hold parents accountable for their child’s performance. It’s unacceptable to have this generational cycle of poverty continue.”
Sen. Campfield, by the way, does not have children. One might also add that the maximum benefit, the maximum, is $185 per month, one of the lowest in the country. In Utah and North Dakota, that number is above $400 per month. In Massachusetts, it is $565.
I honestly didn’t think I could be shocked any more by this stuff, and the worst can usually be written off as “one nutjob filed a bill.” This cleared two committees. They are defending it. I don’t even think market dynamics play any real role in their thinking. At the level of contagious religious emotions where this “fundamentalism” lies, I think it’s directly about hurting vulnerable people. It’s as if they feel that there is something sinful or unnatural about a power imbalance whose potential violence is not brought to complete fruition.
My instinct is to think about this in terms of white Southern culture going back through slavery. But then, this religion is practiced in the national conversation around debt, deficit, and grand bargains. Respectable people in blue states have learned to feel in their bones that hurting the poor will placate our national demons too.
members of the GOP have proposed the SECOND most backward welfare policy (a bow to Tennessee’s unquestioned supremacy).
That SECOND most backward policy would be drug testing for welfare recipients. A Florida law imposing this requirement was ruled unconstitutional by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in February, and the policy itself was neatly demolished by the Daily Show.
Neverthless, when it comes to striving for new Orwellian heights while punishing the poor to distract us from our real problems, Massachusetts is out there trying to hold its own: House 3289, An act relative to the well-being of recipients of public welfare.
Poor children are doing badly in school! Let’s make it harder for them by making their families even poorer – that will surely improve their school performance!
What a bunch of morons.
The Reactionary Mind:
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