(Also posted here. Cross-posting at BMG because…it’s been a while.)
The Baker-Polito ticket announced yesterday that it’s going to spend this week campaigning on (drumroll)–welfare reform. (The press release is here on the Baker campaign website, under the “Travels with Charlie” tab.)
You might have thought that Baker would just take a victory lap on this issue. After all, he deserves much of the credit for the 1994 welfare reform law signed by his boss, Governor William Weld, that instituted a two-year time limit on benefits and mandatory work requirements for families whose youngest child was school aged. These changes, the Baker press release boasts, resulted in “a reduction in the welfare caseload of 50% from approximately 104,000 to approximately 48,000 due to reforms which got people back to work.”
The law has not changed much in 20 years. In fact, by one of the measures important to the Baker campaign, it has become even more strict: it now requires the parents of children as young as two years to work (in the Weld-Baker years, parents of school-aged children were required to work).
The low caseloads Baker attained have continued, too. During a period of years that includes the worst recession in our lifetimes, when a spike in the welfare caseload would not have been surprising, only a very modest (10 percent or so) increase occurred. Today the caseload is back in Baker territory, around 48,000 families.
So, you might have thought that Baker would be touting these stats as proof of his reformer chops instead of devoting an entire week to touring the state to bemoan the “culture of dependence” (yes, the same one he eradicated two decades ago). But then you would have failed to appreciate the important role that welfare has played of late in helping the Republicans distract the public from their desolate party agenda. For this week, at a minimum, they’re back to their fixation on this program that amounts to less than one percent of the state budget. Welfare must be reformed again so that, as the Baker campaign says, “it provides a true safety net for those who need it.”
Really? “A true safety net…?” The fact is that welfare grants have lost 40 percent of their value since 1989 and are farther than ever from being sufficient to lift a family out of poverty. An increase in the grant amount would be required just to keep up with 20 years of inflation, but Baker is not including any increase in his recommendations.
“…for those who need it?” Certainly not for all of them and far fewer than when Baker was last in charge. Back then, 92 percent of the families living in poverty in Massachusetts were receiving welfare. By 2010, that number had dropped to 45 percent. In other words, more people are living in poverty in Massachusetts today without welfare assistance, but the Baker campaign seems concerned solely with the “integrity” of the program.
Candidate Steve Grossman was quick to criticize Baker yesterday for trying to score cheap political points instead of offering real solutions to poverty. It will be interesting to see if and how his Democratic competitors respond and if in 2014 welfare rancor is finally exhausting itself as a campaign issue.
Who can argue with this? Who can argue with cracking down on the cheats who abuse the system?
Based on what you’ve written, every single mother trying to scrape by on what welfare provides for her and her kids? All cheats abusing the system? Every parent who lost their job and can’t find another one in a tough job market, and who needs some help to pay the bills? They’re all cheats? All living high off the hog? All abusing the system? I have to assume you feel that way about all government programs. Have you never needed help of any kind from a government program?
Dan, I really can’t believe you’re serious in what you’ve written. You’re covertly trying to discredit Republicans, no?
$1 million in Orlando, FL. What’s in Orlando? Is this right? All legit so don’t ask questions? The Boston Bomber, a boxer, was on EBT. He couldn’t lay sod for a landscaper?
I know Shauna O’Connell isn’t popular here and I think she is a little too harsh at times, but she has a bill that limits EBT use to the borders of MA only. I find this a reasonable request since most users are legit and deserving of help.
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2014/05/07/i-team-millions-of-dollars-in-mass-welfare-benefits-spent-out-of-state/
Nobody on EBT should ever go to visit a relative in New York or attend a funeral or wedding out of state. Great idea.
If people are relying on strangers to pay for food and clothes, saying no to out of state trips funded by taxpayers is not unreasonable.
I’ve known people who are struggling here, can’t find much work, they get SNAP. They have a large extended family scattered around the U.S. A sister says, “Hey, come visit for a week. I found a ticket for $200, it’s on me.” The visitor buys some groceries during the trip to chip in.
Being in Florida is not, in itself, grounds for suspicion, even if your particular brand of “mesquinerie oblige” prefers these people in sackcloth and ashes. A million in Orlando. There are half a million SNAP households in MA. That’s two bucks per. Sounds a lot less shocking than, as Dr. Evil would say, “One…million…dollars.”
Less than a penny a customer.
When it comes to theft and abuse, zero tolerance must be the rule.
In your example with the free plane ticket, the answer would still be no, you can’t use EBT outside Massachusetts.
I have no idea why I waste any time debating with you. You’re assuming the very point you’re trying to argue for. It is illegal to rob a bank, even of a penny. It is NOT ILLEGAL to use an EBT card in another state.
You yourself said that Shaunna O’Connell, Confederate Flag Queen, “has a bill” that would limit geographic use of EBT cards (to MA and bordering states, which is more generous than your proposal of instant vaporization when the card leaves a wallet in Woonsocket). That bill has not passed.
I decline to join your assumption that use of an EBT card outside Massachusetts is inherently abusive. And I’d refer you to jconway’s comment below for much more egregious abuses to which you might apply your righteous anger.
The relatives of a lot of Puerto Rican and Dominican people in Massachusetts.
argues with cracking down on cheats or helping people to attain economic independence. But there’s a difference between encouraging those goals and punishing people for their poverty.
Consider just one very common scenario — the situation of a victim of domestic violence (who make up large percentage of the welfare caseload). Because her abuser has always controlled the money, she has none, but is still determined to get away. She and her child go to another city hoping he does not track them down. She’s told to keep as low profile as possible.
Under Baker’s plan, before she can receive the $518 per month of welfare assistance that she and her child would be eligible for, she has to search for a job for 60 days, which contrary to all the advice she’s getting, exposes her to more of the risks of being out in public at a time when she and her child are extremely vulnerable.
I think the long-term interests of the state are (not to mention the victim and her child) are better served under the current law, which makes her eligible immediately and gives her 60 days to try to find a job and stabilize her life.
(Also, on the I-Team report, EBT cards are used not only by the 48,000 families receiving welfare, but also by the nearly 500,000 families in the state who receive nutrition assistance under the SNAP program.)
Let’s completely eliminate corporate welfare, let’s realize that all corporations are ‘undeserving’ of public subsidy and end the practice. Let’s eliminate tax shelter, tax loopholes, and tax fraud among big businesses. Let’s eliminate the kind of welfare that gave the last statewide Republican candidate a 281k write off on his Cohasset manse.
Let’s end the state bailouts of towns whose voters refuse to properly fund their own local services. Let’s end the subsidization of motorists at the expense of our ailing transit system. Let’s end the welfare rich towns get for their schools and redistribute it to the districts that need it. Let’s end the kind of welfare that protects nebulous ocean view property values at the expense of our environment and energy independence. Then maybe we can start talking about welfare cheats among the working poor. Let’s solve the real problems first.
The budget for the Department of Transitional Assistance which administers these cards is around $775 million. Of that money approximately $641 million consist of outlays for Safety Net functions.
The I-Team discovered approximately $4.5 million was spent in Florida. As others have pointed out, some proportion of that is likely quite legitimate — and can be explained by relatives that live in Florida as well as perfectly reasonable needs for human happiness. When people are poor, studies show, they tend to share a lot more than comfortable middle class people do. It’s not impossible that poor relatives in mean-spirited Florida are benefiting from the generosity of their equally poor relatives in Massachusetts. Likely not an expected use of EBT cards, but =[y
How we think about this problem is also easily distorted. The resentment that cheating the state inspires makes the cheating more memorable. There’s also availability bias. The news is not full of reports about people benefiting from transitional assistance, but it is certainly peppered with fraud cases. So for the same reason that we falsely think that there are more murders than suicides and more deaths in armed conflicts than from traffic accidents, we are likewise led to overestimate the amount of fraud seen in safety net programs.
None of this is to say that the State should be lax about preventing fraud and abuse. On the other hand, spending $10 million to eliminate $5 million worth of fraud might not be, well, cost effective. So we have to accept that there will always be some fraud.
Why are you so credulous when it comes to statements by Republicans but are so highly skeptical about everyone else? Why are you so willing to take everything Baker has to say at face value? Where has your independent skepticism gone?
A lot of the conservative position on “welfare,” as exhibited by Charlie Baker and DFW, is based on the idea that recipients should develop “economic independence and self-sufficiency.” It is simply assumed that anyone who wants a job can find one. That is not the case, even in a good economy, for the most basic of reasons: it’s contrary to the legally stated economic policy of the United States of America.
Our Federal Reserve has two goals: to promote price stability (i.e. tame inflation) and to promote “full employment.” Historically those goals have been at odds, because zero unemployment, even using the U3 measure, would tend to generate inflation. Policymakers therefore define “full employment” (the “NAIRU”) as no “cyclical” unemployment, which is in reality an employment level several points above zero.
In the early 1960s this was about 4%. For some time, until the mid-90s, it was assumed that even a 6% U3 would constitute “full employment”; below that the inflation monster appears and the Fed raises rates to maintain its desired “structural” unemployment rate. The bankers who have the Fed’s ear certainly don’t want their assets to lose real value due to something like wage-earners having employment market leverage.
As a result the Fed never would let the U3 get below 4% of 5%, even in the best of economic times. Thus our hustling “economic independence” success story who found a job merely has pushed someone else out of paid employment.
One can defend policymakers’ desire to minimize inflation, but it’s pure hypocrisy and cruelty to manage the economy so as to guarantee that one of each 25 people trying to be in the labor force won’t be successful, and simultaneously stigmatize those people for not working and deny them subsistence. The 1990s welfare “reforms” did nothing but ensure that huge numbers of people below the poverty line are not receiving assistance. In an era when the fortunes of the top 1% have been skyrocketing, that’s unconscionable.
You have a fatalist attitude for a huge swath of Americans you say will never get jobs b/c our govt prevents them from doing do due to a desire to keep inflation low. I say hogwash.
People are not doomed to be on public assistance during their working years, as you suggest. First is to incentivize work, allow parents vouchers for their kids who are stuck in crappy schools, applaud success and risk taking rather than demonizing private enterprise, if you do all this then anyone can make something of themselves, much more than what you condemned them to in your comment above.
We are still that shining city on the hill, just let us use our own energy resources to keep that light bright for all to see.
I know you won’t let it get in the way of a good homespun bullshit session, but it’s a fact. Personalize it all you want, but the Fed will not let U3 unemployment get below 4%. Ever. This will show up in the press as “The Federal Reserve today raised interest rates a quarter of a point, citing inflation concerns. Analysts say the Fed needed to put the brakes on an economy that’s in danger of overheating.” It’s just basic math that, when it becomes more expensive to borrow, less borrowing occurs. Businesses expand less, unemployment stops falling, and workers have less leverage. They’re less likely to get raises and that helps keep inflation at bay.
That does not mean, as you suggest, that there’s a particular group of people who are doomed, DOOMED, I tell you. The individual people looking for work and not finding it might change over time. It does mean that, at any given time, 4 percent of the would-be workforce will be out of work. Of course, that hasn’t been the concern for a while. The concern at the Fed now is that inflation’s too low and the job market too weak. Which is an even worse time to shred the safety net.
You do get some points for working totally unrelated right-wing talking points into your answer, though.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/18/business/greenspan-warns-of-another-rise-in-interest-rates.html
Of the total expenditures that Massachusetts spends on welfare, can Charlie or anyone else tell me what percentage is suspected of fraud?