The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.63/No.10           March 15, 1999 
 
 
Clinton's Welfare `Reform' Leaves Million Of Workers With No Jobs And No Income  

BY MEGAN ARNEY
The real toll of U.S. president William Jefferson Clinton's vow to "end welfare as we know it" is beginning to be felt. Two and a half years into the implementation of a bipartisan welfare "reform" law, millions of people, in the most vulnerable layers of the working class, are being pushed further away from a standard of living comparable to that of the rest of their class.

The cynically titled Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which Clinton signed in August 1996, formally ended Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the main federally funded cash relief program. AFDC was part of the Social Security Act of 1935, which also encompasses Social Security, Supplemental Security Insurance, and unemployment insurance.

These programs were a by-product of massive struggles by working people -like the CIO movement that forged the industrial trade unions - against the brutal, grinding conditions that resulted from the world crisis of capitalism. The expansion of social programs, including Medicare and Medicaid for the elderly and poor, in the 1960s was also a product of working-class struggle, the rising Black rights movement.

These minimal entitlement programs, which provide some possibility for workers to make it through a lifetime, buffering the dog-eat-dog competition bred by capitalism, are now under assault. The "ending of welfare as we know it" - is aimed at preparing the way politically for the rulers to cut the much larger social gains of Medicare and Social Security. And it is being implemented at a time when the rulers are bragging of 6 percent economic growth and relatively low unemployment rates - conditions that will not continue in perpetuity.

Under the new law, AFDC is replaced by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), administered by state governments with the stipulation that they organize to slash the number of those receiving aid, supposedly through "welfare to work" programs. It includes a lifetime limit of five years of benefits for most recipients, tightened eligibility criteria, and increased degrading means testing and intrusion into individuals' lives.

Women, for example, are required to identify the father of their children, or see their benefits cut by at least 25 percent. At the time the law was passed, 13 million workers and farmers were receiving AFDC, and 25 million had food stamps. Today the number receiving TANF is less than 8 million -the lowest percentage of the population since 1969. State governments have gone further than the welfare laws require in shoving people off the rolls, spending only a portion of the federal funds available.

In the Senate debate over the welfare law in 1996, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan spoke the clearest - from the standpoint of a representative of U.S. imperialism concerned for the stability of the capitalist state - on what its implications would be. The proposed law "is not `welfare reform,' it is `welfare repeal.' It is the first step in dismantling the social contract that has been in place in the United States since at least the 1930s. Do not doubt that Social Security itself, which is to say insured retirement benefits, will be next.... This legislation breaks the social contract of the 1930s. We would care for the elderly, the unemployed, the dependent children. Drop the latter; watch the others fall."

Referring to the lifetime benefits limit, the New York Democrat said, no one knows what the social impact will be when people fall off the "five-year cliff."

"Welfare to work:" a fraud
In his January 1999 State of the Union address, Clinton boasted about these cuts in workers' entitlements, particularly touting the rulers' "Welfare to Work Partnership."

New York City's system is a good example of this sham. Under the new setup, the welfare offices are now called "Job Centers." Their actual function is to divert people from using the welfare entitlement program altogether. There is a 35-50 day application process before unemployed workers become "eligible" for assistance. The rejection rate for those applying for welfare doubled to 54 percent in 1997 from 27 percent in 1994. Prior to the establishment of these "job centers," the majority of applicants for welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid received some benefits. Now only 25 percent do.

In the last three years, the number of New York City residents receiving welfare dropped by 363,000, or 30 percent. Of these, 29 percent officially found work, but that figure includes anyone who made at least $100 in the three months after leaving the welfare rolls.

Some people have been forced into the city's "Work Experience Program," which requires 20 hours or more of work at a city-organized job, in return for a welfare check. By 1997-98 New York City alone planned to fill 65,000 workfare positions.

At the same time, the number of regularly employed city workers - with union wages and benefits - has dropped by 20,000. The "pay" welfare-to-work workers receive - in the form of a workfare check, which is below minimum wage; food stamps; and Medicaid - adds up to well under the official poverty level.

In New York State in the first eight months of 1997, about 16 percent of "workfare" participants - or an average of 6,100 people each month - were cut from welfare for such "infractions" as showing up late and turning down a work assignment.

In addition, the "welfare to work" workers often don't qualify for seniority, promotions, family and medical leave, and payroll deductions that make them later eligible for Social Security and unemployment compensation. And they are usually not covered by collective bargaining laws or union contracts.

In Mississippi, those who miss appointments with the snooping "job center" representatives or decline to accept a degrading work assignment are forced to give up cash benefits, the family's food stamps, and Medicaid for adults.

An example of the "workfare" options in the region is the Springwater Farms catfish plant in Eudora, Arkansas, an hour- long commute from Greenville, Mississippi. There is 300 percent turnover in the plant. If welfare entitlement recipients leave the cold, wet, gut-filled job, they are denied any benefits. The bosses consciously hire welfare recipients from Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi for "state-subsidized" jobs. The company pays just $1 an hour for the first six months, while the state adds $4.15 to bring the wage up to minimum wage. The subsidy comes in part from money that would have gone toward welfare and food stamps.

Food relief, medical coverage fall too
Immigrants were a particular target of the 1996 cut in welfare, denied any kind of public assistance in most cases. Facing substantial resistance to the assault on the social wage of workers, Clinton was forced to restore food stamps to some "legal" immigrants two years later.

Overall, though, the number of people receiving Medicaid has dropped along with the welfare rolls, but not because people have gotten jobs with health coverage. According to the Census Bureau, the number of people without health insurance rose by 4 percent in 1997, to 43.4 million people -including 10.5 million children.

Federal officials profess surprise in the dramatic drop in number of those receiving food stamps over the last four years. Nationally the number has fallen 28 million to fewer than 19 million. In January a federal judge ruled that the rechristened "job centers" in New York were encouraging those eligible for food stamps to seek out food pantries and improperly denied people prompt access to food stamps and health coverage.

As the slash in the social wage sinks in, growing numbers of workers are forced to rely on private and church charities to get by. A study by the New York City Chapter's Task Force on Welfare Reform found an increasing number of people are using food pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters.

In New York, there were only three dozen pantries in 1980; 600 in 1992; and about 1,100 today. In Arizona the number of workers receiving meals through a statewide food network rose 50 percent at the same time there was a 50 percent decline in the number of those receiving food stamps.

Second Harvest, the nation's largest private network of food pantries, conducted a survey and found that 60 percent of 21 million recipients in 1997 sought out the service due to a chronic food shortage, not a temporary crisis. Nearly 40 percent of the households in the survey had at least one person employed. At the same time many of the companies and grocery stores that donated surplus or damaged food, nearly always with a tax write-off, have found other ways to reduce extra stocks.

A greater burden falls on individual workers' families, particularly in terms of child care. Nationally, the Census Bureau reports the number of children in their grandparents' care has risen more than 50 percent in the last decade alone. That's about 1.4 million children.

In Wisconsin, where the state government has led on the assault on welfare, the number of workers receiving welfare dropped from 100,000 to 9,000 in 10 years. Five percent of former entitlement recipients in Wisconsin said they were forced to send their children to live with others because they couldn't afford to care for them.

In addition, homelessness has escalated nationally as the number of available beds in shelters decreases. In New York, those seeking shelter are subjected to the same bureaucratic rules and sanctions as in the welfare program.

In order to have a bed at the shelter -which according to a 1981 court decree the city is suppose to guarantee - people must meet "workfare" standards. Anyone thrown off of public assistance cannot stay at the shelters. And men who apply for emergency shelter are forced to undergo "finger-imaging" by the state computer system used in the welfare offices statewide.

 
 
 
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