How Americans Are Increasingly Turning Their Backs on the Poor
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_american_are_increasingly_turning_th
eir_backs_on_the_poor_20160128/
Posted on Jan 28, 2016
By Isaiah J. Poole / OtherWords
clementine gallot / CC BY 2.0
This piece originally ran on OtherWords.
With the winter winds of January came a flurry of reports that several
states were moving to cut thousands of people from their Supplemental
Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, or "food stamp") rolls.
In New Jersey, for example, Governor Chris Christie pulled the plug on
benefits to 11,000 unemployed state residents.
By this spring, an estimated 500,000 people nationwide could be cut off. For
most of them, the maximum benefit of less than $200 a month is all the
federal aid they get. For some, it's their entire income.
These people live in states that have chosen to reinstate work requirements
on able-bodied adults without children, which had been suspended since the
2008 economic downturn. It means that single adults who aren't working at
least 20 hours a week or participating in a job-training program may only
get three months of nutrition assistance in a three-year period. After that,
they're on their own.
Some people call this a successful example of welfare reform at work. But to
experts like Joe Soss, a University of Minnesota professor who studies the
drive to "end welfare as we know it" that started in the 1990s under
President Bill Clinton, it's the latest chapter in a misguided ideological
campaign.
This drive is a consequence, he told me, of political rhetoric suggesting
that low-income people are poor because of their inability to exercise
self-discipline and make good choices.
"It's a modern update of longstanding prejudices," Soss explained. These
"get-tough policies are cast as benefiting the poor in the long run," he
added, while their hardline supporters claim to shield taxpayers from
"criminal thugs, undocumented immigrants, and those who live off the welfare
system."
His 2011 book, Disciplining the Poor, chronicles the rise of what Soss calls
"poverty governance" over the past 40 years. "Efforts to get tough with the
poor have often been a bipartisan affair," Soss said. "But
Republican-controlled states have generally been at the forefront of efforts
to restrict social supports - from cash aid to nutrition, housing, and
health care - and to use poor people's behaviors as a litmus test for
government help."
That approach was evident earlier this year, when six of the Republican
presidential candidates attended an antipoverty forum in South Carolina
inspired by the late "bleeding-heart conservative" politician Jack Kemp.
Christie took part. But the way his policies have played out is less
bleeding-heart than cold-blooded.
Under Christie's leadership, New Jersey has sharply reduced the share of
federal block grant money it spends on direct cash assistance to needy
families, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. But as
the number of people getting help has fallen, the percentage of the state's
residents living in poverty actually went up - from 9 percent to 11 percent
- between 2009 and 2012.
Now, community servants worry that more stringent work rules for food
assistance are being imposed when there isn't enough job and education
assistance for people who need it. "I don't know where these work programs
are. And I know we are not ready for this," Diane Riley of the Community
FoodBank of New Jersey told NJ.com.
It's a story that's being repeated across the country. The trend is also
fueling a debate - not over whether people should be working instead of
receiving welfare, but whether we get there by investing more in education,
training, and job creation, or by slashing budgets, shaming the poor, and
turning our backs.
Isaiah J. Poole is the online communications director at Campaign for
America's Future.
http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
How Americans Are Increasingly Turning Their Backs on the Poor
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_american_are_increasingly_turning_th
eir_backs_on_the_poor_20160128/
Posted on Jan 28, 2016
By Isaiah J. Poole / OtherWords
clementine gallot / CC BY 2.0
This piece originally ran on OtherWords.
With the winter winds of January came a flurry of reports that several
states were moving to cut thousands of people from their Supplemental
Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, or "food stamp") rolls.
In New Jersey, for example, Governor Chris Christie pulled the plug on
benefits to 11,000 unemployed state residents.
By this spring, an estimated 500,000 people nationwide could be cut off. For
most of them, the maximum benefit of less than $200 a month is all the
federal aid they get. For some, it's their entire income.
These people live in states that have chosen to reinstate work requirements
on able-bodied adults without children, which had been suspended since the
2008 economic downturn. It means that single adults who aren't working at
least 20 hours a week or participating in a job-training program may only
get three months of nutrition assistance in a three-year period. After that,
they're on their own.
Some people call this a successful example of welfare reform at work. But to
experts like Joe Soss, a University of Minnesota professor who studies the
drive to "end welfare as we know it" that started in the 1990s under
President Bill Clinton, it's the latest chapter in a misguided ideological
campaign.
This drive is a consequence, he told me, of political rhetoric suggesting
that low-income people are poor because of their inability to exercise
self-discipline and make good choices.
"It's a modern update of longstanding prejudices," Soss explained. These
"get-tough policies are cast as benefiting the poor in the long run," he
added, while their hardline supporters claim to shield taxpayers from
"criminal thugs, undocumented immigrants, and those who live off the welfare
system."
His 2011 book, Disciplining the Poor, chronicles the rise of what Soss calls
"poverty governance" over the past 40 years. "Efforts to get tough with the
poor have often been a bipartisan affair," Soss said. "But
Republican-controlled states have generally been at the forefront of efforts
to restrict social supports - from cash aid to nutrition, housing, and
health care - and to use poor people's behaviors as a litmus test for
government help."
That approach was evident earlier this year, when six of the Republican
presidential candidates attended an antipoverty forum in South Carolina
inspired by the late "bleeding-heart conservative" politician Jack Kemp.
Christie took part. But the way his policies have played out is less
bleeding-heart than cold-blooded.
Under Christie's leadership, New Jersey has sharply reduced the share of
federal block grant money it spends on direct cash assistance to needy
families, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. But as
the number of people getting help has fallen, the percentage of the state's
residents living in poverty actually went up - from 9 percent to 11 percent
- between 2009 and 2012.
Now, community servants worry that more stringent work rules for food
assistance are being imposed when there isn't enough job and education
assistance for people who need it. "I don't know where these work programs
are. And I know we are not ready for this," Diane Riley of the Community
FoodBank of New Jersey told NJ.com.
It's a story that's being repeated across the country. The trend is also
fueling a debate - not over whether people should be working instead of
receiving welfare, but whether we get there by investing more in education,
training, and job creation, or by slashing budgets, shaming the poor, and
turning our backs.
Isaiah J. Poole is the online communications director at Campaign for
America's Future.
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