Welfare’S Role

The welfare-reform picture is coming into focus and when officials in Idaho and Washington study it they see fewer poor people than they did a couple of years ago.

Reform advocates say that shows new measures are getting people off public assistance rolls and onto payrolls.

But some others say the officials just aren’t looking in the right places.

At the St. Vincent de Paul food bank in Spokane, for example, the number of clients served is more than double what it was four years ago, even though more of them have earned income.

“People who may not be accessing any other assistance, whether public or private, will probably be visiting their neighborhood food banks,” says St. Vincent de Paul’s social services director, Scott Cooper. “This means we see the poor the state doesn’t see.”

Cooper was responding to Bagpipes’ request a month ago for comments on how welfare reform is working.

Jim Shamp of Cheney calls it a success. Morton Alexander of Spokane calls it a crime. And Peter C. Dolina of Veradale says that whatever it is it’s about emotions more than economics because the actual spending, compared with other public outlays, “is not that substantial.”

Nevertheless, Dolina says, there are too few statistics yet to tell much.

Shamp speaks as a landlord who’s been renting to low-income tenants for 25 years.

“I won’t question the motives of the system’s designers, but I do wonder about their intelligence,” he says.

“By and large our success in life is determined by our personal decisions and lifestyles. Pregnant teenagers, absent fathers, drug and alcohol use, gambling, domestic violence, dropping out of school, poor work ethics, poor financial skills. These are the types of things that cause poverty and promote failure.”

Rather than solve problems, says Shamp, welfare — “the most destructive social experiment since segregation” — has subsidized them.

“Welfare rolls have dropped by almost 50 percent in the past two years,” he adds. “Former recipients who wouldn’t dream of holding a job before reform are working and finding that they’re not nearly as helpless as they thought they were.”

But Alexander, who works for the state Department of Children and Family Services, sees the reform effort as an act of war and exploitation by capitalism against the poor.

“The end of the entitlement to public assistance for needy families is immoral,” he says. “Our culture produces desperate scabs, ready to steal jobs from those who stand up for a decent standard of employment. Welfare repeal feeds this system with throwaway people.”

St. Vincent de Paul’s Cooper concedes that many former welfare recipients have acquired jobs as a result of reform. But they’re often minimum-wage jobs, he notes.

“So, despite the apparent successes of welfare reform, poverty numbers are going up,” he says. “From where we sit, the effect is mostly one of shuffling the poor off the state `payroll’ into a much less secure and much less funded world of minimum-wage jobs and private charity. The poor are no less poor, they are just less visible to governmental eyes, and more vulnerable.”

The keys to making welfare reform succeed, says Cooper, are better-paying jobs and affordable, available child care.

“Yes, more people are working, but their income has often increased only marginally, if at all. They still find themselves well below the poverty line.”

Parents trying to move from welfare to work spend up to half their paycheck on child care, says Cooper.

“Combine this with the low-wage jobs that predominate in Spokane,” he says, “and you don’t have to be Einstein to calculate the mounting obstacles stacked up against those who are actually cooperating with the public will and trying to get off state rolls.”

Alexander, a member of the Spokane Human Rights Commission, puts it emphatically: “Would such slavefare be demanded of any but poor, often single parents? Surely this is discrimination due to economic and familial status.”

He says welfare reductions lead not only to more hunger and homelessness but also to more child abuse.

“On average, out-of-home placements of children in the United States have increased by one-third since welfare reform was enacted,” says Alexander.

Dolina, too, sees a family-values connection to welfare reform, but a note of cynicism is unmistakable:

“I would not hesitate to keep working mothers — married or not — at home and pay them, provided they really take care of their kids. Watching TV all the time does not qualify them here.”

Shamp, too, has some expectations for how people receiving public assistance spend their time.

“I hope we have the resolve to continue the march,” he says. “Better yet, let’s toughen the rules. Make it mandatory that welfare recipients grow gardens, attend school, avoid the vices, dump bad friends, discipline their children and develop habits that promote success.”

Says Shamp: “I’ve watched the welfare system grow and I hope to watch it die.”

To Cooper, assuring that basic human needs are met is a “standard for civilized society,” but just how that’s done and who is responsible for it requires a partnership with government accepting a preventive role.

“Government is probably not the best means to lift many of the poor out of poverty,” he says, “but it is still the best means to prevent those at risk from falling into abject destitution and then flooding private agencies, shelters, food banks, etc., that operate on shoestring budgets.”

NEXT MONTH What’s your idea of civic involvement? Bagpipes is a monthly feature which invites readers of the Perspective Page to share their ideas about a selected topic. May’s will be community participation. What does being involved in your community mean? Is it voting? Volunteering? Joining the parent-teacher organization? Holding a block party? Bowling in a league? A few years ago, in an essay titled “Bowling Alone,” sociologist Robert Putnam declared that Americans just don’t get engaged in our communities as much as we used to. No sooner had he said it than his own critics responded that Putnam looked only at organizations and activities popular with prior generations. Actually, went the counter-argument, people are as engaged as ever but in the work of the ‘90s. What about you? Are you a player or a spectator? What’s your idea of civic involvement and how, if at all, does it strengthen the community when such participation is a value shared by most citizens? We hope you’ll add your comments to next month’s conversation. Responses will be reported in Bagpipes on Sunday, May 23. To take part, submit your comments, accompanied by name, address and daytime telephone number, using any of the methods listed below: By mail to: Doug Floyd, Interactive editor The Spokesman-Review 999 W. Riverside Ave. Spokane, WA 99201 Phone: 456-5466 (Spokane area) or 1-800-789-0029, ext. 5466 (long distance). Fax: 509-459-3815. e-mail: dougf@spokesman.com