Student likes the Head Start Program, but expresses skepticism about many other programs

I like the Head Start program. It is a program that provides early childhood education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and their families. This program is designed to foster stable family relationships, enhance children’s physical and emotional well-being, and establish an environment to develop storing cognitive skills. Head start was launched in 1965 and was originally made to be like a catch-up summer school that would teach low-income children, in a few weeks what they needed to know to start elementary school. Then there was a head start act in 1981 that expanded the program. Head start is one of the longest-running programs attempting to address the effects of systematic poverty in the United States. 

I just really like Head Start because it is a way to provide education to children who may not be ready for elementary school but cannot afford pre-school.  This system has been helpful to many children. If this program was not offered, then I believe that many children would have a harder time in school. When they are put to right into elementary school, their parents may not have had enough time with them to teach them everything they needed to know to start school. This original eight-week program has grown throughout the years to help many children. 

I know this sounds bad, but I do not really like any social welfare policies that I know of. I think they could all use some work. I know they are all government funded and that there is going to be cuts and more cuts and more, but everything has cuts and everything has raises. I think that more of the policies should be given a ending time, or at least a period where we will give you this federal money and in six months it will stop then you can reapply but you have to wait two months in order to start collecting money again. For this temporary suspension and reapplication I think it should apply in such programs such as: TANF, SNAP, maybe some Housing Voucher programs as well. Or, instead of making a two month waiting period between termination of the initial period and start-up of the second period, maybe we can cut the costs given to people and instead pay someone to go out and check up on these people receiving benefits. I believe more people abuse the system than don’t, and if we could find those people abusing the system then we could give the money to someone who really needs it. 

Another thing, someone who is literally homeless and that doesn’t have an address cannot apply for government assistance. These people are the ones who really need the help, they are living on the streets. Maybe there should be a program that if you are really living on the streets that you could give the IDHS people the address of the post office that you think you are going to be closest to. Then when you apply you can just go to the post office every day and instead of having to pay for a P.O. box they can just set aside any mail into a bin that one can use. Another idea, would be having part of the program would be have a P.O. box for these homeless people. 

It seems that you have the following concerns about welfare programs:

1) People who need services should get them, but those who don’t need them shouldn’t.

2) People who abuse the system of welfare services should be stopped from abusing it. You think many people are abusing it.

3) People must accept that government programs ebb and wane, and sometimes there will be increases of funding and sometimes decreases, depending upon the priorities of the elected government and the public they represent.

4) Welfare safety net programs should usually be temporary, and people should keep in mind that the assistance they receive is temporary, until they can achieve independence and self-sufficiency.

5) It is important that there be an exchange between people who receive public help and the public who pay for that help; and one legitimate point is that those who supply the support (the tax-paying public) should be able to control some behaviors of those who receive the support (enforcing conformity to some standards of expected behavior, ensuring that people follow the rules).  

6) You are also concerned that the persons who are in greatest need for help (such as homeless persons who live in shelters or live rough on the streets) should get it.  Actually, that issue you raise of providing such persons with a way to have an address (to facilitate their receipt of resources and help them secure employment) was a topic for a group of students in this class a year ago.

Your use of the example of persons who are homeless and living rough brings to mind the other sorts of persons who are in need of services.  There are persons with severe and chronic mental illness, and they are not really likely to be able to support themselves.  There are persons with physical impairments or limitations related to health, injury, birth defect, disease, and so forth, where the impairments are so severe that every reasonable person would agree that we as a society cannot expect them to support themselves.  Likewise there are persons with a variety of brain conditions, ranging from persons with severe or serious cognitive disabilities or developmental disabilities to persons with mild disabilities, and few of us expect those persons to provide for their own material well-being.  Most people no longer think that we as a society should require children to work to provide for their own sustenance, at least not in the USA.  And, most of us would like to have our society give elderly persons some years before their deaths in which they could relax without the burdens of providing through labor for their own economic well-being.  So, one question to ask yourself is how many of the persons receiving welfare benefits are in these categories where you probably do not expect the recipients to get out and find a job to support themselves. 

I think everyone is inclined to agree with your preference that persons who really need services get the services they need, but you are concerned that persons who do not really need services are crowding the system and draining resources.  For example, you write that, “ I believe more people abuse the system than don’t.” I’m not sure what your idea of “abuse the system” is, but no doubt it’s something bad, and I think everyone would be opposed to allowing lots of abuse of the welfare system.  But, your impression that more than half of persons receiving welfare services and supports are abusing the system is really a perception about a matter of fact, and we can look at research and fact-checking and determine what a plausible estimate of abuse is within the various welfare programs, and also see what sort of persons are committing the abuse.  The counts and results will depend much on how we define “abuse,” but I think it is important to investigate this conjecture and see what proportion are abusing the services.  You’re raising an important issue.  Even those who are far more liberal in their attitudes toward benefits would share your concern that persons who abuse the welfare system are likely to erode public confidence in those programs, and thus damage support for policies that help those who really need the services.

Are persons with significant disabilities and low incomes and few assets able to abuse programs?  How many persons receiving benefits could be fairly characterized as having “significant disabilities” and few financial resources?  Are persons aged 17 and younger (children) capable of abusing the welfare programs that provide them housing and food and perhaps help their households pay bills?  That’s another question we must consider.  

For adults without children who have sound bodies and healthy minds, they may of course be thrown into a period of poverty and desperation due to some drastic change in circumstances (they may flee from an abusive and controlling partner who provided all the household income; they may lose their job and be unable to pay debts; they may become ill, lose their jobs, and then recover from their illness in a situation where they are impoverished and unemployed, etc.), and perhaps in those circumstances they really deserve the benefits of a welfare system.  But, I think you raise a legitimate question about how long they ought to receive such benefits before we as a society expect them to work and support themselves.

There are also different ideas about “self-support” and freedom and liberty involved with welfare policies, and the ideas may shape how we consider abuse.  Some people will look at a situation where a family relies on a social welfare safety net for many years, and no disabilities are present, and call the situation “parasitism” or “welfare dependence” or “abuse of the system” on the assumption that everyone ought to work and earn their own way in life, if they are capable of doing so.  Yet, other people may look at a situation like that and say that once a society achieves a certain standard of wealth and abundance, the needs of human liberty and freedom require that workers and potential workers be given a welfare safety net that provides them with the sort of financial security that maximizes their autonomy and freedom, so that they will only work in jobs that are worthwhile and dignified, and only work through their free will, and not because the threat of poverty works like a whip to drive them into whatever job will offer them a chance of survival. From such a perspective, if a society can afford to do so, it ought to give everyone a dignified and secure material life whether or not they are involved in economic activities to pay their own way through life.  That’s not your perspective, but it is a perspective that seems to me to have just as much moral authority (on the basis of maximizing human liberty) as your perspective based on a sense of fairness and justice (which makes the reasonable demand that people contribute to their own maintenance if they can, and not live off the labor of others unless such reliance is a last resort and ideally temporary).

There are other perspectives as well.  Some people prefer a sort of Social Darwinism in which people must look out for themselves or rely on private charity and family support.  Those who have great need and cannot secure adequate support from family or charity are doomed, and that is acceptable to such a perspective.  There is also a perspective that may admit that it is a moral problem when people depend on the support from others, and it is vexing to have people live off the public when they could be earning their own keep; but this other perspective claims that if you weigh all the benefits of eliminating poverty and the eradicating the many injustices and harms and problems rooted in poverty by providing everyone who is poor with enough support to bring them out of poverty—if you eliminate poverty—then the benefits and gains to society, and all the blessings a society reaps when it eliminates poverty outweigh all the harms of welfare dependence and people who prefer to live off the labor of others at some modest minimum level rather than working.  That is, you are right that it is a problem and injustice for people to abuse the system, but the continued existence of poverty in a society as wealthy as ours is an even bigger problem and injustice, and the gains we take if we have a generous welfare policy that eliminates poverty will be so good that we can overlook the many harms we do to people by allowing them to stagnate in a situation of parasitism and welfare dependence.

These are all things people should consider, and some of these ideas must be rejected if you are going to endorse other ideas.  But when we make our choices about what we prefer, we must be aware of what we are rejecting.   

Temporary Assistance has some pros and cons

In this reaction paper, a student considers the pros and cons of TANF. 

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, also known as TANF is a program that is run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; it provides temporary assistance in the form of cash payments to needy families who are income-qualified.  In 1997 TANF started, and since then has helped roughly over two million families per month; most of those families have been headed by single mothers. 

When talking about TANF there are many pros and cons to the program.  One of the positive aspects of family assistance is the requirement to determine a plan for self-reliance within the family.  Instead of just receiving cash assistance for life, you must meet with a caseworker and come up with a plan that helps you to eventually stop needing to rely on TANF.  I believe that TANF is helping the people find their right path and provide them with ways to stand on their own again.  Another advantage of TANF is that it is a time-based program.  Most states only let families get government money for so many years just so that individuals are not signing up for it repeatedly.  TANF helps individuals pay rent, buy food, pay for utilities etc. 

When I think about the program and its negative aspects, I think of welfare fraud and individuals who abuse it.  I think that there are many people out there coming up with fake names and using other people just to receive cash assistance, just like in the book we read for class (Two Dollars A Day).  Another problem with TANF is helping individuals who do not deserve it.  I think that the individuals who can work should do so and that only the truly poor and disabled should receive cash assistance.  This would stop from helping individuals who make poor choices and suffer from drug and alcohol addiction.  There are needy children not receiving the help and care they need because their parents are worried about getting the cash in hand so they can spend it on things that do not matter.  

In considering the pros and cons of a welfare policy or program, it is often helpful to think in terms of how it fits within a moral framework.  There are also questions we can raise about effectiveness and efficiency. 

I think that just about everyone shares a moral value in which we prefer a situation in which an adult person who is not yet venerable in age is self-sufficient and independent to one in which the person is dependent on others or generally oriented to life with an outlook of what they can get from others instead of what they can produce for themselves.  On one hand, this is obviously related to some sort of sense of fairness.  When we are children or after we reach advanced age, we ought to depend on others, but while we are “working-aged” adults, we ought to “carry our own weight” and “contribute our fair share” to the general civilization.  I think the value of liberty and equality also prefer situation in which people are independent and autonomous.  There is something that distorts our spirit and tarnishes our character if we must be too obviously dependent on others, or if we think so much of what we can get or should get from others.  This is some sort of mental enslavement or subordination, and it violates our sense that everyone ought to be free and equal in life. 

That said, most of us would allow people to be “dependent” or at least “interdependent” in some cases while they are “able-bodied working-aged adults”.  For example, a person may need help for a period of months or years during an economic downturn, or after the loss of a job, or after the birth of a child, or after suddenly taking on unpaid caregiving duties with a child or sick person. Someone must take care of children and sick and disabled persons, so in some sense the person who ceases to earn an income so they can take care of others is really doing a valuable to service to us, and in that circumstance, the “aid” they receive from us through TANF might instead by considered as a sort of “payment” in exchange for their performing duties as good parents, dutiful siblings or children or friends who aid a sick or injured person, and so forth.  But of course we worry whether they are actually earning such payments, which is why you remark on your concern about parents who may only care about having money so they can spend it on things that “do not matter” (or even things that are harmful or wicked).  

There is also this problem to consider: the children in poor families are expected to be dependent.  We do not expect them to go to work in the mills and mines, or the strip malls and industrial parks, to earn their housing and bread.  And, even if the parents are undeserving, it is simply more efficient and cost-effective to preserve families and provide money to parents, and let the parents spend that money on their children.  What is the alternative, removing the children and placing them with a more “responsible” parental figure who can accept the financial assistance we give for child-rearing so that we can adequately punish the parents by denying them assistance and allowing them to face the hunger and homelessness and deprivation that seem appropriate to us as the just consequences of their choices?  And so we are stuck.  We must take care of the parents as well as the children, all together as a family, or else we must punish the parents and their innocent children all together as a family because of choices made by the parents.

But even that is too simple.  For, as it turns out, in many cases the parents who are single mothers have not made especially wicked choices.  Many single mothers are reared in unsupportive families.  Many become parents when they are young and relatively inexperienced, and the fathers are often much older.  In many cases the parents or single parent were working, or are working, but the jobs they hold or held paid low wages, and the cost of living is too high.  Or, they have lost their work, and no employer is willing to hire them.  In such cases, it seems wrong to punish the parents, because they are willing to work and simply cannot find employment; and it is even more obviously wrong to punish the children, as they are blameless in any case, as they are not responsible for the actions of their parents.  

By keeping TANF benefits low, and by restricting them over time, we succeed in our aims of depriving poor parents of the means to pay their rent, pay their utilities, or buy clothing.  We may still provide SNAP to prevent starvation, but even that can be terminated if a parent cannot find work within a certain time period. But, what do we achieve by this?  If we make poor parents homeless, we make their children homeless.  If we turn off the electricity or water or heat for a family, we subject the children to dangers of unsanitary conditions, dehydration, heat stroke, or exposure. Without electricity and internet, we deprive children of access to the Internet, and that must have consequences in their education. By subjecting children to such costs, do we impose a greater long-term burden and cost on society than we do by “saving” money by spending less on such poor families?  It may satisfy some people’s sense of fairness to stop sustaining poor families when the parents fail to meet our expectations that they conform to the demands of capitalist rigor and the free market and get themselves a satisfactory job.  But, we also have values of compassion and altruism that make us want to provide families with at least a minimum of what they need to participate in society with dignity.  We may also have a sense of freedom and liberty in which we do not think there is any value to forcing people to bow down to the principles of the free market and capitalism.  Some of us think that human freedom and dignity come first, and that should be secured for everyone, and then we can use the free market or capitalism to give extra rewards to those who do the best or the most within the commercial and industrial aspects of life. I’m not opposed to using capitalism and the free market to make some of us wealthy, but I see no reason to “punish” persons who want to exert their freedom to disengage from capitalist production, perhaps doing so for six or seven years while they rear a child.

You say that people who can work ought to work.  I agree.  But, do you mean that such persons ought to work to earn money?  I am not sure I do agree. Some work is unpaid, like the work of rearing children, or caring for elderly and sick or disabled siblings or parents or grandparents. There may also be work of improving one’s skills and knowledge. I’m in favor of everyone who can work being put to work, but I’d like to recognize that there are worthwhile types of work that earn nothing, and I’m glad to provide a decent living stipend to anyone engaged in those activities.  Also, capitalism and the free market just doesn’t provide a sufficient range of job and career opportunities.  I’m also in favor of the government creating jobs (especially jobs that provide public goods and aren’t easy to use in the process of extracting surplus labor to make profits).  If the government offered more worthwhile employment opportunities so that the unemployment rate was down near 2%, then I might be willing to restrict TANF benefits for able-bodied working-aged adults who failed to get paid employment and also weren’t engaged in any sort of parenting or caregiving or volunteering or self-improvement through skills-development or education.  Until then, the moral problem of allowing a few cheaters and frauds to take advantage of the system seems insignificant to me, whereas we face a monstrous moral problem of depriving many children of material abundance sufficient to secure stable housing, electricity, water, abundant nutritious food, clothing, and internet access. Surely we lose more in white collar crime and tax evasion and corruption among the wealthiest and most powerful than we ever lose to all the low-income shiftless and idle folks who scam and cheat the welfare system.  Surely more moral evil is present in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians blown to bits by our military drones or the bombs dropped by our proxies in Gaza or Yemen than in all the evil of all the poor people cheating our welfare system.   How prevalent is the problem of welfare fraud anyway?  Is it widespread and common and costing a significant percentage of the TANF dollars?  

Food Assistance isn't the problem.

One area of social policy that has received a lot of attention more than it should in a negative way lately is social assistance for the poor in the way of food stamps. It is a long held belief by some that this is taxpayer’s money being given to free loaders, and poor people who refuse to work and support themselves. There are rampant reports about the misuse and abuse of food stamps or Link in the media. Some people take the apparently compassionate point of view that food stamps trap the poor and create a system that will never allow them to get on their feet independently. The news media—especially Fox News—is quick to highlight instances of people caught gaming the system. In more subtle ways it has led to the idea that most recipients of food assistance are minorities, which makes people respond to this in many ways. I have heard numerous stories both from Fox News and fellow Republican colleagues about how food stamp recipients dine on steak and lobster with their meager food assistance benefits, which is a myth.

What is not portrayed in the mainstream media is that the federal government spends only 12% on safety Net program (SNAP, housing assistance, etc) compared to 19% spent on Defense and International security, 24% towards Social Security, 22% on Medicare, CHIP, and also most food assistance recipients are European-American or that most recipients are United States Veterans. What is also never portrayed is that many recipients are physically or developmentally disabled and could never obtain employment although many would want to be independent. It is also not explained that disabled recipients are living on an average of $165 a month for food (about $80 less than a thrifty food budget). Another missing statistic in the food stamp debate is the actual amount of tax dollars that end up in the food assistance program. For example, if I made $50,000 a year, $33 would go to welfare and $895 would go towards corporate subsidies or tax giveaways to corporations and wealthy citizens, which is starkly different than the picture the media paints, and then again, the people who own the media are getting $895 of that tax money, so they have incentive to keep me focused on complaining about where that $33 goes. Let’s keep it real; the media will rather shield facts as the federal spending on SNAP is not the reason why the country is in debt but the media tend to shine light negatively to brain wash the average citizen and misleading us. 

For additional reading, check out the USDA food plans, and consider how much people actually pay for food to what low income people get for food from the SNAP.  See also the research on food prices and actual spending. 

The real problem is often unaffordable housing combined with low wages. Suppose you live in a city on the coasts, or in Chicago, and fair market rents are very high.  And let us imagine you work full-time for $10-$12 per hour.  In such a situation, you will spend a huge amount of your money on your housing, and what is left over may need to pay for transportation and child-care and so forth, and not much will be left for food.  About 14 percent of American households (with 125 million households, this means about 17.5 million households) are food insecure at some point in the year. We know from survey research by the USDA that there are about 1.2 million American households where an adult goes a full day without eating at least three or more times of year because of food insecurity.  Yes, we actually do have real hunger in the United States.  And the food and nutrition we give to families is just as much a benefit to farmers and grocers and agribusiness anyway, but no one ever points this out.  People in the food business would rather sell their products to poor people with the public paying the bill than letting those people go hungry.

  SNAP costs us about $77 billion per year these days, and we spend another 22 billion on school lunches and other child nutrition programs, plus about $6 billion on WIC.  So, that's a total of $105 billion each year.  These are big programs, but they help many people. Each month about 45 million Americans get food with SNAP benefits, and over 30 million children get free or reduced lunches, or other nutritional benefits through various child nutrition programs, mostly provided through school cafeterias.  And then there are another 9 million or so people in families getting benefits from WIC, including nutrition education as well as food.