Fox Business host: Cut government because ‘no one’ died of starvation before welfare

By David Edwards/Raw Story
Fox Business host John Stossel on Thursday declared that government programs should be cut based on the false assertion that “no one” died of starvation in the Great Depression before the modern “welfare state.”

Stossel told the hosts of Fox & Friends that he had taken his cameras out on the streets of New York and no one he spoke to had any idea about how to fix the nation’s growing national debt.

“You cut whole departments,” the Fox Business host explained. “Why do we have a Commerce Department? Commerce just happens! Agriculture, farmers do that! You don’t need bureaucrats.”

He added that the Department of Education was also unnecessary.

“Isn’t that part of what the government does in a lot of people minds?” Fox News host Steve Doocy asked. “They need to help people rather than let people help themselves?”

“And when people are needy you want them [to get] help,” Stossel agreed. “But think about the [Great] Depression. That was before there was any welfare state at all. How many people starved? No one.”

“Right, good point,” Doocy agreed.

During the Great Depression in 1933, then-President Herbert Hoover (R) had told reporters that “nobody is actually starving… The hoboes, for example, are better fed than they have ever been. One hobo in New York got ten meals in one day.”

But according to historians Steven Mintz and Sara McNeil, the number of cases of starvation in New York City alone had increased from 20 in 1931 to 110 in 1934.

And malnutrition was a much larger problem. One 1933 study of 514 children in New York found that more than one-third were in “poor” or “very poor” health.

Watch this video Fox News’ Fox & Friends , broadcast May 30, 2013.

Ryan Returns To Washington To Vote Against Welfare Policy He Once Supported

By Pat Garofalo/Think Progress

Republican Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan is returning to Washington on Thursday to cast what will likely be his last vote before the November election. House Republicans are holding a vote to block the much-maligned welfare waivers that the Obama administration granted states that wanted to experiment with their welfare-to-work programs.

Ryan will likely support the legislation. “The waiver I don’t think meets the letter of the law. The law was not intended to allow states to waive the work requirements,” Ryan said last week. “If states waive work requirements, people will not go from welfare to work. They will stay on welfare. That’s not good for anybody.”

For starters, the waivers do not waive the work requirements. And as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted, in 2002 Ryan inserted a provision into a reauthorization of the welfare law that gave his home state “a significant break in meeting new federal work rules“:

Those measures — patterned after a Bush administration plan — require states to have 70% of their welfare recipients working by 2007. That’s compared with an average of about one-third now.

But under the change sought by Ryan, a Janesville Republican, the states with the biggest drop in their welfare caseloads since 1995 would have a lower threshold to meet.

Wisconsin had the third-biggest caseload drop between 1995 and 2001 — 76%.Under Ryan’s change, that would mean the state would need to have 54% of its welfare recipients working by 2007, instead of 70%. Sixteen other states would get relief under the change, but only two states would benefit more than Wisconsin.

As ThinkProgress reported, Ryan argued that this provision would “give the state more flexibility in meeting the tough new federal work requirements expected to be enacted this year — including more use of education and training to help move people into better-paying jobs.”

Now, of course, Ryan is singing a different tune, claiming that flexibility “is not the American idea. That’s a welfare state.” On Wednesday, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) attempted to move a measure blocking the administration’s waivers through the Senate by unanimous consent, but was blocked by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD).

Romney Claims Waivers He Used To Support Will ‘Gut Welfare Reform’

By Travis Waldron/Think Progress

Mitt Romney’s campaign launched a full-on attack on Tuesday accusing President Obama of gutting welfare reform. In a new ad, policy memo, andpress release, Romney claims that the administration’s decision to offer waivers to states that develop innovative ways to meet the law’s work requirements is actually an attempt to “remove work participation rate requirements all together.”

“Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to workand wouldn’t have to train for a job,” the ad’s narrator says. “They just send you your welfare check.”

The ad is blatantly false — the administration’s plan specifically maintains the work requirement, but allows states to experiment with other methods of transitioning recipients from welfare to work. This is a policy that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says will make Temporary Assistance for Needy Families a more effective program.

But the ad is also disingenuous, as it fails to mention that as governor of Massachusetts, Romney explicitly supported the same waiver program he is now criticizing. Romney was one of 29 Republican governors to sign a 2005 letter from the Republican Governor’s Association to congressional leadership touting the benefits a waiver program would bring their states:

The Senate bill provides states with with the flexibility to manage their TANF programs and effectively serve their low-income populations. Increased waiver authority, allowable work activities, availability of partial work credit and the ability to coordinate state programs are all important aspects of moving recipients from welfare to work.

As ThinkProgress has noted, Republican governors in both Utah and Nevada still support the waiver program. Both, incidentally, have endorsed Romney. And while Romney touts TANF’s success in a release accompanying the ad — welfare “reduced the number of people receiving monthly cash benefits from 12.2 million to 4.2 million,” it says — the program’s “success” hasn’t been because its recipients are finding jobs. In fact, TANF has failed to reach the people who need it most, especially compared to the programs that came before it.

As the directive from the Department of Health and Human Services states, the waiver program is aimed at helping more recipients transition to work. “HHS is encouraging states to considernew, more effective ways to meet the goals of TANF, particularly helping parents successfully prepare for, find, and retain employment,” the directive says. “The Secretary is only interested in approving waivers if the state can explain in a compelling fashion why the proposed approach may be a more efficient or effective means to promote employment entry, retention, advancement, or access to jobs that offer opportunities for earnings and advancement that will allow participants to avoid dependence on government benefits.”

And states will still be subject to federal evaluation and basic work requirements that “focus on measurable outcomes” and furthering TANF’s purpose. Failing to do so, HHS states, could result in “termination of the waiver project.”

UPDATE

The Huffington Post’s Arthur Delaney notes:

The proposal Romney supported may have provided for even broader welfare waivers than HHS is currently offering. While the health department today is willing to let states tinker with things like the definition of work activities and the calculation of participation rates, the 2005 bill would have waived “any requirement applicable to the program” — not just work requirements, but maybe even time limits for cash assistance, too.

Santorum Tries Again To Defend Racist Welfare Rant: I Said ‘Plives,’ Not ‘Black’

By Marie Diamond/Think Progress

GOP contender Rick Santorum continues to try to explain away a racist welfare rant in which he said, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better” through government aid. Santorum appeared to acknowledge he made the remarks in an interview with CBS shortly after the original comment. But after being roundly criticized, hebacktracked and claimed he said “blah” people, not “black.”

Santorum’s latest explanation is that what sounded like “black people” was actually the garbled word “plives”:

Rick Santorum said Monday that comments he made last week in Iowa about food stamps that some construed as racially charged were the result of his having been tongue-tied and were not a reference to black people.

Moreover, he said he has done more in black communities “than any Republican in recent memory.”

He maintains that he did not say “black” people’s lives but rather stumbled verbally when he was trying to say “people’s lives” and uttered a short syllable that came out as “plives.”

Here’s the original video — decide for yourself whether what he said sounds anything like “plives”:

Santorum’s self-aggrandizing claim that he’s done more for black people “than any Republican in recent memory” is even more of a leap. The NAACP blasted him for falsely suggesting that most welfare recipients are black. And on the campaign trail Santorum proudly touts his rolethrowing millions of families off the welfare rolls by supporting welfare “reform” in 1996.

Newt Gingrich’s Latest Assault On The Constitution: Drug Test Americans Before They Get ‘Any Kind Of Federal Aid’

By Tanya Somanader

Across the country, Republican governors are pushing policies that mandate drug-testing for all welfare recipients and marginalize low-income Americans in the process. Now, the latest GOP presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich is trying that idea on the national stage. When asked by Yahoo News’ Chris Moody for his thoughts on how to reform the U.S.’s failed war on drugs, Gingrich declared that “we need to consider taking more explicit steps to make it expensive to be a drug user.” His first and foremost step? Drug test Americans “before you get any kind of federal aid“:

[MOODY:] Speaking of Ron Paul, at the last debate, he said that the war on drugs has been an utter failure. We’ve spent billions of dollars since President Nixon and we still have rising levels of drug use. Should we continue down the same path given the amount of money we’ve spent? How can we reform our approach?

[GINGRICH:] I think that we need to consider taking more explicit steps to make it expensive to be a drug user. It could be through testing before you get any kind of federal aid. Unemployment compensation, food stamps, you name it.

It has always struck me that if you’re serious about trying to stop drug use, then you need to find a way to have a fairly easy approach to it and you need to find a way to be pretty aggressive about insisting–I don’t think actually locking up users is a very good thing. I think finding ways to sanction them and to give them medical help and to get them to detox is a more logical long-term policy.

Gingrich’s first step would likely run headlong into the Constitution. As UCLA Professor Adam Winkler noted, random drug testing is a “suspicion-less search” and “the Supreme Court has upheld the ability of government to mandate random drug tests in a few limited circumstances,” most often in “high-risk public safety environments.” In fact, courts have struck down such policies again and again.

The fact that Gingrich’s first thought regarding drug users points to federal aid recipients should not be surprising given his low opinion of Americans who are struggling to make ends meet. He once insisted that an unemployed mechanic receiving jobless benefits was made lazy by that “welfare.” Nearly one-third of America’s 14 million unemployed have been unable to find work for a year or more. And yet, to Gingrich, “it is fundamentally wrong” to give these people jobless aid “for doing nothing.” Unless, of course, we drug test them first.

Mich. governor signs 48-month welfare limit

Timmy gave me a wink
when I told him so it has to be good right?

By KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN



Gov. Rick Snyder on Tuesday signed into law a stricter, four-year lifetime limit on cash welfare benefits, prompting advocates for the poor to warn that tens of thousands of residents will find themselves without cash assistance on Oct. 1.

Michigan's first-year Republican chief executive said the state will offer exemptions to the limit for those with a disability who can't work, those who care for a disabled spouse or child and those who are 65 or older and don't qualify for Social Security benefits or receive very low benefits.

Some recipients who are the victims of domestic violence also may be temporarily exempted.

"We are returning cash assistance to its original intent as a transitional program to help families while they work toward self-sufficiency," Snyder said in a statement. He noted that the state still will help the poor by offering food stamps, health care coverage through Medicaid, child care and emergency services.

Then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, signed a bill that created a four-year limit starting in 2007. But that law exempted many welfare recipients, including those whose caseworkers said they were making progress toward finding employment.

The 2010 election of Snyder and the simultaneous Republican takeover of the Michigan House gave the GOP a free hand to set its own course on public assistance.

The change gives Michigan the Midwest's toughest welfare time limit, according to a survey by The Detroit News. It said there are five-year limits in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin. Indiana has a two-year limit for adults -- but none for children.

Gilda Jacobs of the Michigan League for Human Services said she expects about 41,000 people to lose their cash assistance payments on Oct. 1 when the state's new budget year begins. That includes 29,700 children, according to the Michigan Department of Human Services.

"We're very, very concerned," Jacobs said. "As the days go by, new people will be meeting the 48-month limit. ... More will be falling off that cliff."

The new law will reduce the number of children and adults receiving cash assistance by nearly a fifth, from more than 221,000 to around 180,000. Enforcing a four-year limit will save the state more than $60 million annually, according to a House Fiscal Agency analysis.

Jacobs said it's hard to see how 11,000 adults will find a job when Michigan's July unemployment rate was 10.9 percent, tied with South Carolina for third-highest in the nation.

"We still have to preserve a safety net for people who, through no fault of their own, can't find a job," she said, noting that most cash assistance goes to help poor residents pay their rent. "There's obviously a lot of anxiety out there. Folks aren't sure exactly what this means to them."

State officials say they're working with nonprofit organizations to direct welfare recipients to other services and provide a "soft landing" as they lose benefits. Recipients will be connected with other resources, given housing and job placement assistance for up to three months beyond October and mentored by trained job navigators.

"Michigan continues to face financial challenges, and the fiscal reality is that we cannot afford to provide lifetime cash assistance to recipients who are able to work," Health and Human Services director Maura Corrigan said in a statement. "Enforcing lifetime limits for cash assistance ensures that available funds are targeted toward those recipients who need a helping hand while they find employment."

Michigan ranked 38th in child poverty for 2009, defined as income below $21,756 for a family of two adults and two children. About 23 percent of Michigan's children lived in poverty in 2009, compared with 20 percent nationally. In 2000, only 14 percent of Michigan children lived in poverty. The average age of a child in a family receiving cash assistance is around 7 years old.

Snyder, a Republican, has said reducing the number of children living in poverty is a priority of his administration.

The Michigan Catholic Conference has objected to the four-year limit. The conference said the effect will be felt for years by society and by children who lose services.

Motor City Liberal Comment: Before any of you right wingers post a dumb ass racist comment the majority of people on welfare in this state are young white females with children.

Florida’s welfare drug testing costs more than it saves

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s plan to test welfare recipients for drugs is costing the state money, despite his claims that the program would actually save tax dollars.

A WFTV investigation found that out of the 40 recipients tested by Department of Central Florida’s (DCF) region, only two resulted in positive results. And one of those tests is being appealed.

Under the rules of the program, the state must reimburse recipients who receive negative test results. The state paid about $1,140 for the 38 negative tests, while saving less than $240 a month by denying benefits over the two positive tests.

“We have a diminishing amount of returns for our tax dollars,” the ACLU’s Derek Brett told WFTV. “Do we want our governor throwing our precious tax dollars into a program that has already been proven not to work?”

The cost to taxpayers could end up being significantly higher because the state expects to have to defend the law in court.

Watch this video from WFTV, broadcast Aug. 18, 2011.