Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 2, 1992 TAG: 9202030158
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CORINNE GOTT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A SELF-DEFEATING SYSTEM
THE WELFARE system is structured to keep people from getting help rather than assist them in getting help. As soon as a new program starts costing money, they start putting regulations on how to keep people from getting help.There are a lot of myths about welfare.
One is that people have babies in order to increase their welfare checks. That is wild. People on welfare who have a baby get another $40 per month. Pampers cost $30.
Another myth is that people would rather receive Aid to Dependent Children than work. What you are saying is that people are insane.
Actually, 86 percent of the people who receive ADC are reapplicants. They've been on the system, gotten off, then have had the rug pulled out from under them and are back on the system for whatever cause: loss of day care; loss of transportation; a job that turned out to be temporary at 20 hours per week instead of 40, and there is no way they can pay the rent.
The system victimizes them, too, because within the past 10 years we have had negative policies to get people off welfare without giving them any other assistance toward jobs or anything else.
Persons on ADC receive $231 per month for one child, one mother. The rent's $300, and they haven't even started toward paying for other basic necessities. The ADC grant has not increased in 10 years and yet everything else has; recipients have had about a 34-percent decrease in buying power.
A third myth is that teen-age mothers are a very tough lot to deal with.
They are complicated, and it is a tough job to understand what is going on with teen-age mothers. But what we really have is not a bunch of tough, arrogant teen-agers, but a bunch of very frightened children who happen to be mothers.
There are a lot of myths about this business, and a lot of hostility. Look at David Duke. We've got a lot of work to do in understanding what the system does to people, and we need some real evaluation of where this country should be in its support system for people.
I would toss out food stamps, for instance. Do away with food stamps, and you will see bread lines that you would have never seen in the '30s. But no, we buy people off with food stamps.
I'm not saying do away with the help; I'm saying put cash into the hands of the people and let them manage the program for the benefits that they need.
We spend money to print the things in Washington, ship them out to all over the United States, warehouse them. Then we pay people to evaluate people to see whether they are eligible for stamps, and it is done every month because incomes vary and we have to keep up with exactly where their incomes are. Then we pay people to issue the stamps, and to take them in the grocery stores.
Then people black-market the stamps and print them, because they are very poorly printed, and sell them on the streets, so clients can live on the ADC payment of $231 while the rent is $300. They only get 50 cents on the dollar. It's a big business, and we ought to do away with it. But it's getting more entrenched everyday.
Corinne Gott is director of Roanoke's Department of Social Services.