The Real Problem With Welfare: It Stopped Helping the Poor

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/the-real-problem-with-welfare-it-stopped-helping-the-poor/260857/

Mitt Romney has a new ad out accusing President Obama of attempting to "gut" welfare reform by letting states hand out cash to families that aren't working. At best, the claim seems to be some serious hyperbole surrounding the small kernel of truth that the administration wants to give states more leeway on how they move families into jobs. But hey, it's the summer, and campaigns need to fill air time, right?

Rather than dwell on this skirmish, let's remember the bigger picture about the current state of our welfare system, as captured in this graph from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Remember how Bill Clinton promised to "end welfare as we know it?" Well, did he ever.



***SNIP

If this was the the result of millions of parents getting jobs and moving up in the world, it wouldn't be cause for concern. But that's not what appears to have happened. In 2010, the Government Accountability Office reported that most of the decline had occurred because eligible, impoverished families had simply chosen not to participate.

As the graph below shows, 84 percent of eligible families took part in pre-Clintonian welfare. By 2005, it was just 40 percent.

[ejpoeta]

1. eye opening. looks like the number of poor hasn't changed much at all.

it's harder to get help. I don't know what it was like before, but I know the hoops you have to jump through now. Plus of course a side of derision to go with it.

[Downwinder]

2. I thought no bid contracts were the thing.

[ananda]

3. Our poor are essentially ignored for the most part.

It's the shame of our society.

[Downwinder]

4. Except when someone needs a whipping boy.

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. True that.

[Johonny]

7. yip, funny when the poor enter the political race discussion

it is always to deride them. Mitt Romney accuses the American poor of being free loaders and the media doesn't bat an eye.

[Hydra]

8. The poor don't have any power to strike back effectively

I can be as eloquent as any politician, but without financial backing I basically don't exist.

Therefore the poor make the perfect targets. You can even blame a Banker created financial collapse on them and people nod sagely.

Might DOES makes right after all.

[TalkingDog]

5. A-fucking-men

n/t