NY Times' "New Poor" article: Budget cuts ax child care, increase need for welfare

[alp227]

Tomorrow's New York Times will have an in-depth reports in its series "The New Poor". Peter S. Goodman wrote "Cuts to Child Care Subsidy Thwart More Job Seekers", which observes that states' budget cuts are eliminating child-care subsidies and forcing single mothers to quit their jobs and get welfare just to take care of their children.

TUCSON — Able-bodied, outgoing and accustomed to working, Alexandria Wallace wants to earn a paycheck. But that requires someone to look after her 3-year-old daughter, and Ms. Wallace, a 22-year-old single mother, cannot afford child care.

Last month, she lost her job as a hair stylist after her improvised network of baby sitters frequently failed her, forcing her to miss shifts. She qualifies for a state-run subsidized child care program. But like many other states, Arizona has slashed that program over the last year, relegating Ms. Wallace’s daughter, Alaya, to a waiting list of nearly 11,000 eligible children.

Despite a substantial increase in federal support for subsidized child care, which has enabled some states to stave off cuts, others have trimmed support, and most have failed to keep pace with rising demand, according to poverty experts and federal officials.

That has left swelling numbers of low-income families struggling to reconcile the demands of work and parenting, just as they confront one of the toughest job markets in decades.

The cuts to subsidized child care challenge the central tenet of the welfare overhaul adopted in 1996, which imposed a five-year lifetime limit on cash assistance. Under the change, low-income parents were forced to give up welfare checks and instead seek paychecks, while being promised support — not least, subsidized child care — that would enable them to work.

The Obama stimulus and child care subsidies:

As part of last year’s package of spending measures aimed at stimulating the economy, the Obama administration added $2 billion for subsidized child care programs for 2009 and 2010, on top of the expected $5 billion a year. The administration has proposed a $1.6 billion increase for 2011. But even as this extra money has limited cuts and enabled some states to expand programs, officials acknowledge that it has not kept pace with the need.

Now, someone who constructed the Clinton welfare reform realizes the downsides to a supposed incentive for personal responsibility:

Even some architects of the mid-1990s welfare overhaul now assert that low-income families are being denied resources required to enable them to work.

“We’re going the wrong way,” said Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was a Republican Congressional aide and was instrumental in shaping welfare changes. “The direction public policy should move is to provide more of these mothers with subsidies. To tell people that the only way they can get day care is to go on welfare defeats the purpose of the whole thing.”

Ms. Wallace's situation illustrates the problem with "welfare-to-work" programs: They often disappear too soon, screwing one over once one's income jumps over an arbitrary limit:

She was working three days a week at a call center for Verizon Wireless, earning about $9.50 an hour while attending beauty school at night to earn a license as a cosmetologist. She aimed to use earnings from that profession as a springboard to nursing school.

Alaya was enrolled at a child care center, with a state subsidy, and Ms. Wallace was pleased with the girl’s experiences there — singing songs, learning to share. But when Ms. Wallace sent in the forms to extend the program, she received a rude surprise: a recent raise — less than 50 cents an hour — had bumped her above the income limit.

This has been a problem for the last decade:

In 2000, only one in seven children whose families met federal eligibility requirements received aid, according to an analysis by the Center for Law and Social Policy, which advocates for expanded programs. In 2003, the Bush administration found that in the smaller group of children eligible under more restrictive state criteria, only 30 percent received subsidized care.

Until the Obama administration increased financing last year, federal support for subsidized child care had been steady for a decade. From 2001 to 2008, direct federal spending for subsidized child care through the Child Care and Development Fund — the primary source — nudged up to $5 billion a year, from about $4.6 billion, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

So...when will the federal child care fund be bailed out? Anyone know?

Putting on my conservative, big-framed, John Chancellor-style glasses, I think "Why don't these women just get married and stay in the kitchen instead of stealing my tax dollars? That's why marriage helps society!" Wearing my regular glasses that help me see DU (yes in real life I wear transitions) I once again moan at the America that favors the rich/bankers/corporatelite rather than the working class. And given the young age of the Ms. Wallace in this article, I can hear you begging not to start ranting on about abstinence education and the lack of reproductive choice in much of America today.

[Amonester]

1. > “We’re going the wrong way,” said R (hypocrite)...

DUh