ARIZONA TO GUT THOUSANDS FROM WELFARE

Arizona’s legislature has decided to try to plug a $1 billion budget deficit in part by kicking people off of welfare after just 12 months, the strictest time limit in the country.

The change will mean that at least 1,600 families, including more than 2,700 children, will lose the benefit on July 1, 2016 and save the state at least $4 million.

All states cap benefits at some point, but the majority cut recipients off after five years. Some states have shorter limits than that: four impose a cap at four years; one at three years and nine months; four a three years; and 13 at two years or less. Only one state, Texas, imposes a 12 month limit for some parents, but their children can keep getting benefits for up to five years. Arizona’s won’t have the same exemptions. In a given year, about 51,000 cases across the country, or 3 percent of the total, are closed because of time limits. While not all states have always had them, the trend recently has been to add them and to tighten the restrictions.

This is an outgrowth of the way Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), or welfare, is designed. In 1996, it was turned into a block grant, meaning that states get a fixed amount of money from the government no matter what need and demand might look like. That amount also hasn’t been increased in the intervening time, losing 28 percent of its value since then. States are largely responsible for designing their programs, but the incentives are to reduce how many people participate, rather than increase assistance to low-income people, to free up funds that often get used for other purposes like plugging budget holes, as in Arizona.

But while there may be savings for states, time limits can impose severe hardship on families already at the brink. One examination of Maine’s a five-year limit found that the families that lost assistance weren’t likely to find work thanks to disabilities, low education levels, child care responsibilities, and/or few job opportunities and experienced “severe hardships.” Forty percent had no income afterward and median income for those who lost assistance was just $3,120 a year. People who lost benefits after Washington enacted a five-year limit in 2011 had lower rates of employment and higher rates of homelessness. Studies of time limits in a handful of other states have similarly found that they lead to lower incomes and increased hardship for the families who lose benefits and these families have few job prospects.

States have found other ways to impose harsh restrictions on those who need welfare assistance. Kansas recently limited recipients to withdrawing just $25 of their benefits a day as well as accessing them from places like movie theaters, pools and spas, and cruise ships. Even though states are given quite a lot of leeway in designing their programs, this might violate federal law, which would mean it could lose the $102 million it gets in block grant funding from the federal government. The state had previously instituted other reforms that kicked more than 23,000 people off the rolls. Many others have instituted drug testing, barring those who test positive from getting benefits, even though positive rates are lower than drug use rates for the general population and the testing programs cost thousands of dollars.

NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

SO MUCH FOR THAT IDEA

TENNESSEE TESTING OF  WELFARE RECIPIENTS TURNS UP DRY

Epic fail for the state of Tennessee:

Less than one half of one percent of Tennesseans [.0023] who applied for public assistance flunked a drug test in the first six months of the state’s experiment with drug screenings for welfare recipients, according to recently released state figures.

Out of more than 16,000 applicants from the beginning of July through the end of 2014, just 37 tested positive for illegal drug use. While that amounts to roughly 13 percent of the 279 applicants who the state decided to test based on their answers to a written questionnaire about drug use, the overall rate among applicants is just 0.2 percent.

Such an infinitesimal rate of drug use among welfare applicants contrasts sharply with the state’s overall 8 percent rate of drug use. Across the country, states that implement drug tests for low-income families have found that economically vulnerable people are less likely than the general population to use drugs. Utah spent $30,000 on tests that caught just 12 drug users, for a positive rate of 0.2 percent of total benefits recipients, compared to 6 percent of all state residents who use drugs. Before a judge ruled Florida’s drug testing system was illegal, it had turned up a drug use rate of just 2 percent among public assistance users, compared to 8 percent of its total population.

Separate research has also found that the facts do not support the stigmatizing ideas about low-income Americans and drug use that motivate drug testing schemes like these. Less than 4 percent of welfare recipients have a drug abuse problem — the kind of habitual dependence on a drug that the tests are theoretically designed to root out — and the rate of non-abusive drug use among the welfare population is barely above that of comparable non-welfare families.

“Other physical and mental health problems are far more prevalent” among low-income people than substance abuse problems, social scientist and public benefits expert Harold Pollack wrote in the Washington Post, and “yet these less-moralized concerns receive much less attention from legislators or the general public.” Pollack’s research found that age is a better predictor of drug abuse than welfare participation, with men aged 18 to 24 being roughly twice as likely to have a substance abuse problem than a food stamps recipient. Both the American Civil Liberties Union and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health have condemned dragnet drug testing for welfare recipients as ineffective, harmful, and unnecessary.

But the idea of drug testing poor folk before doling out food money and rental assistance continues to spread despite all the evidence and expert testimony against the practice. Texas lawmakers are hoping to start mandatory drug tests for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; their law would impose a three-strikes rule for drug testing, under which anyone who tested positive a third time would be permanently ineligible for the federal aid program. Maine is launching its own drug testing system for welfare early this year. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker wants to drug test everyone who gets food stamps or jobless insurance money. Montana lawmakers have proposed a drug testing scheme this year, and El Paso County, CO has instituted a testing system.

The stubborn stickiness of the idea that drug testing low-income families is good policy reflects a broader misunderstanding about the lifestyles of the poor. In reality, people who rely on public assistance programs to make ends meet are thriftier than the average American, spending a smaller share of their budgets on eating out and entertainment.

[h/t thinkprogress] 

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

“WELFARE CRAZY CHECKS”

WING NUT GENE ALDAY

A Mississippi state lawmaker said he opposed putting more money into elementary schools because he came from a town where “all the blacks are getting food stamps and what I call ‘welfare crazy checks.’ They don’t work.”

In an interview with the Clarion-Ledger regarding education funding, state Rep. Gene Alday stated his opposition to a push to increase funding to improve elementary school reading scores. Alday implied that increasing education funding for children in black families would be pointless.

Alday continued, saying that when he was mayor of Walls, MS, that the times he’d gone to the emergency room had taken a long time. “I laid in there for hours because they (blacks) were in there being treated for gunshots,” he told the newspaper.

At issue is something called Mississippi’s “third grade reading gate,” a measure passed in 2013, which won’t allow students to advance to fourth grade if they can’t read proficiently. A survey of Mississippi’s school superintendents estimated that about 28 percent of the state’s third graders would have to repeat a grade because they couldn't pass the reading proficiency exams.

The idea for the policy came from Florida, where the state invested about $1 billion into schools to pay for reading coaches, teachers and increased attention to students who struggled with reading.

The Mississippi legislature recently advanced a bill that would provide exceptions to the reading policy for students with learning disabilities. The bill is opposed by Gov. Phil Bryant , who supports the third grade gate policy.

“It’s disappointing that 62 members of the House of Representatives would vote to socially promote children who cannot read,” Bryant told the Clarion-Ledger. “With votes like this, it is little wonder that Mississippi’s public education system has been an abysmal failure.”

Bryant’s critics suggest that he needs to change his approach. “If the governor is sincere about making universal literacy a gateway, rather than a gatekeeper, he would support full funding for what it will take to get the literacy job done,” said Mike Sayer, co-founder of Southern Echo, a grassroots civil rights group that works with African-American students.

Alday staunchly opposes increasing the funding. “I don’t see any schools hurting,” he said.

NFTOS

STAFF WRITER

TESTING TENNESSEE WELFARE APPLICANTS, LIKE VOTER FRAUD....

...Is a non issue.

In July, Tennessee began a drug testing program for applicants to the state’s welfare program. Since then, just one person has tested positive out of more than 800.

Applicants have to answer three questions about drug use to get benefits, and if they answer yes to any of them, they get referred to urine testing. If the result is positive, they have to complete a treatment plan and then take another test. If the second comes back positive, they get cut off from benefits for six months. Those who refuse to take a drug test in the first place can’t get benefits.

In the month since it began, six people submitted to a drug test and just one tested positive out of the 812 people who applied. Four were turned down for benefits because they refused to participate in drug screening. That means a positive rate of 0.12 percent for those who took part in the screening. That compares to the 8 percent of state residents generally who use illegal drugs.

Despite stereotypes that the poor people who need welfare assistance use drugs at a high rate, other states have had similar results. In Utah, just 12 people tested positive in a year of drug testing applicants. In Florida, 2 percent of applicants failed the tests in 2011 but the state has an 8 percent rate of illegal drug use.

And when Maine’s governor set out to prove that welfare recipients in his state were using their benefits to buy drinks and cigarettes at bars and strip clubs, he turned up next to nothing.

Many other stereotypes about how welfare recipients use their money turn out to be untrue when data is examined. Those who get public assistance spend less than half of what families who aren’t enrolled spend and still put a larger share of those small budgets toward basics like food, housing, and transportation. At the same time, they spend less on luxuries like eating out and entertainment.

Welfare recipients may be spending so much less in part because the benefits have become so meager. Virtually all of them are worth less now than in 1996. And many families who should be eligible aren’t even getting them. In the mid-90s, a little over a quarter of poor families with children didn’t get benefits. In 2012 that number had soared to three-quarters.

Yet a chunk of the program money is being used now to administer these costly drug testing regimes. Utah spent more than $30,000 in the year that turned up just 12 drug users. The purported savings in Florida’s program will be negligible after administrative costs and reimbursements for the drug tests are taken into account. The $1.5 million price tag with just $229,000 in savings for a proposed program in Virginia prompted lawmakers to reject it.

Still, the move has been popular in other states. Eleven of them have enacted drug screening or testing for welfare applicants.






NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

LIES AND SUPRESSION, A DAY IN THE LIFE OF GOP POLITICS

Below are two videos that should be a wakeup call to Americans, minorities, and women. An insider speaks candidly to the Rev on GOP politics - radical tea bagger style.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

"We have no proof to support Robme’s welfare attack"

The ad is blatantly false; a fabrication critics say is aimed at stirring up resentment toward people of color. Yet, amid a flurry of negative speculation in the media over why Romney refuses to release his tax returns, the deceptive welfare attack has suddenly emerged at the very epicenter of the Republican’s struggling presidential campaign.
And yet, if the above videos are not pungent enough for you, listen to Eye of Newt “moon unit” Gingrich:





The number of Americans reliant on government assistance to buy food grew by more than 70 percent between 2008 – 2011, driven by a lack of jobs and the unavailability of credit as the country grappled with a near total economic collapse at the end of President George W. Bush’s second term.

Despite the nearly unprecedented economic pressure on working class Americans, President Obama did not scrap a rule that requires welfare beneficiaries to look for work. Instead, the administration gave states the option to waive federal welfare work rules if officials come up with a plan that can increase employment among the poor even more.

All this utter bullshit from the radical tea baggers, is there anything beneath them, is there a point where they stop the lies and deceit? Probably not, stay tuned and watch closely as this desperate group comes unglued before our very eyes.

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West