The bill, which passed the House in a 229-197 vote May 16, incorporates many of the proposals promoted by President George Bush. The legislation requires a person receiving welfare to be engaged in "supervised activity" 40 hours per week-- including 24 hours’ work, frequently for a pittance--in order to qualify for benefits. Currently the law mandates 20 hours work in a 30-hour week. The bill also instructs states to increase the number of recipients who meet this requirement from 50 percent to 70 percent by 2007.

The proposed legislation also allocates $300 million a year to promote "healthy marriage" through advertising, high school courses, and premarital counseling; provides millions more toward encouraging sexual abstinence; continues to deny welfare benefits to legal immigrants; gives governors substantial new powers to reshape food stamp and housing programs for the poor; and allows some states to drop out of the food stamp program and receive in exchange a fixed amount of federal funds that they can spend as they choose on food assistance.

Bush praised the House vote, stating that this legislation "will help millions of Americans realize a life of hope, dignity, and independence."

In the Senate, Hillary Clinton, a Democrat from New York, has joined with some other Democratic senators, including John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, Zell Miller of Georgia, and John Breaux of Louisiana, in supporting a bill to increase the work requirement for welfare recipients to 37 hours a week, a significant increase over the current 30-hour-a-week obligation.

Clinton’s stance drew scores of protesters outside her Washington, D.C., house May 21. She defended her position on the bill with the argument that she was able to extract promises to increase funding for child care and maintain limited exemptions from work requirements for mothers of children under six. She said the Senate version of the bill "is a vast improvement" and "not even comparable" to that approved by the House.

According to various news reports the issue of funding for child care was a point of contention between some Democrats and Republicans, with both sides arguing their approach would place the greater number of women in workfare programs. The House bill calls for a measly $5.2 billion a year in child-care spending, while some Democrats want to increase the yearly total to $7 billion.

The proposed legislation builds upon the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act signed by William Clinton in 1996, and promoted by him as one of the centerpieces of his administration under the theme of "ending welfare as we know it." Unless reauthorized by Congress, the 1996 law expires September 30.

The bipartisan assault under the Clinton administration eliminated cash assistance and the federally funded entitlement Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). The government imposed a five-year lifetime limit on any individual’s ability to collect welfare payments. The elimination of the AFDC program, which was part of the 1935 Social Security Act, was the biggest single blow to this entitlement since its enactment.

Since then most capitalist pundits have hailed the law, pointing out that it has cut the number of individuals receiving welfare payments by more than half--from 12.2 million in 1996 to 5.3 million today. In New York City alone some 38,000 families were cut off federal welfare programs last December after reaching their five-year lifetime limit.  
 
Impact of 1996 law
A recent study published by the Joyce Foundation, an institution based in Chicago that supports the changes in government aid, details the extent to which many of those who have had their welfare payments eliminated have sunk even deeper into dire straits.

The welfare rolls in seven Midwestern states have shrunk by two-thirds over the past eight years, according to the study. Many of the 2 million former aid recipients remain in poverty, struggling to pay utility and grocery bills as they juggle part-time, temporary jobs.

The study reports that Illinois and Wisconsin reduced their welfare rolls by more than 70 percent each, while Minnesota and Iowa cut theirs by a third, and Indiana by 11 percent. However, wages earned by these individuals remained well below the official federal poverty level of $14,630 a year for a family of three. Researchers found average incomes for those they were tracking to be $12,000 in Iowa and Ohio and $14,000 in Indiana and Minnesota. In Michigan, 49 percent of those who worked full time, 88 percent of those on welfare, and 71 percent of those combining welfare and wages remained in poverty.

The study reports that half the former recipients in some states said they were unable to buy food, pay rent, or pay utility bills, and a similar number reported their phone service being cut off for more than 24 hours. Several studies found that 1 in 10 former recipients had been evicted or become homeless.

The report also took note of the fact that five of the seven states showed an increase in welfare caseloads in 2001, and warned of the impact of the recession on this section of the working class.

"Most families coming off welfare who rely on wages alone--or in those states that allow it, wages plus welfare--remain poor," the study concluded. "Many families face substantial hardships each month. Meanwhile some people--700,000 families nationally, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities--actually have lower annual incomes that they would have had if the 1996 law had not been passed."

The make-work jobs to which welfare recipients are assigned not only pay less than the minimum wage; they are also used by the boss class as a dagger aimed at union rights. Many of these workers, who are employed by various city agencies from the parks to the transit authority, are doing the same jobs as union members for far less money and without the health and pension benefits available to union members.  
 
40,000 on workfare in New York
In New York City, for example, some 40,000 people are employed by city authorities in various workfare assignments, according to Community Voices Heard, a New York–based group of people on welfare. A statement presented by the group to the House Ways and Means Committee last April pointed out, "The cost to the city for an hour of a workfare worker’s wage is only $1.80.... The annual cost to the city of a workfare worker’s pay is only $3,600 a year, compared to an annual salary of between $18,000–$22,000 a year for an entry-level union worker in a similar position."

As unemployment grows and anticipated state income disappears, New York and other states are now putting even the make-work programs on the chopping block in order to make up for budget shortfalls. In January, for example, New York City’s welfare commissioner ordered 3,500 workers fired who had been employed in jobs cleaning up city parks.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home