NYT: Welfare Spending Shows Huge Shift

[CShine]

New government figures show a profound change in welfare spending, shifting money from cash assistance into child care, education, training and other services intended to help poor people get jobs and stay off welfare.

Cash assistance payments now account for less than half of all spending under the nation's main welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, federal officials say.

The proportion has been declining steadily since 1996, when Congress revamped welfare and abolished the guarantee of cash assistance for the nation's poorest children. The 1996 law required most adults to work within two years of receiving aid and gave states sweeping authority to run their welfare and work programs with lump sums of federal money.

"Welfare" used to mean a monthly check that could be immediately converted to cash. But statistics tabulated by the Department of Health and Human Services, at the request of The New York Times, show that the proportion of federal and state welfare money spent on cash assistance declined to 44 percent in 2002, from 77 percent in 1997. The proportion allocated to various types of noncash assistance shot up to 56 percent, from 23 percent in 1997.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/13/politics/13WELF.html

[imhotep]

1. What about corporate welfare?

Guess those types of handouts don't count...cash "assistance" for the ultra wealthy.

[TahitiNut]

2. In other words ...

... 56% of welfare outlays go directly to businesses rather than to those in need. I guess the idea that 'people know how to spend their money better than government' doesn't extend to those in need - like, they don't know what they need, right? Uh-huh. :eyes:

I wonder what comparative 'value' is delivered. I wonder whether anyone bothers to track, for example, the 'success' of education and training to anything near the degree they're testing elementary schools.

Maybe that education and training teaches folks how to spell 'privatization' -- (synonomous with 'corporate welfare'?) What happened to the 'free market"?

[Mel]

3. meanwhile......

poverty is on the rise and what about the people that already used their two years and have lost their jobs due to the *Bush economy?


<snip>The number of people in poverty rose to 34.6 million in 2002, from 31.6 million in 2000, the Census Bureau reported last month. But the number of people on welfare continued to decline, to 5 million in 2002, from 5.8 million in 2000.</snip>

[grasswire]

4. I read in Saturday's Oregonian...

...that food bank assistance has increased 82 percent since Bush has been in office. Pretty scary stuff.

[THUNDER HANDS]

5. thank you Clinton

Reason No. 1 why I'll never be a charter member of the Bill Clinton fan club.

[twilight]

6. same here - I agree

That was what finished me off w/Clinton - when he passed those welfare laws. Why did he do this? Did he help anyone? HELL NO!!!

I almost voted Green in 2000 because he made me so angry for doing this. However, seeing what was in store, I changed my registration back to a Democrat before the selection occurred, as if that did any good.

This was Clinton's biggest mistake IMO!

:grr:

[THUNDER HANDS]

7. yes

At the very least, Clinton's approval of the passage of NAFTA and GATT could be reasonably argued and debated among liberals.

But I don't know anyone who thinks Welfare Reform was actaully good for the working poor of this country.