Welfare-To-Work Program's Demise 'Really Demoralizing'

[onehandle]

Source: Huffington Post

Jaquayla Burton's job will end this week unless the Senate does an about-face and decides to preserve a welfare-to-work program that created more than 240,000 jobs as part of the stimulus bill.

"I wish they would because on Friday I'll have to sign up for unemployment. I don't feel good about that," said Burton, 20, in an interview with HuffPost. "It's hard because I have two kids to take care of. I've been working here nine months and it's kind of stable at home, and then on Friday I'll be unemployed."

Burton is one of six moms doing community outreach work for for the San Francisco Living Wage Coalition whose subsidized jobs will disappear on Sept. 30, said campaign co-director Karl Kramer. "We do community outreach to educate people about what their rights are under San Francisco's wage and benefit laws."

The 2009 stimulus bill created an "Emergency Fund" that allowed states to subsidize jobs via the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (TANF), formerly known as welfare. The Senate voted against reauthorizing the program in May. Last week Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) blocked a request to bring up a bill that contained a $1.5 billion reauthorization. Advocates of the program are not optimistic that a change of heart is afoot in the U.S. Senate.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/27/demise-of-welfaretowork-p_n_740893.html

[Scuba]

1. Well, we can't be educating people about their rights.

Besides, only corporations deserve rights anyway.

[ProSense]

2. There are those who tried to bring attention to this program

A Jobs Program That Works

Job Subsidies Providing Help to Private Side

Kerry Pushes TANF Extension to Save Jobs for Working Families

[Demoiselle]

3. ProSense, your list makes it clear how hard it is to get a message out there...

Did anybody in the "Main Stream Media" pick up on Kerry's press release? I don't remember anybody else picking up on the NYTimes business section article ("Jobs Subsidies"), it's the first I've seen it..and I try to read the Times every day. Thank goodness for Bob Herbert. But then again, how many people in the echo chamber ever pick up on Bob Herbert and repeat his points?
Sigh.

[ProSense]

5. There really isn't a

market for good news right now. Seems like the media prefer to ignore reporting news in favor of hyping Republicans.

Also, Herbert's article never got the attention it deserved.

[sandnsea]

9. It's a shame these agencies didn't broadcast the stimulus

and loudly tell the community activists that all of this help had come.

[cstanleytech]

4. "Advocates of the program are not optimistic that a change of heart is afoot in the U.S. Senate."

Well before that could happen wouldnt that mean Orrin Hatch and certain others (mostly republicans) in Washington would have to even have hearts in order to have something there that could be changed?

[Techn0Girl]

6. No Job for YOU! ( 300 Billion to Big Business)

You heard that right 300 Billion dollars.

http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/07/news/economy/obama_business_tax_cut/index.htm

[ProSense]

7. More information

here

[Techn0Girl]

10. The link you gave says it's all the Republican's Fault....

So let me get this straight ....
When The republicans had 51 votes they were able to destroy our Constitutional Rights with The Patriot Act, lower taxes for the wealthiest Americans, deregulate the banking industry and fund 10+ Trillion dollars for a war based on a lie.

Now the WE have 60 votes , we can't save a quarter of a million American jobs. Can't come together on that one, no Sir.

Did I get that about right?
OK, just checking.

[sandnsea]

11. I thought you said the stimulus didn't provide any jobs

And now that jobs are about to be cut, you want to trash Democrats for that too.

Did I just get *that* right?

Why yes, yes I did.

Stuff a sock in the sock.

[Techn0Girl]

12. Your cogent argument has turned me around - giving 300 billion to business and putting 240 thou ....

people out of work is a Good thing.
Double plus good.

Go team.

[ProSense]

13. What exactly are you complaining about:

that the administration is putting funding in place to create jobs?

You're criticizing the administration because you learned that a stimulus-funded jobs program is about to expire due to Republican obstruction by criticizing the further attempts by the administration to fund jobs-creation programs?

[Techn0Girl]

14. Not complaining at all - 300 Billion in tax cuts to business is a good thing. 240 thousand .

more put out of work is also a good thing.

You misread my post.

I'm totally on your side.
Go team.

(of course those 240 thousand recently fired people probably think differently but as long as we give that money to the Corps we're home free this November! Right?)

[sandnsea]

8. I thought the stimulus didn't provide any jobs n/t

[eilen]

15. Nuance

The stimulus preserved jobs, just didn't create many new jobs. Now the preserved jobs are expired.

[eilen]

16. Stimulus Shtimulas

I don't know that the tax cuts on small businesses will really help job stimulus either. All I can think of are those Economic Development Zones we have in NY in which businesses took advantage, said they were going to hire, got the breaks/monies in Grants and Tax breaks and then didn't really hire anyone. This was a huge scandal in NYS. The only job that has touched my life created by the stimulus was a job my brother obtained as a subcontractor (which he lost money on) and the general contractor hired imported Chinese labor to do the larger part of the job.


The job cited in the OP was a state grant job. States are cancelling or not renewing their grant programs d/t decreased fund because of decreased tax revenue d/t job losses (loss of income and sales tax) and decreased property values (d/t foreclosures/crash of real estate). Our government saw to it that the banks and their insurer were preserved but not the states and its citizens. The stimulus program was just to staunch the hemorrhage with the hope that their great gamble in the bank bailout and Fed printing press would pay off before it expired. They didn't consider that the banks were vampires. All take and no give. There is no societal conscience in today's corporation.

When you consider his advisers were Emmanuel, Summers, and Geitner (and by proxy Rubin)... one can consider this a heist of epic proportions.

I cannot understand why the federal gov couldn't have helped the states, put a moratorium on foreclosures, allowed restructuring of the mortgage or a flat reassessment and let the banks take the loss-- after all, they were given quite a cushion. The actual monies equalling loss on the real properties were much less than the complex zombie financial instruments houses like Goldman invented. It would have cost much less and communicated to the people of the US that their government believed in them and had their back.

Instead, the Gov. had Goldman's, Citi, and BofA's back.

[ProSense]

17. R.I. intends to use all $8.1 million in stimulus funds to help the poor

R.I. intends to use all $8.1 million in stimulus funds to help the poor

By Paul Edward Parker

Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — As a Thursday deadline approaches, state officials said Monday that they will use all $8.1 million in federal economic stimulus money approved for the Ocean State to put 722 poor and unemployed Rhode Islanders to work and help them pay bills.

But they said a one-year extension of the deadline would allow them to employ 3,000 people and use up all the nearly $48 million in stimulus money that the state was eligible for under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Contingency Fund. The fund is a stimulus-program enhancement of the temporary assistance program, a federal form of welfare.

Even as the deadline to spend the federal money looms, the state has a last-minute application pending with the federal government to use the nearly $40 million left under the state’s eligibility cap of $47.5 million.

Meanwhile, members of Governor Carcieri’s administration and the chairman of the House Finance Committee cast aspersions about who was to blame for the state not getting approved for more money sooner.

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