Part of my work entails being on conference calls and taking notes
for my supervisor when she is unable to be on the calls herself--such as
this past Thursday and Friday, when she had a speaking engagement at
Cornell. While I do little or no talking, I learn a lot on these calls.
The one on Thursday was about the criminalization of homelessness. The
one on Friday was about an impending crisis that, if not averted,
promises to drastically increase homelessness and other social
problems--Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett's proposed budget.
So, here it is, folks--my blog is getting political!
The
proposed budget features a number of austere (one might say draconian)
cuts prompted by troubled economic times, but the one that has PPEHRC
(and pretty much every other Pennsylvanian human services and/or social
justice organization you can name) up in arms is the complete
elimination of the General Assistance (GA) program. GA is the state's
baseline cash assistance program for vulnerable Pennsylvanians with no
other source of income. It pays $205 a month. To qualify, one must be
disabled, a survivor of domestic violence, a caretaker of a disabled
person, in an alcohol or drug treatment program, or a child living with
an unrelated adult. A lot of these people will be pretty much screwed if
they are simply cut off from assistance. Some examples:
Domestic violence survivors: Most
of the ones on GA have just recently fled their abusers. Abusers, who
often prevent women from going to school or working, are the sole source
of income for many of these individuals. When survivors take the
courageous step of leaving, GA is their lifeline while they work to get
their lives back together and become independent. Without aid, leaving
is often not a financially viable option, leading many women to stay
with their abusers rather than take their chances with homelessness and
destitution.
People in drug treatment and mental health programs: The
cuts will lead to a number of programs being eliminated, with no
provisions for where the people in them will go afterwards. One county
commissioner says, “Literally, people could be turned out on the street. They could end up in prison or worse.”
Disabled people: In order to qualify for GA as a disabled person, you must be unable to work. This should be self-explanatory. They cannot earn money. Do they therefore lose the right to subsist? Just something to think about.
Multiple
groups that have done cost benefit studies are stressing that the plan
will cost much more money in the long run than it will save in the short
run. As they are cut off by the state, greater numbers of people will
turn to the already overwhelmed and underfunded shelter systems,
counties, and churches. Higher incarceration rates are projected as
well, and prisons are spendy. Keeping somebody behind bars costs a fair
bit more than $205 a month. Prisons might get trickier to fund with the
business tax cut that is also in the budget proposal.
Whenever politicians start talking about welfare reform, they
hone in obsessively on people who "cheat the system" (by not reporting
other sources of meager income, etc.). Reagan generated righteous anger
on the part of the American public with an image he created of a woman
on welfare with eighty aliases, collecting dozens of checks and driving
Cadillacs--the Welfare Queen. It turned out Reagan had very lavishly embellished the news story of a woman with four aliases,
accused of defrauding the state of $8,000. And she made the news
because she was an anomaly. But the image stuck. The facts: people who
are on cash assistance are desperately poor. Most people who are on cash
assistance and have some other income that they do not report are also
desperately poor. One cannot live in an American city on $205 a month,
which is 25% of the federal poverty line.
I am of the opinion that even if welfare fraud were a
common phenomenon, it would not justify cutting off aid to thousands of
people in truly dire straits, for whom a monthly check can be the
difference between barely getting by and not getting by. I leave
you with this quote from Franklin Roosevelt's 1936 speech before the
Democratic National Convention, which speech is an interesting piece of
rhetoric not only because it illustrates a very different response to
financial crisis, but also because it is indicative of views on
economics and social responsibility that would mark Roosevelt as a
radical today.
"Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of
charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice
of its own indifference."
And that's all for now.
Helpful links
Coalition to Save General Assistance: pacaresforall.org
FDR Speech: http://www.austincc.edu/lpatrick/his2341/fdr36acceptancespeech.htm
My friend always tells me that Reagan was responsible for the elimination of mental institutions, that ever since that, a lot of people are on the streets that would ordinarily have been cared for and possibly treated.
ReplyDeleteI think you brought up an essential point with your Roosevelt quote. But I'd be interested to hear some of the arguments for the cut as well. They must think we collectively can handle the impact of the lack of this $205, you've gone through the consequences but how do they go about minimizing them and justifying cutting this? Did you feel there was a good chance that this aspect of the cut wouldn't be taken into effect?
Judging from how you cite a "county commissioner," you are actually listening to the people in charge talking, including the governor? That must be intense...
De-institutionalization did indeed contribute to an increase in homelessness in the 80's. Large mental institutions tended to be pretty awful places, which is part of why they were closed down. The ostensible plan had been to move people from the institutions to smaller care facilities and support centers, but that mostly did not happen. Many were simply turned out on the street.
DeleteThe argument for the cut is essentially that in times of deficit we must cut spending. Most lawmakers do not personally know people on public assistance and are very disconnected from the realities of trying to live on almost nothing. It seems to me that they are making the assumption that people will find some other way to survive with no data to support this assumption. There are no provisions in the budget proposal for minimizing the consequences of the cuts. The governor is essentially throwing his hands up in the air and saying, "Well, it sucks, but we gotta do what we gotta do."
But he isn't working too hard to find other sources of revenue that could get the state out of deficit. On the contrary, he plans to cut business taxes, diminishing the state's tax revenue. He's telling poor people they have to make sacrifices, but not corporations. And therein lies the hypocrisy.
The county commissioner was quoted in two news articles I read; I unfortunately have not talked to him personally. On the conference call were lawyers from Community Legal Services (one of the places where I interviewed for an internship) and people from a number of organizations that will be affected by the proposed budget.
You're absolutely right about this, and the antics of right-leaning politicians thinking up policies like this are laughable - they're essentially cutting their nose off to spite their face, because they're going to make the country financially WORSE in order to push a scaremongering agenda that they say will improve the economy. It's all so bigoted and simplistic. Here in the UK, they tirelessly use the analogy: "if your household was in debt, you wouldn't keep spending. The country is in debt, we have to cut back." Thankfully, a few people point out that it's ludicrous to compare a NATION'S ECONOMY to a household, but few people listen. This is the problem with having lawyers make up the bulk of politicians instead of scientists, mathematicians, engineers and economists. Democracy sucks!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, you caught me in the first paragraph with "criminalisation of homelessness." What's that all about?!
Callum, I read a Paul Krugman column on austerity economics in the New York Times this morning that might interest you. It may be online; I don't know how these things work. It's called "Pain Without Gain."
DeleteAs for the criminalization of homelessness - Outreach teams interviewed around 700 homeless people in cities around the country and most of them had been hassled by police or even arrested, sometimes for sleeping, but often just for sitting or standing in public space while looking like a homeless person (though "standing in public space while looking like a homeless person" was never the official charges). Businesses often call police to remove homeless people from nearby because their presence is bad for business.
Fun stuff.
Your dad and I were out hitting the bars and he wrote your blog url on a cocktail napkin. I liked your Roosevelt quote and I'm appalled by the state balancing the budget on the backs of the least able of our society. I'm sure you've already heard it at home, but we need to tax corporations and the rich, not jettison the poor. I'm glad that I live in Oregon.
ReplyDeleteEminently well reasoned and written. If only this was how most people got "angry"!
ReplyDeleteHey! It didn't write my name!
DeleteGo Meaghan! Smart cookie
ReplyDelete