(ThyBlackMan.com) As the Trump Circus began its blustering and bumbling trip across Europe, before culminating in a complete capitulation to America’s Russian adversary in Helsinki, the president’s Council of Economic Advisors issued a report that bears closer scrutiny here at home. Expanding Work Requirements in Non-Cash Welfare Programs issued July 12, 2018 concluded:
“Based on historical standards of material wellbeing and the terms of engagement, our War on Poverty is largely over and a success.”
As we have seen with so many other tenets of conservative orthodoxy – free trade and legal immigration for example – this administration has taken the usual conservative arguments and turned them on their heads. Republicans have argued for decades that social safety net programs were abject failures. This new position is that the programs have met their mission. The conclusion, however, is the same: they should be eliminated.
The report follows up on an Executive Order issued in April directing federal agencies to “strengthen and expand” work requirements for all welfare programs. These directives would mandate that non-elderly, non-disabled adults meet a minimum number of hours of work per week in order to receive benefits. While it may sound fine on its face, the reality is that the majority of non-elderly, non-disabled adults receiving benefits are already working. They just don’t make enough money to make ends meet.
In its report on poverty in America, the United Way used the acronym ALICE (Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed) to explain this phenomenon. They showed, by state, how working people are unable to afford the basics of a middle-class lifestyle on the income they are earning. Other studies by housing advocacy groups on worst case housing needs document that many working adults don’t earn enough to pay only 30% of their incomes for rent (the standard of housing affordability): a growing number pay more than 50%.
Empirical evidence further shows that the homeless crisis has been exacerbated in virtually every major American city by gentrification and subsidized housing waiting lists are ridiculously long; and in many jurisdictions are closed. Food pantries can’t keep up with the need and schools in the D.C. metro area, for instance, stay open on snow days to ensure that their students get at least one good meal per day.
Equally depressing is the fact that not one Democratic officeholder, let alone any members of the Congressional Black Caucus, has made any public comments on the premise and conclusions of this report. Too busy caught up in the distraction of the day, there has been no push-back to this threat to their constituents.
It’s certainly easier to declare victory and say “game over”, than to continue to try to disprove the demonstrable improvements these social safety net programs have made in the lives of so many American families. To ignore the continuing need is, at best, irresponsible, and at worst morally repugnant. Especially when “corporate welfare”, in the form of trillion dollar tax cuts, have recently been passed, with talk of more tax cuts to come.
This administration is intent on turning America upside down and inside out. The Supreme Court, and its recent decision weakening public employee unions, is part of the intensifying war on the poor and working class. Congress has shown either its lack of courage, lack of interest, or lack of a plan to fight back against these escalating attacks.
For those who believe in a just and equitable society, who make any pretense of believing in the “Christian” ethic to “care for the least of these”, who subscribe to plain ole’ human decency, now is the time to raise our voices and take action to make that vision come to pass.
Staff Writer; Harry Sewell