I hate seeing stories like this. The Press will find one person, highlight their story, and inevitably the "good" citizens of West Michigan will rip this person from limb to limb with a flood judgmental letters to the editor, whining about those "lazy" people on welfare and how they just want a hand-out.
But when the wealthy want a government hand-out in the form of huge tax breaks, not a peep.
Compassion is in very short supply from the conservatives. I don't understand how some people can be so cruel.
The job interview went well enough the other day, but then the employer told Martell Hughes there was one possible hitch: She doesn't have a telephone.
"I can't afford a phone until I get a job," Hughes said later. "If I get a phone, I gotta eliminate the gas or electric."
Hughes, a single mother of six boys, is caught in a trap that ensnares many others. Nearly a decade after Congress passed a welfare reform package requiring recipients to work or at least look for employment, many remain trapped between public assistance and low-paying jobs.
I think it's curious that they paint "welfare" as trap and yet say nothing about the trap that is "low-paying" jobs. More on that later.
"You try so hard to get off, and you can't," said Hughes, 39. "Instead of making us better, it's keeping us in the same spot. You don't want to be on aid. You work for $6.25 an hour -- come on, you can't do it. We need more jobs that pay more, because if they pay more, I can get off the system."
The federal welfare reform law, passed in 1996, removed millions from the nation's welfare rolls, including about 400,000 through Michigan's Work First program. But 211,400 people, including children, remain on welfare in Michigan. That includes 50,367 who have been receiving public assistance for four years or longer.
I would hazard a guess that most of the recipients have children or are disabled in some way. As a matter of fact, I thought that children were a requirement for even receiving any sort of welfare besides physical/mental disability.
Keep in mind we are talking mostly of families with children.
With Michigan's welfare-to-work law set to expire Dec. 31, Gov. Jennifer Granholm's administration and Republican legislators are working on plans to replace it. While neither plan is in its final form, both are aimed at encouraging more recipients to leave welfare and land jobs.
The difference is in how they get there. During budget negotiations last summer, state House Republicans suggested recipients should lose their welfare benefits after four years. The Granholm administration is adamant that benefits continue indefinitely, as long as the recipient is complying with the program's requirements.
"What we learned from Work First is that it's not enough to just get a job," said Marianne Udow, director of the Michigan Department of Human Services. "Our clients clearly need help getting stabilized for longer periods of time.
"Those who have been in the system the longest have significant barriers to independence. It's not enough to say ... that they're not motivated enough and we need to throw them off the rolls."
While the Work First program offers incentives for recipients to find work, most end up back on the welfare rolls, Udow said. Half who leave welfare are back within a year, she said. For those who have been on cash assistance for more than four years, the return rate is even higher: nearly 70 percent.
So what we have here is the chronically unemployable. For whatever reason, these folks up end back on the system. Do we want to look at the reasons why? No. That might entail having to address the conditions that cause this in the first place, and Republicans don't have any simplistic catch-phrases and slogans for that.
But State Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema, R-Wyoming, warned last month that, while the social safety net is designed to help people until they become self-sufficient, it's time "to make sure that safety net hasn't taken on a larger role than was ever intended."
The debate centers on the long-term recipient who continues to languish on $459 a month for a mother and two children, the typical Family Independence Program (FIP) household.
Those are the people Republicans targeted with their proposal to cut off assistance after four years. An eight-member legislative work group, heavily weighted with Republicans, was appointed last month to find ways to move those recipients off welfare and into jobs.
"We need to reform our laws so that able-bodied people become more self-sufficient and are not dependent on welfare for a lifetime," said Rep. Jerry Kooiman, R-Grand Rapids, who co-chairs the group.
Which laws would those be, Jer? How about the minimum wage law? You know, the one that Republican legislators are blocking from leaving committee? The minimum wage law that, due to inaction on the part of our legislature, might have to be a ballot proposal in 2006? Or how about the living wage laws in various Michigan cities that the Republicans keep trying to circumvent?
Those laws, Jer? Because I'm not sure what you are talking about when you mouth the standard Reagan talking points. Perhaps you should be more specific with your allusions of making people become magically self-sufficient.
Why is it that Republicans wail on and on about welfare, and then refuse to do the things that would actually alleviate the need for welfare?
It's easy to just say "reform the laws". Kick 'em off, kick 'em out, ignore the rising poverty and hunger and homelessness. But when it comes to a real plan, the Republicans offer nothing. I start to think that perhaps they just don't care that hungry children end up living in the street.
I expect a multitude of letters about this woman from the rich folk who would implore her to just run out and get her Masters degree or start her own business. Because, you know, that's just so darn easy to do, everyone can do it, right?