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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 31, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------Why Dr. King would oppose ‘welfare reform’
By Monica Moorehead
If Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he would certainly focus much of his attention on the issue of racist repression in the United States. Dr. King dedicated most of his life to fighting against racism and poverty.
Many forces within the dynamic new youth and student movement against so-called globalization that emerged last December in Seattle have made the fight against the death penalty, rampant police brutality and the expansion of the prison-industrial complex top priorities. They have also embraced winning freedom for political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Fighting racism is strategic to overcoming all forms of capitalist oppression.
Racism, while rooted in white-supremacist ideology, also has a deeper social character. Political repression is but one side of the equation to combat racism. Underneath the political repression, there is economic repression.
Aug. 22 is the fourth anniversary of President Bill Clinton's signing of the so-called welfare-reform law. The official name of the law is the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act." Its true name should be "Economic War against the Poor and People of Color Act."
Dr. King would have viewed this law as a vicious assault against the most downtrodden in society. It is just as vicious as the city of Memphis, Tenn., denying Black sanitation workers the right to organize back in 1968. King had gone there to offer the workers his support before he was assassinated.
Just four months before he signed the anti-welfare bill, Clinton signed the Effective Death Penalty Act, an addendum to the Anti-Terrorism Bill. That law has all but gutted the right to a writ of habeas corpus for death row inmates. It makes it much harder for prisoners to get an independent federal review to overturn biased state convictions.
Welfare won through struggle
Welfare was a right won by the struggle to build the unions in this country back in the 1930s. It served as a necessary safety net to provide a guaranteed income for the unemployed and those unable to provide a means to subsist for themselves.
Signing away welfare is something that both Al Gore and George W. Bush support wholeheartedly.
The Center On Budget and Policy Priorities, which describes itself as a non-partisan organization that conducts research and analysis on government programs and policies, recently released a report on the impact of this significant law. The report, entitled "The Initial Impacts of Welfare Reform on the Economic Well-Being of Single Mother Families," was based on census data.
The report found that the average income of low-income families headed by single mothers rose "substantially" between 1993 and 1995--but that the average income of the poorest 20 percent of these same families declined between 1995 and 1997. The decline coincides with the application of this repressive law.
What was sore ly missing from this study was any major section on the racist nature of so-called welfare reform. Even though there were more white people on welfare, a disproportionate number of Black, Latino and Native people were dependent on welfare due to a lack of strong affirmative-action policies.
Wendell Primus, the report's main author, said, "It is disturbing that substantial numbers of children and families are sinking more deeply into poverty when we have the strongest economy in decades and when substantial amounts of funds provided to states to assist these families are going unused."
What does this mean in stark reality? These numbers reflect 2 million families and a total of 6 million people who have lost an average of $580 per year in income.
This may not seem like a lot to some people. But if you are trying to survive, every dollar is precious.
These statistics roughly equal the same number of people--especially youths--caught up with the vicious cycle of the prison-industrial complex and the criminal-justice system. The joint political and economic attacks amount to racist genocide on the part of the U.S. government on behalf of capitalist profit and greed.
The poorest 10 percent of these families saw their income decrease by $810 per year, a one-seventh loss in income. Their incomes declined from 35 percent of the poverty line in 1995 to 30 percent of the poverty line in 1997.
Any income gains these families achiev ed between 1993 and 1995 were completely wiped out between 1995 and 1997.
Before Clinton signed the 1996 bill, every family eligible for welfare or Aid to Families with Dependent Children automatically received Medicaid, federal- and state-government-sponsored health care for the poor. Of course, the 1996 welfare act dramatically changed this scenario and has created a national health-care scandal.
A 1999 study by Families USA, a group that supports universal health care, found that 675,000 people lost their Medicaid benefits in 1997 and another 200,000 lost their benefits in 1998. All together, at least 1.25 million people have lost their Medicaid benefits since 1996.
At least 100,000 disabled children who lost their supplementary Social Security benefits thanks to the 1996 law also lost Medicaid. The Health Care Financing Administration, which runs Medicaid, has "ordered" the states to reinstate Medicaid coverage for those thrown off of welfare, including the disabled children. How this agency is going to oversee the reinstatement is another question.
The 1996 bill has also had a negative impact on the right of poor children to nutrition. Before the bill went into effect, poor families could count on food stamps and some cash assistance. After the bill was signed, there was a 17-percent decline in those receiving food stamps between 1995 and 1997.
The 1996 law requires that single mothers seek work and job training in order to receive what little benefits they can before they are completely cut off from welfare after two years.
The federal government is supposed to provide vouchers for child care. But in many cases across the country, single mothers have been forced to pay out of pocket. Many mothers were not informed by their caseworkers of their right to subsidized child care.
Child care can cost upwards of $1,000 a month. Single mothers, if they can find jobs, wind up paying most of their salaries for child care.
$7 billion surplus
Ever since the federal government stopped providing funds for welfare, it has given the states block grants to use as they see fit. Each state can set its own rules and regulations about who is eligible to receive food, medical care, child care and cash assistance. There is no higher body to monitor them.
This has led to a $7 billion welfare surplus in 45 states and the District of Columbia, according to a report issued by the National Campaign for Jobs and Income, an anti-poverty coalition.
This is a complete and utter scandal that warrants an independent people's investigation.
Texas is one of 17 states that have accumulated over $100 million in surplus welfare funds--$175 million to be exact.
Texas has executed more people than any other--140 under Bush. But that state also has an official poverty rate of 15.1 percent.
Of course, the poverty rate is actually much higher. The state doesn't count the great mass of immigrants from all over Latin America who have been denied citizenship and decent-paying jobs.
When asked why the huge surplus isn't being spent to alleviate the suffering of the poor, Charles Stuart of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission replied, "The legislature has been prudent in maintaining a reserve for contingency purposes." What contingency purposes?
This is the kind of "compassionate conservatism" that Gov. George W. Bush is talking about. If you cannot outright legally lynch every poor person or person of color, then relegate them to an even slower death of poverty, drug addiction and despair.
William Mason is the co-founder of Workfairness, an organization of New York workfare workers and supporters fighting for the right to join unions. Workfairness was founded just days after Clinton signed the 1996 bill. "The whole welfare reform act is a lie--a lie that doesn't help anybody," Mason says.
"Nothing has improved. Things have actually gotten much, much worse than they were before. Welfare reform has created more homelessness and joblessness. It has added to the oppression faced by women, people of color and the poor. Anybody can see it doesn't work. Case closed."
The working class should be organizing to demand that every state release these funds immediately for emergency aid for the poor and the working poor.
Boom for which class?
All the capitalist think tanks and politicians love to talk about the "booming" economy. The question is, booming for which class? It certainly is not booming for the poor and the most oppressed.
In fact, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp in the early 1990s, the rich have gotten richer at an ever greater rate while the poor have gotten poorer. This is due to the greater concentration of wealth in the hands of the banks and corporate monopolies worldwide, especially U.S. big business.
If Dr. King were alive today, it's hard to say whether he would be supporting Gore's presidential candidacy. The Democrats are still considered by many to be the "lesser evil."
But one thing is for sure--Dr. King believed in activism and he would be urging the masses to be out in the streets, organizing and fighting against racism, be it political or economic, regardless of the capitalist elections.
Dr. King understood better than most that elections do not change social conditions. Mass movements do.
Moorehead, Workers World Party's 2000 presidential candidate, disrupted Clinton's appearance at a New York fundraiser in 1996 after he consigned a million more children into poverty by signing the "welfare reform" bill.
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