EDITORIAL
Is the glass half empty or half full?
A recent U.S. government report declares there
has been a decrease in the number of families on welfare over
the past three years. That leaves 2 million families barely
surviving on public assistance compared to more than 4 million
families when President Bill Clinton in 1996 signed the
despicable welfare "reform" bill that dismantled the Aid to
Families with Dependent Children.
This important social safety net for all workers, especially
the unemployed and lowest paid, was won through struggle during
the 1930s when the U.S. labor movement was organizing in the
streets and in the factories.
The report is full of contradictions. It claims that the
decline in some states can be attributed to state governments
providing more subsidized child care and tuition-free community
college education for poor single mothers. Then why isn't this
kind of assistance being given to all workers, period, end of
story? Shouldn't every worker have the right to decent child
care and education, regardless of their ability to pay? This is
especially true now when low wages, poverty and hunger are on
the rise during this protracted "jobless recovery."
But this is only one side of the story. In response to this
report, Shawn Fremstad from the Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities stated, "Falling caseloads amid rising poverty
should be a cause for concern."
Wendell Primus, a Clinton appointee who resigned from his
post in protest over the signing of the welfare bill, said,
"It's an indictment of the welfare law, the welfare system,
that it has not been more responsive to economic conditions."
(New York Times, March 22)
Those living at or below the poverty line have found it
increasingly difficult to receive any kind of public assistance
since Clinton's bill was enacted.
In the "land of plenty" that boasts a $7-trillion economy,
there was a 15-percent increase between 1999 and 2002 in the
number of U.S. households facing "food insecurity"--1.5 million
families. Overall, this translates into more than 12 million
families not knowing where their next meal will come from due
to layoffs and low-wage jobs with no benefits. And this
disturbing increase in hunger does not just apply to the inner
city poor but also to the working poor who once considered
themselves the "middle class." There are more food pantries,
many inadequately supplied, from one end of the country to the
other. The number of families receiving food stamps has
increased 35 percent in the past three years to 10 million.
All this shows that government figures on the decline in
welfare don't come close to telling the real story. Deep
suffering is taking its toll on millions of people in the U.S.
The loss of welfare means that the greedy bosses can not only
lay off workers but force them to accept slave wages in order
to increase profits. Those who once thought that they could
never lose their jobs and be on welfare are now finding
themselves in an increasingly desperate situation, much like
those in the inner cities.
From the point of view of the interests of big business, the
report on the decline in welfare reinforces that the capitalist
system works--for them. For the vast majority of workers,
whether born here or abroad, it is an unmitigated disaster.
Capitalism does not work when it comes to meeting the needs of
human beings.
Reprinted from the April 1, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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