Over the years, many states have tried to attach different conditions to public assistance programs for low-income Americans. These conditions include things like work requirements, which limit benefits to people who are currently working or actively pursuing employment, and drug testing, which limits benefits to people who are not currently using illegal drugs. Both of these policies have been in the news lately as Republicans at the state and national level seek to move assistance programs in a more conservative direction.

While many tend to refer to welfare as if it’s a single government program, assistance to low-income Americans generally comes through the tax code and a hodgepodge of programs administered at the state level. While a wide range of tax credits and public programs make up the American safety net, discussions of drug testing and work requirements typically focus on a handful of programs. Read on for an overview of the programs that are typically targeted for these requirements and what recent proposals would mean for them.

Conditions and Public Assistance Programs

Both drug testing and work requirements are important components of the ongoing debate over welfare policy. Many public assistance programs have work requirements built into them due to policy changes in the 1996 welfare reform legislation. And while some efforts to impose drug testing requirements have been blocked by the courts, according to the National Conference for State Legislatures, at least 15 states have passed legislation requiring public assistance applicants or recipients to be drug screened. These conditions have different implications for people based on how they relate to specific forms of public assistance. Here’s a look at four of the most discussed programs:

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program–previously referred to as food stamps and now known as SNAP–already has some limitations but the debate re-emerged last year as states started reimposing work requirements after getting waivers following the recession. The 1996 welfare reform law placed stringent requirements on able-bodied adults without children. The law only permits these adults to receive benefits for just three months every three years when they are not either employed or in a job training program for at least 20 hours per week. As a result, the vast majority of people who receive SNAP benefits are either employed or have dependent children. While lawmakers at the state level have called for drug testing requirements, federal law currently does not allow it.

In addition to work requirements, several lawmakers have called for limitations to be placed on what people can use SNAP benefits to buy. Proponents of these restrictions argue that people shouldn’t be able to use publicly funded programs to buy things like sugary drinks or expensive food like lobster. But opponents argue that these decisions are best left to individuals, and limitations on what you can buy already exist–for example, SNAP recipients cannot buy alcohol or prepared foods with their benefits. Moreover, they note that such rules may further stigmatize the use of the program, which has been a crucial means of preventing food instability for a large number of Americans.

Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF)

TANF is one of the few antipoverty programs that provides direct cash assistance, rather than in-kind benefits. The TANF program is administered by the states, which are given a federal block grant each year. Because of its funding system, states have a significant amount of control over how the block grant funds are used as well as the conditions that are tied to benefits. As the name suggests, TANF benefits are typically limited to families with children and have a duration limit. All benefits are also tied to work requirements. While states can define exactly who is eligible for assistance, work requirements are part of the underlying law–states face a funding penalty when their TANF work participation rates are below what is defined by federal law.

State-level flexibility has also led many states to implement drug testing requirements for TANF recipients. However, courts have found that states do not have an unlimited authority to require drug screening. A Florida law requiring all TANF recipients to be drug tested was struck down in court because suspicion-less testing requirements amounted to an unconstitutional search. What set Florida’s law apart from similar laws in other states was its breadth–requiring all recipients rather than focusing on those suspected of drug use.

The law was also not cost effective while it was in effect–the state spent more reimbursing people for drug tests than it would have if it had given them benefits without screening. More generally, critics of efforts to attach conditions to public assistance programs tend to cite the unnecessary administrative costs that come with determining a person’s employment and drug use status.

Medicaid

Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income Americans, has been a recent target for both work requirements and drug testing. A recent letter from the Department of Health and Human Services to the states indicated that the Trump Administration would give more flexibility to states to impose work requirements for people in the Medicaid program. Wisconsin plans to take its Medicaid program in an even further conservative direction, imposing drug screening requirements, work requirements, and time limits for those receiving benefits. Under Wisconsin’s proposal, applicants would need to fill out a questionnaire and, based on their responses, could have to undergo drug screening. If they test positive, they will be diverted into a drug treatment program and if they decline treatment they will be denied benefits altogether. As the Trump Administration signals that states will have more control over the administration of Medicaid, we can expect to see additional states propose conservative changes to Medicaid, but legal challenges may be just as likely.

Given the nature of Medicaid and the health care system in general, even some who support work requirements in principle question their use for Medicaid. Because the government requires emergency rooms to provide care to people regardless of their ability to pay for it, work requirements in Medicaid would not have the same effect as they do in programs that could simply cut off all benefits. This would also mean that more costs are shouldered by hospitals, including public hospitals funded in part through tax dollars, which limits the cost-savings related to pushing people unwilling to work off of public programs.

The video below gives a brief overview of how work requirements would work in Medicaid:

Unemployment Insurance

The Unemployment Insurance program has been around since 1935 and seeks to help the recently unemployed manage their expenses as they look for a new job. The program typically provides benefits, about half of an unemployed person’s previous salary up to a limit, for about 26 weeks in most states. The system is funded by employers on behalf of their workers through state and federal taxes. Federal law says that people eligible for Unemployment Insurance must be able to and currently be looking for work while they receive benefits, although states have the ability to define certain eligibility details.

Unemployment Insurance has been a frequent target of drug testing requirements, but a recent regulatory rollback may have inadvertently made it harder for states to place such requirements on beneficiaries. As a part of the effort to remove a number of regulations put in place under the Obama Administration, Republicans used the Congressional Review Act–a law that allows for the expedited removal of recent regulations under a new president–to scrap a Department of Labor rule outlining who could be drug tested for unemployment benefits. The regulation came out of a provision in a 2012 law that allowed states to drug test individuals before receiving unemployment benefits according to federal regulations. When the regulations were finally enacted, Republicans said they were too narrow, limiting people eligible for the tests to those in a small set of occupations. The rationale was to subject people who would need to pass a drug test for a new job to also be subject to the same tests when receiving unemployment benefits. But the law was contingent upon existing federal regulations, and now that Republicans scrapped the rules that existed, states are now unable to require drug testing absent federal regulations. Writing new rules will take some time, and removing an existing regulation makes it considerably more difficult to pass a new one seeking to accomplish the same thing. As a result, some administrative law experts believe that getting rid of the previous rule may actually set back efforts to enact drug testing requirements.

Conclusion

While there is significant disagreement on the extent to which the government should assist the poor and unemployed between the two major political parties, both Republicans and Democrats tend to agree that the government should do something to help those in need. The primary disagreement stems from how much the government is willing to pay and who is eligible for assistance. Drug testing and work requirements are seen by conservatives as a way to reduce eligibility to people who deserve it and cut costs as a result. Critics say that these requirements add more to the cost of administration than they save in withheld benefits. They also argue that placing these requirements can stigmatize the programs and discourage people who need help from seeking it.

It’s also important to realize how different requirements interact with various programs and how certain funding systems make adding conditions easier at the state level. Block grants, like the one used to fund the TANF program, give states the most flexibility to impose requirements on those receiving benefits, while entitlements tend to need a change in federal law.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Drug Testing and Work Requirements: Attaching Strings to Public Assistance appeared first on Law Street.

Earlier this week, the Canadian province of Ontario announced it would be conducting a pilot program for 4,000 of its residents, guaranteeing each person minimum income even if they did not work. While the idea of giving away “free money” may draw criticism from some, this is not a new concept. In fact, programs similar to this have been around for nearly 50 years, with the ultimate goal of eventually replacing the welfare system as we know it.

Read on further to find out more about guaranteed basic income (otherwise known as universal basic income or basic income), its purpose, the history behind it, and how it might impact the future of welfare programs worldwide.

Guaranteed Basic Income?

So what is guaranteed basic income (GBI)? According to the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), this type of payment has five key characteristics: it is paid in intervals instead of all at once, the medium used allows the recipient to use it any way they want (it is not a Food Stamp card, for example), it is paid on an individual basis only, it is paid without a means test, and those that receive it are not required to work.

Everything else, such as the amount of money in each payment or longevity of payments varies based on the proposal. (In the Ontario test case it does have an income threshold and is paid to only the 4,000 included in the program; the rest of the principles still apply.)

The Purpose of GBI

Guaranteed basic income is not really “free money,” as some may claim; it does serve a few important purposes. An article from Law Streeter Eric Essagof already does a great job of explaining the GBI’s use in fighting poverty. Namely, the income encourages people to keep working, while also ensuring that if their income rises, they won’t automatically lose the benefits they rely on (also known as the “poverty trap”). In addition, in the United States at least, it could streamline a complicated system where someone who needs benefits has to sign up for five different programs that all fall under one welfare system.

There are other potential benefits associated with a guaranteed basic income. If people were assured of at least some income, they might be more likely to go to school for more education or training or even take a chance and start their own business. They could also pursue passions (such as writing, for example) that they are harder to take on when their time is dictated by the necessity to make money. For individual workers, a guaranteed income would also enable them to bargain more effectively with their employers and force employers to agree to concessions in order to keep their workers.

History of GBI

The Ontario GBI pilot program is certainly not the first of its kind; in fact, it is not even the first in Canada. The first program was conducted in the province of Manitoba in the 1970s, and led to societal health improvements while simultaneously not discouraging work participation. The idea for a universal basic income can be traced even further back than that–much further, in fact. In 1797 Thomas Paine, a pamphleteer famous for his work “Common Sense” in support of the American Revolution, stated that in exchange for social consensus among the people, the government should offer yearly payments to its citizens.

Since then there have been numerous debates between thinkers on all sides of the political spectrum, but generally basic income has been viewed as a positive. The accompanying video looks at the evolution of the basic income idea:

This type of program and the philosophy behind it have been embraced outside of Canada as well. The most recent effort was in Finland: earlier this year, the Finnish government selected 2,000 unemployed people at random to begin receiving a guaranteed basic income of €560 for two years instead of the unemployment benefits they had been receiving. The major advantage to this for the participants would be that if they found jobs they would still get to keep their basic income, as opposed to losing unemployment benefits.

Through the Finnish trial, which is still ongoing, the government wants to see whether this type of program can help the country’s ailing economy by encouraging part-time work. In addition to this trial, other similar programs worldwide have proven successful, such as one in Brazil in 2004 and another in Namibia in 2007. There was also a similar cash transfer pilot program in India from 2011 to 2012 that led to increased test scores and improved health in participating villages.

Despite the success of many of these programs, there seems to be a perception that they can only be successful in poorer countries and would never work in an “affluent” country like the United States. However, even the United States has some history with the guaranteed basic income. One of the earliest efforts, the Negative Income Tax Experiments, took place between 1968 and 1990 in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Iowa, North Carolina, Indiana, Washington state, and Colorado. Although these experiments had successful outcomes, they were not politically popular and they lost their momentum. Arguably the most successful experiment so far concerning guaranteed basic income in the U.S. is currently ongoing, and can be found in Alaska.

In 1976, a permanent fund was set up in Alaska to preserve profits made by the oil industry to ensure that the wealth would benefit future populations in the state. This fund was allocated for a basic income program in 1982, and ever since then anyone living in the state for at least six months is eligible to receive a dividend from the state. At its peak in 2008, the fund annually paid out more than $2,000 per resident.

The following video looks at how the program is playing out in Finland and other places:

Future of GBI

With more and more places willing to at least launch guaranteed basic income pilot programs, the future of the measure seems bright. This is especially true given the benefits that it so far has offered, along with the fact that automation is increasingly making many jobs obsolete. Currently, along with Finland, there are also ongoing guaranteed basic income trials occurring in Italy and the Netherlands, with Scotland considering a trial of its own as well.

While a basic income has been advocated by some philosophers, researchers, and other individuals, overall there has not been a tremendous groundswell of support. Even in places where pilot programs have been launched, these are usually only reserved for a few thousand people in countries with tens if not hundreds of millions of citizens. So, if this program has repeatedly proven so successful and could replace faulty welfare programs, why are countries not more willing to try them?

The answer starts with cost. In 2016, Swiss voters rejected a basic income for the country’s citizens, and while Scotland is considering adopting such program, the rest of the UK in general is resistant. This opposition comes even when polls show that up to 64 percent of Europeans approve of a basic income. Part of that, however, might be attributed to how the survey questions were worded, in that they do not mention tax increases necessary to provide that income.

Aside from cost, there are other considerations, such as the fear of automation. Although some fear this trend could lead to a dearth of jobs, some economists are quick to point out this same thesis has been made before with regard to past trends, and has been proven wrong by new innovations that, in fact, created more jobs. Additionally, while some want to use basic income to replace existing safety nets, there is no proof yet that exchanging one for the other is actually superior. Even some of the protections basic income is supposed to offer can be turned on their head, with a basic income convincing some employers they can pay lower wages. There’s also the argument that basic income will lead to people choosing simply not to work. The video below looks at basic income, highlighting some pros and cons:

Conclusion

Guaranteed or universal basic income as an idea has been around for hundreds of years. As an idea put into practice, it has been around for at least around half a century. Moreover, in seemingly every case, pilot programs incorporating basic income guarantees have been successful in a number of measures, from raising GDP and improving test scores to ensuring nutrition. Furthermore, these types of programs have been lauded by leaders on all parts of the political spectrum as everything from a panacea for solving the broken welfare system to necessary in a world that is increasingly automated.

However, for all its success stories, guaranteed income has never become widespread nor long-lasting. The reasons for this apparent contradiction are manifold and run the gamut from high costs to exaggerated benefits. Additionally, for every country that has adopted and embraced the idea there are others that have rejected it.

What is basic income’s outlook then? In a world that is increasingly feeling budget cuts and squeezes, it seems unlikely a major initiative to expand the program is possible, especially given the ascendance of more conservative leaders who rose to power partially on attacks of the social welfare system. Basic income, then, is unlikely to be guaranteed or universal anytime soon, yet continued successful trials indicate that when conditions are more favorable, it could become the norm.

Michael Sliwinski

Michael Sliwinski (@MoneyMike4289) is a 2011 graduate of Ohio University in Athens with a Bachelor’s in History, as well as a 2014 graduate of the University of Georgia with a Master’s in International Policy. In his free time he enjoys writing, reading, and outdoor activites, particularly basketball. Contact Michael at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post A Right to Life, Liberty and a Basic Income?: The History of Guaranteed Basic Income appeared first on Law Street.

On February 17, Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) asked the federal government to approve a statewide ban on the use of food stamps to purchase sugary drinks and candy. In its press release, DHHS representatives argued that banning such purchases would benefit public health and ease the burden on taxpayers. While many welcomed the move, it embodies the way in which conditional government welfare programs patronize and stigmatize low-income people.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as the Food Stamp program, is a state-administered and federally-funded program designed to help low-income families. Maine’s move to ban candy and soda aside, SNAP is already an example of conditional welfare in that benefits can only be used to buy foodstuffs from approved vendors. Rather than providing unconditional benefits for low-income families to spend at their discretion, conditional welfare programs like SNAP undermine the autonomy of low-income people by imposing parameters on how they are allowed to use their benefits. Governments rationalize the conditions imposed on welfare recipients, but these rationalizations are often unjustified. Ultimately, conditional welfare is motivated by a cultural and institutional mistrust of low-income people.

The press release from Maine’s DHHS justified the prospective ban on the grounds that soda and candy lack nutritional value and that eliminating the option to buy soda would reduce obesity amongst SNAP recipients. However, the assumption that simply improving nutritional content of the food one eats will improve one’s weight is not that well supported by evidence. While poor nutrition can affect certain health outcomes, the American Medical Association and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases agree that caloric content, not nutritional content, of food overwhelmingly determines one’s weight.

In 2010, a professor of human nutrition at the University of Kansas made headlines when he lost 27 pounds in two months by cutting his calorie intake and restricting his diet to Twinkies, Doritos, and Oreos. Of course, being thin is not equivalent to being healthy and there are many positive health outcomes associated with improving nutritional intake. Nonetheless, simply banning the purchase of some items will do little to reduce obesity, nor ensure those on food stamps will diversify their nutritional intake.

Misguided Calculations

After drawing a tenuous prediction that the prohibition of sugary foods will cause a reduction in obesity rates, the press release notes “Over $700 million is spent in Maine on obesity related medical expenditures and more than a third of that paid for by taxpayers in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.” This, of course, implies that low-income individuals are disproportionately responsible for Maine’s obesity problem and that they disproportionately contribute to the healthcare costs associated with obesity.

However, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), the average low-income Mainer generates an effectively equal amount of “obesity related medical expenditure” as the average Mainer who is not reliant on Medicare or Medicaid. Over 269,000 of 1.33 million Mainers rely on Medicaid and over 306,400 on Medicare. When factoring in the 104,000 dual eligibilities, KFF’s data shows that nearly 35 percent of Maine’s population relies on these health aid programs.

Therefore, just under two-thirds of the Maine population that is not low-income makes up about two-thirds of Maine’s “obesity related medical expenditure.” The assertion made in this press release is likely grounded in the misguided and simplistic belief that poorer Americans are more likely to be obese. In reality, obesity is a relatively constant cause for concern across all income brackets.

Unconditional Help

Obesity is no doubt an issue in Maine and throughout the country. While the state’s move to eliminate sugary products from its food stamp program may have been well intentioned, it is but one example of how conditional welfare disproportionately blames low-income people for public problems that are largely unrelated to economic status. Such misguided rationalizations are often used to justify patronizing conditional welfare programs.

While limiting the autonomy of beneficiaries is seen as a way of ensuring government funds are spent properly, doing so not only unjustly stigmatizes welfare recipients, it often undermines the efficacy of each dollar spent on welfare. Conditional welfare assumes that because one is in need of welfare, they are unfit to have discretion over how they spend money.

Research has shown that unconditional cash transfer and welfare programs are far more effective means of improving recipients’ conditions. In 2003, Brazil introduced a program known as Bolsa Familia under which poor families were eligible to receive direct cash transfers. While Bolsa Familia did impose some conditions on families (requiring children of recipient families be vaccinated and attend school), each family was free to spend their cash transfer as they saw fit. The program was considered a huge success, helping to reduce poverty and inequality nationwide.

Maine’s effort to ban the purchase of candy and soft drink with food stamps awaits approval from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which is the federal agency in charge of overseeing SNAP.

Callum Cleary

Callum is an editorial intern at Law Street. He is from Portland OR by way of the United Kingdom. He is a senior at American University double majoring in International Studies and Philosophy with a focus on social justice in Latin America. Contact Callum at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post No Food Stamps for Sweets: Unjust Welfare Conditionality appeared first on Law Street.

After years of debate, California Governor Jerry Brown has finally given in to liberal legislators and advocates of the poor by eliminating a California welfare rule that many believe inordinately targets poor mothers of color. The rule goes by many names–the “Welfare Queen” rule, the family cap, and formally in California as the Maximum Family Grant Policy–and prevents families from receiving more benefits if they have additional children while receiving benefits.

California’s revocation of the policy is projected to cost the state a projected $220 million each year, and will eventually be funded by an account for inflationary increases to welfare benefits. With Brown’s decision, California joins a list of seven other states to repeal the rule, which once existed in some form or another in nearly half of U.S. states.

The rule is a byproduct of the criminalization of welfare recipients that began in part with Ronald Reagan’s 1976 presidential campaign rhetoric:

Reagan ran a campaign largely based on the anecdotal evidence of a few criminals who defrauded the U.S. welfare system, with the conclusion that welfare fraud was a pervasive plague in the U.S. that could only be eliminated by cracking down on the “welfare state.”

The stereotype of the “welfare queen” has persisted as a woman, usually black, on welfare who persistently has children, does not work, and lies to receive greater handouts.

“Welfare queen” rules emerged in the early 1990’s as a solution, with the belief that if women were to not receive additional benefits for additional children, that they would stop having additional children. Not only have studies found that the rules have no distinguishable impact on birth rates among mothers who receive benefits and are subject to a family cap, but the rules have been criticized as degrading and dehumanizing to poor mothers.

Opponents have long held that children shouldn’t be penalized just because they were born into a poor family, while advocates of the policy claim that the estimated additional $130 families will be receiving will not be enough to lift families out of poverty. But ultimately, California legislators decided that the policy was ineffective in its goals, perpetuated unfair stereotypes, and punished children in deep poverty for elements out of their control.

However, this is just a first step to de-constructing the “welfare queen” image, which is unfairly projected on poor mothers.

There are still many other states with family cap rules. Additionally, public perception of mothers and families on welfare is often flawed. For example, pervasive myths such as welfare recipients buying alcohol, cigarettes, and fast food with SNAP benefits are simply untrue. SNAP benefits only apply to non-ready-to-eat food items with small exceptions for eligible disabled, homeless, or elderly recipients who can purchase select restaurant items in a few states.

Similarly, one of the most common welfare recipient stereotypes is the lazy non-working adult who is on welfare for years without ever working. Contrarily, 20 states have work requirements for TANF (the program for cash welfare assistance) recipients, including California.

The myth that most people using welfare stay on it for years also isn’t true. Many areas only allow single adults to receive SNAP for three months while unemployed, and many places have a lifetime limit on how long an individual can receive welfare benefits–California’s is 48 months.

California and many other states have a long way to go in deconstructing the harmful stereotypes of poor mothers and families they have perpetuated. But California has shown that the first step is possible, and that strong legislatures and citizens prioritize the livelihood, dignity, and opportunity of poor communities.

Ashlee Smith

Ashlee Smith is a Law Street Intern from San Antonio, TX. She is a sophomore at American University, pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Journalism. Her passions include social policy, coffee, and watching West Wing. Contact Ashlee at ASmith@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Fall of the “Welfare Queen” in California appeared first on Law Street.

It is no large secret that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has had a tumultuous relationship with the issues of poverty and welfare: referring to the “culture problem” of “inner cities,” claiming America is divided into “makers” and “takers,” and making more controversial statements within the last few years.

But following a speech in March 2016 where he apologized for the hateful rhetoric, poverty has become one of his premier issues, especially as he revealed the first part of the House Republican policy brief A Better Way on Tuesday.

The 35-page brief has a simple and not particularly harmful premise; by embracing community-oriented solutions, encouraging work, and customizing welfare services, more individuals in poverty will be able to achieve social mobility. However, in these 35 pages, Ryan offers few policy solutions, poor research, and repackages Republican cut-back proposals under the guise of being “good” for impoverished people in America.

While the proposal includes what is expected of a House Republican brief on poverty–cutting and consolidating welfare programs, blocking grants to states, and tightening work requirements for welfare recipients–the sheer lack of quality research and policy proposals is underwhelming.

Though Ryan has no problem citing sources and statistics on such imperative topics as whether or not Americans believe welfare recipients should have to work, the brief states–without statistics or sources–that “recent data suggests many (SNAP recipients) are not working or preparing for work” and that “recent reports from independent government watchdogs reveal that welfare benefits are often paid to people who are not eligible.”

Poor research aside, let us not forget that House Republicans abhor bureaucracy, but only when it’s inconvenient to their goals. The brief relies heavily on the Work Participation Rate (WPR) as the measurement of TANF success. This is innately unsuccessful because it doesn’t differentiate between states with low WPRs and states where social service workers do not accurately and attentively track WPR. Thus, Ryan’s recommendation to require states to “engage TANF recipients in work” is largely a move to better document and regulate work involvement, despite persistent anti-bureaucracy sentiments throughout the brief.  

While this may be one of the most jarring contradictions Ryan offers, rest assured that it is not the only one. In a paragraph on strengthening higher education, he criticizes the strict academic-year timeline Pell Grant recipients are forced to take and proceeds to call the Pell Grant program unsustainable due to expansion.

Despite Ryan’s vague language, his attempts to criticize efforts such as the fiduciary rule–a Department of Labor proposal which would require retirement advisers to prioritize their clients’ best interests over profit–as well as the CFPB’s regulation of payday loans which have historically placed impoverished people in long-term debt traps, are quickly revealed as partisan interests snuck into a brief on “opportunity” for impoverished people in America.

In a more holistic way, the entirety of this brief is contradictory. Ryan espouses at one point that “this ‘spend more’ approach invests taxpayer dollars in bureaucratic programs without addressing the root cause of poverty.” However, in the brief, Ryan never assesses the root cause of poverty; to do so would invalidate his proposals to cut programs that help vulnerable people receive food and housing, and meet other basic human needs.

Ryan does seem to acknowledge that poverty extends beyond income poverty–that poverty is a culmination of societal forces suppressing social mobility. He is misled, though, in suggesting that services and work requirements can replace financial assistance. Strong community services and work enforcements alone do not feed people, do not pay the rent for their apartments, and to deny cash assistance is to be in denial of what poverty comes down to: not having the money and bargaining power in society to protect and empower oneself.

Ashlee Smith

Ashlee Smith is a Law Street Intern from San Antonio, TX. She is a sophomore at American University, pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Journalism. Her passions include social policy, coffee, and watching West Wing. Contact Ashlee at ASmith@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post An Ode to Paul Ryan’s Anti-Poverty Brief Mishap appeared first on Law Street.

Last week on Law Street we shared findings from a new study that concluded immigrants take more in welfare than U.S. born, the trending hashtag #MaybeHeDoesntHitYou, and an in-depth look at drug courts. ICYMI– Check out these top stories below.

1. New CIS Study Shows Immigrants Take in More Welfare Than U.S. Born

A study published yesterday by the Center for Immigration Studies, or CIS, claims immigrant households collect $1,803 more in welfare benefits than native households–families headed by a U.S. born person–based on data collected in 2012. Read the full article here.

2. #MaybeHeDoesntHitYou: Hashtag Sheds Light on Non-Physical Abuse

Domestic abuse isn’t always physical, it doesn’t always leave bruises, and it’s not always visible to the naked eye. Abuse can be mental, emotional, and verbal–and Zahira Kelly wanted to call attention to that fact when she started the hashtag #MaybeHeDoesntHitYou. Read the full article here.

3. Are Drug Courts the Answer For Addicts Who Commit Crimes?

As of 2015, there were 2,800 drug courts in the United States and they were working with 120,000 defendants per year. The idea behind these courts is to use the criminal justice system to compel addicts to rehabilitate themselves. The ultimate goal is to reduce recidivism for drug use and the other crimes that often accompany drug addiction. In order to do this, drug courts use both a carrot and a stick approach with addicts. Courts promise to reduce or eliminate jail time in exchange for the successful completion of a drug treatment program–hopefully saving money for taxpayers along the way. Read the full article here.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post ICYMI: Best of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

A study published yesterday by the Center for Immigration Studies, or CIS, claims immigrant households collect $1,803 more in welfare benefits than native households–families headed by a U.S. born person–based on data collected in 2012.

Based on a sample size of 22,077 native households and 2,980 immigrant households, the study found that a large portion of the discrepancy in welfare benefits stems from Medicaid dollars, though immigrant households benefited from welfare by slim margins in nearly every other category–cash ($686 to $517) and food ($1,083 to $689). Native households received one dollar more in housing benefits, ($395 to $394.)

Conducted by the conservative, independent public policy analyst Jason Richwine, the study explains the findings as being attributable to the average education level of immigrant families, which is lower than those born in the U.S.

“It is easy to understand why people with fewer skills are more likely to participate in welfare programs, since eligibility for those programs requires a low income,” writes Richwine, whose 2013 study with the Heritage Foundation on IQ differences between immigrants and natives caused quite a stir.

Richwine concluded the study by saying, “the American welfare system has become increasingly focused on buttressing low-wage workers rather than supporting non-workers. Put more simply, welfare and low-wage work go together.”

While this study seems to provide evidence for those who want the U.S. to scale back immigration, claiming that immigration hurts the economy, a separate study by the American Immigration Council highlights the positive effects immigration has on the economy.

Among the findings:

• Based on 2013 figures, immigration increases GDP (by $31.4 billion) and tax revenue (“The average immigrant contributes nearly $120,000 more in taxes than he or she consumes in public benefits”).
• Immigrants are nearly twice as likely to start a business than natives–at a rate of 0.52 immigrant entrepreneurs and 0.27 for natives.
• Between 1996 and 2011, immigrants contributed $62 more per person than natives to Medicare.

As Congress and the next president will surely take a close look at U.S. immigration policy, possibly overhauling it completely or banning those of a certain faith, these studies will surely be used as fodder for both sides in the conversations to come.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Like most topics in law school, child support is discussed first by talking about the theoretical reasoning behind it and then with a series of very dry formulas for how it actually works in practice. In theory, child support payments from the non-custodial parent are not meant for the other parent, rather it is money for the child. The custodial parent can’t bargain it away, he or she is supposed to be acting in the child’s best interest and spending the money to support the child. It is more like a responsibility that both the parents have to the child than a debt owed to the custodial parent.

Also, like most topics in law school, the real world application of the law has very little to do with supporting the rationales behind it. The goal of the collection of benefits we call “welfare” as well as child support is to provide basic necessities for children and help lift them out of poverty. But does the current system actually accomplish the goals that it is set up to accomplish?

Magical Thinking: Calculating and Collecting Child Support

For parents who want to receive welfare benefits, there may be a perverse incentive involved with seeking the child support that is owed to their children. Receiving child support, Social Security assistance, or having a job may leave you ineligible to receive welfare assistance. A recent feature story from the Washington Post about poverty, particularly in the deep South, illustrates the challenges faced by people who are in deep poverty but are unable to get help for their basic needs. The article’s main subject, Lauren Scott, is a single mother looking for work. Although she was not receiving child support from the father, she was deemed ineligible for welfare benefits. The other women featured, who were seeking benefits with Scott, were told not to apply for benefits if they were receiving child support payments for their children. In this particular county in Georgia, the eligibility criteria did not take into account the possibility that a person receiving child support could also still need welfare benefits–it’s one or the other.

A parent who needs benefits, typically the mother, may choose to not seek child support payments from the non-custodial parent, typically the father. If the parent thinks they are eligible for welfare benefits as long as they don’t receive child support payments they may actually be better off foregoing the child support, or they believe they would be.

If the non-custodial parent is able to be located, they may be “judgment proof,” which is the legal term for a situation where there is no income or property to pay off a judgment against you, regardless of how justified the creditor may be in trying to collect. If the parent lives in a state that garnishes wages for unpaid child support but doesn’t have a job in the first place, the custodial parent won’t be able to collect, even though the child is owed that support.

Many of the non-custodial parents who owe child support are, in effect, judgment proof. As of late 2015, unpaid child support in the United States was $113 billion. Most of that debt, about 76 percent of it in 2013, is owed by individuals who earn less than $10,000 a year. In her comments to NPR, Vicki Turetsky, the head of the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement, refers to the current structure for the calculation and attempted collection of child support payments as “magical thinking.” Even if a non-custodial parent declares no income when the child support order is being issued, the court will calculate what they owe based on a fictitious job–often full-time minimum wage work. Incarceration is also considered “voluntary employment” in terms of calculating child support.

Take a listen to the report here which explains how child support is calculated and some of its consequences.

Perverse Incentives

Calculating child support payments based on income that does not exist and then punishing individuals for non-payment doesn’t lead to an increase in collected payments. The way that child support payments are distributed to custodial parents who receive welfare benefits may also provide a perverse incentive to those beneficiaries to not seek child support. A perverse incentive is a policy that is meant to encourage a certain positive behavior but actually provides an incentive for a negative behavior, often the opposite of the original intention. In the case of child support payments, we want children to benefit from the support they are entitled to, and when that is not enough, to supplement that with the social safety net. But by not allowing custodial parents access to both–by eliminating welfare assistance when they receive child support–we cut potential revenue streams available to that child and even encourage parents not to try to collect child support.

Many states garnish wages for unpaid child support payments. In Illinois, the state can use some of the money from the garnished wages to offset the TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) payments made to custodial parents. No more than $50 of the child support payments were actually given to the child if their parent was receiving welfare. States can use garnished wages to replenish their TANF funds, which are used for the custodial parents welfare assistance. This occurs even though, in theory, that child support is owed to that individual child from that individual parent.

The federal government allows states to pass on up to $200 dollars for two children through child support payments that are received from garnished wages, allowing that money to make it to the custodial parents. But it does not give them the discretion to give the entirety of the child support payment to a parent on welfare. So even if the state wanted to encourage a parent to seek child support while they were also receiving TANF payments, they are only able to collect some of what they are owed.

Reform Attempts

States have tried other ways to incentivize parents to make child support payments and to engage in other positive behaviors by dealing with the debt they find themselves in for missed payments. As NPR explains, Maryland is implementing programs to help forgive child support debt  and clarifying the difference between child support and state-owed child support. State-owed child support is a child support payment that will go back to the state to reimburse taxpayers for the welfare payments they made to the custodial parent.

For example, Maryland is trying to forgive 10 percent of the parent’s child support debt in exchange for the completion of a month-long employment training program and then getting a job. It’s a win-win for both the state and the parent because the state has no ability to collect the outstanding debt from an unemployed person. Put simply, forgiving the 10 percent is a smart way to make collecting the outstanding 90 percent possible. It also benefits the parents who finish the program because their debt burdens are lowered and they now have a job.

Completing a Responsible Fatherhood Programs will get you another 15 percent and you can then eliminate 50 percent of your outstanding debt if you keep up to date with payments for a year. So an unemployed father in Maryland who owes $10,000 in child support debt, which he is completely unable to pay, may be able to eliminate 75 percent of that debt by participating in an employment program, a parenting class, and by showing that he can, when employed, consistently be relied upon to pay what they owe. The state did lose that $7,500 that it forgave. But going forward, the child is now receiving the support to which they are entitled. If that parent had remained unemployed, the state would have still been owed $10,000 and the debt would continue to grow. These experiments in Maryland have yielded positive results, collecting twice as much as state forgave.

Conclusion

The idea that parents should be financially responsible for their children is deeply ingrained in the way that our child support system is set up. The policy is designed to make sure parents are held accountable for their children The image of the “dead-beat dad” also indicates that parents who don’t pay child support do so because they choose not to, not because they can’t afford it. However, the data indicates that individuals who owe child support are typically men who make less than $10,000 a year. These are men who are unable to make the payments as they are initially calculated, especially if they are currently or have previously been incarcerated.

The system also forces many people to choose not to seek child support. When forced to choose between a potential welfare payment and a potential child support payment, many parents would choose the welfare payment. A system that reduces payments, but does not eliminate them completely, would provide an incentive for parents to seek support. Moreover, the children can only benefit if the parent is able to pay the support in the first place.

States that have begun to experiment with debt relief measures have found that they can increase the payments they receive. Other states have sought to stop the accrual of child support debt for individuals while they are incarcerated. Both of these measures have had positive results because they allow parents who owe child support to at least pay part of their debt

The underlying goal should be to help raise children out of poverty and provide for their basic necessities. By structuring systems that incentivize parents to seek–and enable the other parent to make–payments, states can increase the amount of support that children receive and lift them out of poverty.

Resources

NY Times: Poverty and Perverse Incentives

The Washington Post: Lost Opportunity In the Deep South Part 4

Scientific American: Magical Thinking

NPR: Some States Are Cutting Dad’s A Deal On Unpaid Child Support

NPR: From Deadbeat To Dead-broke: The Why Behind Unpaid Child Support

NPR: How U.S. Parents Racked Up $113 Billion In Child Support Debt

Chicago Tribune: Welfare Law Formula Doesn’t Support The Family

Mary Kate Leahy

Mary Kate Leahy (@marykate_leahy) has a J.D. from William and Mary and a Bachelor’s in Political Science from Manhattanville College. She is also a proud graduate of Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart. She enjoys spending her time with her kuvasz, Finn, and tackling a never-ending list of projects. Contact Mary Kate at staff@LawStreetMedia.com

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In American culture, there is a deeply ingrained moral value placed on work. On having an “entrepreneurial spirit” and a strong work ethic. It is part of what makes America a great country. “Greed is good” may be the slogan we use to describe capitalism, but for those of us who get up in the morning to go to work, it isn’t greed that motivates us. It is the sense of purpose and dignity that we get from our jobs and from doing those jobs well. And, from needing to eat.

Most Americans agree that there is a standard of living that we should not allow our citizens to fall below, even if it means that we use some of our resources to help them. We don’t think it is morally right for fellow citizens to starve, especially children. Our policies on public assistance reflect that belief and try to provide the very basics of life to everyone.

These policies also reflect a tension between American generosity and the American ideal of the entrepreneurial spirit. In an effort to both prevent hunger and to protect the American work ethic we reformed assistance programs to eliminate cash benefits and to tie receiving benefits to work or the search for work. It has led many recipients of SNAP assistance, more commonly referred to as food stamps, to sell their benefits for cash rather than using them for food. This is a crime and may carry fines, jail time, and a loss of benefits. One that we spend a lot of time and effort trying to eradicate. But should we? Or should we be turning a blind eye to, or maybe even encouraging, the sale of food stamps for cash?

Say It With Cash

Take your net income per month and divide it by 30. For most of us, the amount is probably more than $2. Yet many Americans are living on $2 a day or less.

In the book “$2 A Day: Living on Almost Nothing In America,” authors Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer go into a detailed explanation of the history of welfare reform in recent decades and a series of interviews with Americans who live on $2 a day or less. In October 2015, PBS interviewed Edin who spoke about some of the book’s major themes:

The book’s central theme is that while food is the most important necessity for people in poverty, they also have other needs that can only be met with cash. Goods like electricity, clothing, and phones might be considered luxury items but are vital tools in looking for work. Because they have no other source of income they end up selling things to get cash–like plasma, sex, and food stamps. The cash that they get is able to be used for necessities that food stamps can’t pay for.

The beauty of cash is that it allows you to purchase whatever you need with it. If at that particular time your most pressing need is clothing, cash allows you to sacrifice your need for food in favor of clothing. It gives the person the choice of how to best allocate their resources. The downfall of course, from the point of view of the taxpayer, is that a recipient of cash may decide that drugs or alcohol, and not food, is their most pressing need and use the cash for that. It is partly this fear of misuse that encouraged the reformation of welfare from cash benefits to benefits like SNAP, where recipients are locked into only buying food with their EBT cards. It also drives the movements emerging in many states to prevent these benefits from being used for certain luxury food items or junk food items.

Contract Of Adhesion

For many, the main concern with the sale of food stamps is not that people are selling them but how much they are getting. Selling your food stamps is a terrible deal. The going rate for $100 worth of food stamps is between $50-60 dollars depending on what part of the country you are in. By selling your food stamps, you’re losing about half of your purchasing power. In some places, if the store owner is particularly friendly, it can be a little better, but generally, sellers take a loss.

The relationship between food stamp buyer and seller is an unorthodox example of the legal concept of a contract of adhesion. A contract of adhesion is a legal phrase for “raw deal.” Essentially, when the bargaining power of the parties is very unbalanced, so much so that the weaker party really can’t meaningfully negotiate the terms of the contract, courts may take a look and invalidate the contract or provisions of the contract that are “unconscionable.” Typically, contracts of adhesion are things like insurance contracts, mortgages, and credit cards. The little guy versus the big guy. These contracts are often “boilerplate” meaning that they are pre-written and the same for everyone. The little guys here aren’t special and don’t really have a way to haggle with the big guy to get a better deal. So courts will give those contracts a closer reading in a light that favors the little guy.

Selling your food stamps is a lot like that. For one thing, if you need the cash you NEED the cash. Just like someone who is buying a house really does need a place to live and maybe can’t negotiate with the lender. Only perhaps more so because a home buyer doesn’t necessarily need that specific house. The cash buyer may not also have the luxury of shopping around for the best rate. Just as a home buyer may not have enough good options for a line of credit, the cash buyer may not have enough potential buyers they can go to–there may only be a few people willing to buy food stamps in a given area.

The illegal nature of the sale has the effect of making the contract even more unfair for the seller because the buyer is charging a fee to assume that risk. The greater the risk of a fine or jail time to the buyer, the more the money cost. So instead of getting $60 for your $100 worth of food stamps you might get $50. These are the same issues that prevent the seller from negotiating for a better price. Someone might be perfectly willing to give them $85 in cash for $100 in food stamps. But sellers may be reluctant to shop around because doing so increases the likelihood that they could be caught. Increasing sting operations, which are designed to stop the sale of food stamps, may only drive the price down and may not have diminished sales meaningfully.

This video from Democracy NOW! provides another account of how SNAP recipients are selling their food stamp benefits.

In 2012, the USDA’s Office of the Inspector General, which is in charge of prosecuting SNAP fraud, devoted half of its resources to combating SNAP fraud and abuse. This includes both fraud in collecting benefits when you shouldn’t as well as “trafficking,” the official term for selling food stamps. That year it investigated 15,000 stores and did 4,500 sting operations. Out of the 15,000 stores, 2,100 of were either shut down or sanctioned, meaning that 14 percent of the stores were punished. The 4,500 undercover investigations resulted in 342 convictions, about 0.75 percent.

The problem with the selling of food stamps is that we aren’t sure what the sellers will be buying with their cash. Most of us are sympathetic when we hear about a woman who sells her food stamps to buy diapers, which you can’t buy with food stamps. Even if that activity is illegal, many of us do not find it to be quite so immoral. But because the sale of food stamps is a contract of adhesion that mother, and many like her, is able to buy a lot fewer diapers than she normally would be able to after selling her food stamps. And we fear that she won’t be using it to buy diapers at all but to buy alcohol or drugs.

This is a legitimate fear. Changing the program to one that is purely cash assistance would allow recipients to use the money on anything they want to. That is both the benefit and the drawback of that change. They may choose to buy diapers or electricity, or they may buy vodka. There would be no way to effectively control their spending if the benefit was pure cash.

The Parable of The Talents

There was one story in “$2 A Day” of a SNAP recipient spending her benefits on junk food. Rather than buying healthy foods, she chose to spend it partly on transportation (through an illegal conversion from food stamps to cash) and partly on cups and Kool-Aid. She was able to make popsicles and then sell them for a dollar each–increasing her income with that initial investment. Rather than taking the 50 percent value of her food stamps in cash and buying her other necessities, she took that cash and turned it into more cash.

She’s a criminal and an entrepreneur. The cash from the food stamps was a greater benefit to her than the food stamps themselves. So how do we craft a policy that will protect the taxpayer interest in keeping that money from being spent in inappropriate ways while still promoting the core American value of the entrepreneurial spirit?

Proposed Reforms

Reformers from all points on the political spectrum have advocated amending welfare benefits such as SNAP and TANF (Temporary Aid To Needy Families) in an attempt to help those programs combat poverty in a more meaningful way. Many of these reforms focus on trying to change the incentives for beneficiaries by encouraging behaviors that are thought to alleviate poverty and provide social benefits, particularly marriage, in addition to encouraging work. Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush proposed eliminating the various programs that we call “welfare” (TANF, SNAP, etc.) and instead provide states with block grants so that they can choose how to provide benefits. Currently, states have a lot of leeway in how they structure their benefits–which leads to a lot of differences in the support people can receive in various states–but they are all within the framework of meeting federal government criteria to get funding. That usually means work requirements. Eliminating the need to satisfy federal requirements would allow states to experiment further.

One positive aspect of that approach is to use federalism to our advantage and allow states to each try a slightly different method of delivering benefits to low-income individuals. But it does not change the need that many poor individuals have for cash benefits who qualify for SNAP but not TANF. States are unlikely to adopt less stringent work requirements for aid, in fact, the trend has been in the opposite direction. In Maine work requirements were tied to food stamp benefits in 2015, which resulted in a sharp reduction in the number of people receiving SNAP benefits.

Other Possible Solutions 

One solution might be to develop a hybrid system for benefits. Like most of the changes proposed it would require more of an investment in the program. But we could set up a system where the SNAP benefits are primarily for food, with a small portion of the benefits made available in cash as well. That cash might be used for bad purposes, but if only a portion of the benefits was available in cash then not all of the benefits would be “wasted.” Some would still need to be used for food though they could still be sold on the black market. The initial investment would be in determining the correct ratio of cash to food stamps but it wouldn’t require as much monitoring as other options.

There is a government program already in existence, TANF, which does provide cash assistance to families that qualify. This program was designed as a replacement to Aid To Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) and sought to tie cash assistance to work requirements. To get funding for the program from the federal government, states must maintain certain percentages of working recipients. The goal of tying work requirements to the receipt of assistance is to encourage people to seek work and to make sure that families do not develop a cyclical dependence on TANF. There are also time limits placed on the benefits for that same reason.

The problem is that for many people, particularly after the Great Recession, they are unable to find employment that can satisfy these work requirements. This has cut the amount of people receiving cash assistance drastically since 1996. In 1996, 68 out of 100 families in poverty received TANF. In 2013, only 26 out of 100 families in poverty received it. Cutting the number of people who are eligible makes it so fewer people receive benefits, but that does not actually reduce the number of people in need. Even if TANF was an effective program to assist the working poor it does nothing for families who have fallen out of the mainstream economy almost completely.

Another option is to increase the number of vendors of legitimate products that we want people to purchase who accept food stamps. Instead of making food stamps into cash just make them more like cash. Encourage, or require, utility companies and clothing stores to accept EBT cards as payment. That way recipients can use an EBT card to pay for electricity or clothing without having to take the loss of purchasing power that accompanies turning it into cash on the black market.

There are some programs that attempt to deal with the needs for a phone and for utility subsidies for low-income Americans. For example LIHEAP (Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program) provides federal funding to states to assist families with their utility costs. However, each state can set its own eligibility standards, which is true of the other programs as well. As a result, the rate of people receiving benefits ranges widely across states. In states where you need to receive TANF in order to qualify for LIHEAP, the non-working are once again left out.

A final option would require more manpower to distribute aid but might do the most to both encourage personal responsibility on the part of the benefits recipients as well as eliminate potential fraud: working with beneficiaries to help figure out what their greatest needs are and then tailoring their benefits accordingly. The poor are not a monolithic group. Those in rural areas may be able to supplement their diet with home-grown food and so may need less in food stamps but more in their transportation budget. Someone who is poor in an urban area might be able to travel on foot while they hunt for work but because they live at a shelter they need a cell phone to be able to contact potential employers. Matching the benefits more closely to the individual needs satisfies our core value of encouraging personal responsibility while also protecting our interest in only spending our tax dollars on items we approve of.

Conclusion

SNAP recipients selling their benefits for cash is a growing phenomenon that is unlikely to go away even with more vigorous efforts to combat it. The types of needs that the poor have here in America almost require the use of cash rather than food stamps alone. Even so, Americans struggle with how to balance our values: concern for the poor and the promotion of the entrepreneurial spirit.

Resources

Goodreads: $2.00 A Day: Living On Almost Nothing In America

Fox News: State Food Stamp Purchases

The New York Times: Food Stamp Fraud, Rare But Troubling

Cornell University Law School: Legal Information Institute: Contract of Adhesion

CBS: Food Stamp Recipients Selling Benefits For Cash

United States Department of Agriculture: Food and Nutrition Service: Fraud

The Weekly Standard: Food Stamp Trafficking Up 30 percent From 2008-2011

The American Prospect: Stop Worrying About Food Stamp “Fraud”

Government Accountability Institute, Profits From Poverty: How Food Stamps Benefit Corporations

SNAP to Health: The History of SNAP

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Policy Basics: An Introduction to TANF

Journalist’s Resource: Inequalities In U.S. “Safety Net” Programs For The Poor

CNN Politics: Jeb Bush Releases Welfare Reform Proposals

International Business Times: Which US States Have The Most Welfare Program Benefits?

The National Review: Getting Welfare Right

Mary Kate Leahy

Mary Kate Leahy (@marykate_leahy) has a J.D. from William and Mary and a Bachelor’s in Political Science from Manhattanville College. She is also a proud graduate of Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart. She enjoys spending her time with her kuvasz, Finn, and tackling a never-ending list of projects. Contact Mary Kate at staff@LawStreetMedia.com

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Amid sustained calls to “fix this now” and the trending Twitter hashtag #boycottindiana, Indiana’s Republican leadership has quietly been maneuvering to maintain the increased discrimination against LGBT residents that Governor Mike Pence‘s “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” (RFRA) enabled. The Indiana legislature voted this week to deny protective provisions that would have ensured that religious protections cannot be used to discriminate against LGBT people. According to Think Progress editor Zack Ford, due to recent legal developments, “outside of the few municipalities with local protections, anti-LGBT discrimination is still legal throughout most of the state.”

And although #boycottindiana is trending hard on Twitter, the RFRA is hardly the only devastating bill to come out of Indiana recently.

But it’s the only one causing majors trends.

Why? One of the big reasons: mainstream (read: overwhelmingly white) LGBT advocates, organizations, and issues have largely gained the support of big businesses and corporations. (Yes, I know that the pizzeria that supported the RFRA made an absurd amount of money from the controversy. But that’s not the systemic trend, which favors corporations making profit off of and cooperating with upper- and middle-class, white LGB people and organizations.)

Whiteness must be decentralized from the LGBT movement. I’m sick of hearing about Leelah Alcorn and not Blake Brockington #HisNameWasBlake

— Ryan Mishler (@storyofryguy) April 9, 2015

So what could be trending under the hashtag #boycottindiana, but is not?

An incredibly scary amendment to Senate Bill 465, which addresses the operations of the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, was passed in the Indiana House this week. Though much ire and rage have been focused on the Indiana Republican leadership that was responsible for the RFRA, it was Democratic Representative Terry Goodin who proposed adding the drug testing requirement to the bill.

Drug testing requirements in order to receive welfare fundamentally introduce even greater racism into welfare programs: even though white people tend to use illegal drugs at comparable or even higher rates than people of color, people of color are arrested and imprisoned at disproportionately higher rates for drug related “crimes” than white people. This means that people of color who are welfare recipients are going to be disproportionately targeted by the new provision’s requirement that recipients with histories of drug-related “crimes” be required to undergo testing. These folks will be stripped of their welfare benefits if they fail two tests.

So… Why is the #boycottindiana hashtag not blowing up with rage over this new twist to already-racist policies? Do my fellow white queers think racist laws are alright while homophobic laws are not?

Racial justice is LGBT justice.

So… Where are the trending boycotts against all kinds of racist laws across the country, like the resurgence of Jim Crow-esque laws that suppress the votes of Black and Latina people by mandating ID requirements for voting?

Where is the #boycottwhitenessinLGBTorganizations hashtag? The #boycottmassincarceration hashtag, or the #boycottracism hashtag? The #boycottwhitesupremacy hashtag?

Oh, yes. We can’t boycott those things. They’re too integrated into what makes this country operate.

Jennifer Polish

Jennifer Polish is an English PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC, where she studies non/human animals and the racialization of dis/ability in young adult literature. When she’s not yelling at the computer because Netflix is loading too slowly, she is editing her novel, doing activist-y things, running, or giving the computer a break and yelling at books instead. Contact Jennifer at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post There’s Something Scarier Than Religious Freedom Going on in Indiana appeared first on Law Street.

An old FOX News interview with an unemployed Californian surfer appears to be the inspiration for one Missouri Republican lawmaker’s new initiative that would strike some delicious foods like steak and seafood from welfare recipients’ menus.

It all began with an interview FOX News did in 2013 with Jason Greenslate, who unapologetically bragged about using the government assistance program SNAP to receive $200 dollars a month in taxpayer money for “luxury” food items including coconut water, sushi, and lobster. And because it’s FOX, the network used this one slacker’s statements like “this is the way I want to live and I don’t really see anything changing” and “it’s free food; it’s awesome” to support some Republican conjecture that all poor people abuse their government assistance.

You can watch the full FOX segment below.

That segment may have been a bit of inspiration for Missouri State Representative Rick Brattin, who according to the Washington Post, has proposed a bill that if passed would stop people like Greenslate from abusing the system by banning the purchase of “cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood or steak” with food stamps. Brattin said:

The intention of the bill is to get the food stamp program back to its original intent, which is nutrition assistance.

What’s interesting about that statement is Brattin’s interpretation of what qualifies as “nutrition assistance.” Eliminating unhealthy foods like chips, cookies, energy drinks, and pop I can understand, but why seafood and steaks? First of all seafood has been proven to be a healthy staple in a balanced diet. Take tuna, for example,  which happens to be a highly cost effective form of protein. And when it comes to steaks, there are so many different kinds ranging in size, fattiness, and cost, that eliminating the entire food group just sounds too vague to be useful.

These protein add ons to his bill seem to stem from other issues that don’t involve a lack of nutrition, but rather a problem with the buyers themselves. Brattin was quoted saying:

I have seen people purchasing filet mignons and crab legs with their EBT cards. When I can’t afford it on my pay, I don’t want people on the taxpayer’s dime to afford those kinds of foods either.

Now according to the Washington Post, a household of one can qualify for “up to $194 dollars a month, or fewer than $7 dollars day, as part of SNAP.” That number can essentially double with every added family member according to the Department of Agriculture. Seven dollars a day is obviously not enough for a daily lobster dinner, but depending on how the family has budgeting their finances over the month who’s to say they can’t have a “luxury” treat once in a while.

Every case is different, and while surely a few individuals are bound to abuse the system, eliminating these foods for everyone is hardly an effective means of changing that. The bill is still needs some “clarifying” according to Brattin, but if passed in its current form, this measure will be just another way to continue to stigmatize food assistance programs and discriminate against the people who use them.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Missouri Lawmaker: No Steaks or Seafood for Food Stamp Recipients appeared first on Law Street.

The idea of a “welfare queen” has been a political talking point for several decades. It began as a term used by President Reagan in a story he told while he was running for election in 1976:

‘In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record…She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.’

The idea of a welfare queen has evolved into being characterized as a woman who stays on welfare, receiving benefits, and continuing to have children so she can get even more money from the government to support those children. In the eyes of many, the stereotype is thoroughly racist–she’s an under-performing black woman, living off of taxpayers’ money. The term is seen by many as a dog whistle of sorts, a way to play on the public’s racial anxieties without actively saying so.

Read More: No Strings Attached: Replacing Welfare With a Guaranteed Income

Some claim that Reagan’s story was a complete lie, but, there is some proof that it was at least based on reality. It now appears that there wasn’t just one welfare queen, but the subject of Reagan’s story  was actually an amalgamation of three different women. Craig R. Smith, a former speechwriter for Presidents Ford and George H.W. Bush said,

It hangs together as a good story because it’s consistent with people’s perception of the real world…Like in any good mythology, you need heroes and villains and in the Welfare Queen, you had a villain who was taking advantage of the system.

Regardless of the truth, this story changed the minds of many Americans about the state of the welfare system and the people who receive the benefits.

 What is the “Welfare Queen” law?

Nearly two decades ago, California  passed a law that many have come to call the “Welfare Queen” law. It states that a family that has any additional children while on the welfare system is barred from getting any increases in the grant it already receives from the state. There are exemptions made if the couple in question can prove that birth control measures such as sterilization, IUD, or Norplant failed. There are also concessions made if the case involves rape or incest. In cases like those, the mothers were more quickly offered medical, physical, and monetary help. California is not the only state to use a variation of this law. In fact, other states including Arizona, Mississippi, and Virginia have similar measures.

Senate Bill 23

California Democrats are fighting to repeal the measure, calling it “classism” and “prejudicial” to the citizens of the state. Holly Mitchell, a Senator from Los Angeles, is working for the third time to abolish the law. She introduced Senate Bill 23, which would repeal the “welfare queen” law.

Advocates for the poor are mounting their strongest efforts ever to repeal the “maximum family grant” ruling as the state is about to set its budget for the next year. These changes come after it was announced that California was named the state with the highest child poverty rate.

“It is a classist, sexist, anti-democratic, anti-child, anti-family policy whose premise did not come to fruition,” said Mitchell, the author of Senate Bill 23. “It did not accomplish what it set out to accomplish. So it’s appropriate to take it off the books.”

California is very split on this topic, ranging from those who would like to impose stronger rules against the so called “welfare queens” to those who want to completely annul the law.

Arguments to Eliminate the “Welfare Queen” Law

The average cost to raise a child in America, from birth to 18 years old, is $241,080, according to CNN Money. That breaks down to about $1,116 a month–something that many low-income families will not make. If a family has more than one child, many families will go without in order to provide for the children instead.

Advocates for repeal also argue that when it comes down to it, the law is aimed at controlling women. According to Sacramento Bee, Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) said reversing the policy is “critically important to families, telling a recent women’s policy summit in Sacramento that the criteria are “’invasive (and) insulting.’” Some have even compared the law to China’s One Child Policy. Women’s groups and Planned Parenthood find fault with this measure as well, citing that it is more controlling than necessary.

In addition, those who want to repeal it say that it unfairly punishes children for the actions of their parents. Newborns need care and support, and not allowing the parents of newborns to gain the necessary resources can endanger the health and wellbeing of those children.

In an unlikely collaboration, Linda Wanner, the associate director of government relations at the California Catholic Conference, said that her group favors annulment of the bill as well, but for other reasons: “We have the opportunity to remove burdensome county processes, reduce the number of children living in poverty, and, more importantly, eliminate the incentive to terminate a pregnancy,” she said.

Arguments to Keep the Law in Place

Those who oppose abolishing the law say that removing it to raise the amount of money that the family gets will not lift any family out of poverty. According to the Sacramento Bee, Mary L.G. Theroux, senior vice president of The Independent Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Oakland, said she doesn’t disagree that the law did not prevent births. “The opportunity cost of them having another kid is not going to stop them from doing it,” she said. However, she continued to say that giving more money would not give the growing families the incentive to get help from charities, family members, or find higher paying jobs. She then continued, “What these programs are doing is completely handicapping people from learning how to take care of their families and how to help their children have a better life than they do.” In addition, many feel that these programs that provide complete care to parents and children actually hinder further development of the child and his or her autonomy.

There’s also a concern that repealing the law would be a huge economic strain on the state of California. The state’s economy has been struggling since the recession in 2008, and pouring more money into welfare could harm its rebound even further. One analyst claimed that repealing the law could cost up to $205 million a year, although that number is difficult to reliably quantify.

According to the Sacramento Bee, Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff (R-Diamond Bar) said that helping families in poverty is an important role for officials in the state government as well as people outside of the state, and is even a nationwide issue. The question is whether repealing the maximum grant is the best thing to do with the money. “Putting $200 million into an effective job training program or providing child care for working mothers would be a better use of resources,” Huff said. Huff “pointed to a long list of other needs for both the parents and children in the state, including services for the developmentally disabled and foster children.”

Conclusion

This is not the only time that discussions have been developed around the “welfare queen” law. In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed a welfare reform law, and then-Governor of California Pete Wilson and lawmakers compromised on a statewide program called CalWORKS in 1997. This bill stiffened the work requirements and set time limits, sanctions, grant levels, and eligibility requirements for California welfare recipients.

So how much fraud is there really in the welfare system? According to Eric Schnurer of the Atlantic it’s actually not so clear.

It’s not easy to get agreement on actual fraud levels in government programs. Unsurprisingly, liberals say they’re low, while conservatives insist they’re astronomically high. In truth, it varies from program to program. One government report says fraud accounts for less than 2 percent of unemployment insurance payments. It’s seemingly impossible to find statistics on ‘welfare’ (i.e., TANF) fraud, but the best guess is that it’s about the same. A bevy of inspector general reports found ‘improper payment’ levels of 20 to 40 percent in state TANF programs — but when you look at the reports, the payments appear all to be due to bureaucratic incompetence (categorized by the inspector general as either ‘eligibility and payment calculation errors’ or ‘documentation errors’), rather than intentional fraud by beneficiaries.

The number of people living in poverty in California, and nationwide, has continued to grow and grow. The face of welfare has changed since the 1980s, as has the amount of money that is needed to raise a child, especially in a state where the cost of living is high.

Resources

Primary

California Legislature: Senate Bill No. 23

Additional

Cal Coast News: California May Repeal “Welfare Queen” Law

CNN: Return of the ‘Welfare Queen’

NPR: The Truth Behind the Lies of the Original ‘Welfare Queen‘

New York Post: When Welfare Pays Better Than Work

CNN: Average Cost to Raise a Child

Huffington Post: California Poverty Rate

Slate: The Welfare Queen

Nieman Reports: The ‘Welfare Queen’ Experiment

SCPR: Lawmakers Debate Repeal of Welfare Queen Law in California

Jezebel: Reagan’s ‘Welfare Queen’ Was a Real Person and Her Story is Bananas

Editor’s Note: This post has been updated to credit select information to the Sacramento Bee. 

Noel Diem

Law Street contributor Noel Diem is an editor and aspiring author based in Reading, Pennsylvania. She is an alum of Albright College where she studied English and Secondary Education. In her spare time she enjoys traveling, theater, fashion, and literature. Contact Noel at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Battle Over the “Welfare Queen” Law in California appeared first on Law Street.

Hey y’all!

The Berkley City Council in California has unanimously approved an ordinance requiring pot dispensaries donate 2 percent of their product to “patients” making under $32,000 a year. A single person is eligible for this “welfare weed” if they make $32,000 or under, but if that person has a family, the family income has to be $46,000 or under. This ordinance will go into effect in August 2015, but I imagine there will be some pushback over the next year about whether this should actually go into effect or not. I mean really, allowing free weed to those already on welfare? We all might as well quit our jobs or take on low-paying jobs and wait for our handouts. This is getting a little bit ridiculous. How many people in Berkley actually need free weed!?!

There are only three licensed dispensaries in the Berkley city limits and one of those dispensaries, House of Compassion, claims they already had:

[A] program in place that allocated a pound of marijuana for giveaway each week. The pound is broken up into 3.5-gram parcels and distributed on Mondays to anyone who can prove that they are on welfare (using an EBT card or other form of proof) and have been certified to use medical marijuana.

So why the need to create an ordinance if one location already has this program and there are only three dispensaries in the city? I don’t feel right about the reasoning behind this ordinance or the idea that marijuana should be free to anyone. And to be honest, I don’t think it should be legalized.

I don’t believe that every medical marijuana cardholder is someone who is genuinely sick or needing it for medicinal purposes. Back in 2011, the top three reasons physicians gave for recommending medical marijuana were “back/spine/neck pain” at 31 percent, “sleep disorders” at 16 percent and “anxiety/depression” at 13 percent. That is a total of 60 percent. SIXTY PERCENT! Now, I understand that many of these patients probably went through a very frustrating period of trial and error with other medical remedies, like pills, and nothing worked. But realistically how many of these “patients” were telling the truth? I understand, for the most part, the benefits of medical marijuana for some, but not everyone that has an ailment. I get the need for medical marijuana for people diagnosed with cancer or HIV/AIDS–those are diseases that can really take a toll on your body. But the “I need pot because I’m depressed” thing doesn’t sit well with me. Anyone can claim they are depressed or anxious or have certain levels of pain when in reality they don’t. Symptoms can be faked and I know people who have done so, which is why I am so cynical about the whole thing.

My biggest issue with the Berkley City Council is that they basically have said that if you need pot and are on welfare you might as well get it for free. They are allowing the lazy to be even lazier.

In Texas, the Texas Senate passed a bill last year that approved drug testing of welfare applicants so I can’t imagine the ideals of the Berkley City Council will breach the Texas boarder anytime soon. Which is great. Legalizing marijuana is probably one of the most reckless things a state can do. I love the fact that the Texas Senate allows for drug testing and if someone fails that drug test three times, no more welfare for them! “Taxpayer money should not be used to subsidize someone’s drug habit,” read a statement made by Texas State Sen. Jane Nelson, (R-Flower Mound.) I could not agree more!

I’ve seen the functioning pothead who will smoke a blunt everyday but still be able to go to work and act like a contributing member of society. I’ve seen the pothead who will sit at home, smoke out of their glass pipe in front of the computer and play mindless video games all day long, contributing nothing to their own lives or to society. I also recently had a friend tell me that she wished her husband would stop smoking pot but she recognizes that if he doesn’t smoke his four or five blunts throughout the day he turns into a completely different person, so she accepts his decision to smoke weed everyday, all day long. Dependence. Addiction. Altered mood. These are things that marijuana does to a person and it isn’t something that we should condone.

Marijuana’s second hand smoke is said to be very dangerous to children and pregnant women. Obviously there isn’t a whole lot of testing that has been done on the subject because of the dangers but there have been a few and the results appear to be compelling. According to studies, just like any other illicit drug, marijuana and secondhand marijuana smoke can cause premature labor, low birth weights and even neurological damage. There are people reckless enough out there that will disregard warnings and expose their loved ones to the second hand effects of marijuana. This short, but very interesting and to the point, article really brings to light what can happen to young children that are exposed to it in the womb or through second hand smoke.

Now I am not a believer in the “marijuana is a gateway drug to other drugs” idea–I think it is completely inaccurate–but I do think that allowing our country to accept an illegal drug like marijuana simply opens the door to other illegal drugs like opiates. At one point opiates were used like Tylenol is today. We should not revert back to the days of not knowing just to appease the drug users of the world; drugs are illegal for a reason. They do more harm than good.

—

Allison Dawson (@AllyD528) Born in Germany, raised in Mississippi and Texas. Graduate of Texas Tech University and Arizona State University. Currently dedicating her life to studying for the LSAT. Twitter junkie. Conservative.

Featured Image Courtesy of [Ian Sane via Flickr]

Allison Dawson

Allison Dawson was born in Germany and raised in Mississippi and Texas. A graduate of Texas Tech University and Arizona State University, she’s currently dedicating her life to studying for the LSAT. Twitter junkie. Conservative. Get in touch with Allison at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Welfare Weed – Let the Lazy Be Lazier appeared first on Law Street.

Hey y’all!

I like to keep an open mind about our government and how different states run differently, but there are some things that I feel like would make more sense if every state did them the same way. Maine’s Governor, Paul LePage (R), has reinstated a policy that would make people have to work for food stamps. No more sitting around on your ass waiting for that welfare check to come in, nope, you have to actually work for the money.

“People who are in need deserve a hand up, but we should not be giving able-bodied individuals a handout,” LePage said in a statement. “We must continue to do all that we can to eliminate generational poverty and get people back to work. We must protect our limited resources for those who are truly in need and who are doing all they can to be self-sufficient.”

I think that this is one of the greatest ideas ever, but I also wonder why they have to reinstate such an idea, and why aren’t other states doing the same thing? Wasn’t the original idea of food stamps and welfare just to help people who are down on their luck and trying to find a job? When did we allow welfare to become a way of life? In fact, when did we start allowing people on welfare to become lazy and just accept a handout without having to work for it? I can’t say  that I remember a time when everyone understood the value of a dollar and what a good work ethic is because I’ve never lived in a time where that held true, but I know that at one point in this country our citizens knew what they had to do in order to get by. Nowadays you can pop out a couple of kids, get on welfare, and just sit around waiting for that money to be deposited in your account. You don’t have to actively look for a job, volunteer, or commit to attend a workforce program. You can just say you need the money and the government will hand it on over, the more kids you have the more money you get.

I am no stranger to the ways in which some people have found to manipulate the system. I’ve heard stories of people who will get on food stamps or welfare, take the government’s money, and buy themselves a brand new iPhone or a new pair of Jordans or any other material thing that you don’t need when you are living off of welfare. Do you know where that “government money” is coming from? That money is coming from my pocket. That money is coming from the guy who works a 50-hour work week on minimum wage trying to make ends meet because he understands what hard work and supporting his family are really all about.

Do people not realize that when it comes from the government it’s actually coming from the people!? That’s why we pay taxes, so our government can supplement the many things that we need as a nation, and part of that goes to supporting those who are on welfare. If you are an able-bodied person who can work and is on welfare then there should be a stipulation that says you have to be doing something rather than sitting at home watching Real Housewives of New Jersey or hanging out with your friends. Why not volunteer or participate in a skills training program? Be an active member of society, be a part of your community in a positive way, and teach your kids that a handout is something to be ashamed of. Teach your kids good work ethic and respect for our government.

Under Maine’s new policy people capable of working would be limited to three months of food stamp benefits over a three-year period unless they work a minimum of 20 hours a week, volunteer a certain number of hours for a community agency, or participate in a state skills-training program. This was the point of welfare: to help you out until you can get back on your feet and support yourself and your own family again. Reinstating this policy is something that all states should think about doing (if they aren’t already)!

Way to go Governor LePage and good luck to the people of Maine!

—

Allison Dawson (@AllyD528) Born in Germany, raised in Mississippi and Texas. Graduate of Texas Tech University and Arizona State University. Currently dedicating her life to studying for the LSAT. Twitter junkie. Conservative.

Featured image courtesy of [Steve Hopson via Flickr]

Allison Dawson

Allison Dawson was born in Germany and raised in Mississippi and Texas. A graduate of Texas Tech University and Arizona State University, she’s currently dedicating her life to studying for the LSAT. Twitter junkie. Conservative. Get in touch with Allison at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post You Actually Have to Work for Food Stamps in Maine appeared first on Law Street.

The FBI completed Operation Cross Country VIII last week, and it was definitely a success. Agents and officers rescued 168 children from sex trafficking, and arrested 281 pimps across the country. The operation spanned 106 cities and was part of the FBI’s Innocence Lost National Initiative. The FBI worked in conjunction with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies. This year’s mission was the most widespread yet; since 2003 Operation Cross Country has identified and recovered about 3,600 children from sexual exploitation.

In addition to the operation, the FBI and its partners are trying to increase awareness about child sex trafficking within our borders. John Ryan, president and CEO of NCMEC, called for better laws that would require child welfare services to report children missing. He said there is no federal legislation for agencies to report children missing from their care and only two states have such regulations. It’s clear that the children rescued in this year’s operation would not have been found without the valiant efforts of the FBI and NCMEC, because the laws just aren’t in place to protect them.

At the Operation Cross Country press conference, FBI Director James B. Comey stated,

The lesson of Operation Cross Country is that our children are not for sale; that we will respond and crush these pimps who would crush these children. […] We will do this by seeking jail terms of many, many years, to send two messages. One, you will never do this again. Two, to others who might be tempted to crush the souls of children—you do that, and you’re risking your freedom and your life.

The Need for Legislation

NCMEC is pushing for state welfare agencies to create mandatory reports of all children missing from foster care. Without regulations requiring welfare agencies to report missing children, no one is looking for them–no one even knows they’re gone. And with no one aware of their whereabouts, no one can track their activities. So, more and more children are sucked into the sex trafficking industry. Here’s a breakdown by NCMEC:

The Children Who Need Our Help  

In comparison to our nation’s total population, 3,600 children rescued may not seem like a lot, until you put a name or a face to the numbers. For me, that happened when Operation Cross Country took action nearby. This year’s operation rescued two girls from Montgomery County, Maryland–one of them was only 16 years old. But what really hit home were the arrests of four pimps in Prince George’s County, home to my college. To think the children I tutored last year, or the teenagers on the University of Maryland’s campus for summer sports camps could be coerced by pimps is horrific.

It’s a frightening reality. Take Nicole‘s story, for example. She was 17 years old when she met her pimp. He took her shopping, bought her nice things, and treated her to a life of luxury. He told her how she could make good money, quick; after her first day “on the job” she came home with $750. Then she got raped by a john and when she told her pimp he beat her and forced her to take an ice shower for three hours. She needed surgery to repair her broken ribs, wrist, nose, and head injuries. She had no family or friends. All of her assets were tied up in the pimp. She was trapped in the life of sex trafficking.

Then she met Dani Geissinger-Rodarte, an FBI Victim Specialist. With the help of Rodarte, Nicole was able to leave her pimp and build a case against him. Now, that pimp, Juan Alexander Vianez must serve 20 years in prison and pay $1.3 million in restitution for sex trafficking and interstate transportation of a minor in furtherance of prostitution, among other charges.

Nicole got justice, and thanks to Operation Cross Country, more than 3,000 other victims of human sex trafficking have as well. But the number of children who are coerced into the trade at young ages needs to be reduced, and our government should do more to protect them. Why are Florida and Illinois the only states that require social services and foster care providers to report missing children in their care to NCMEC? In just one year more than 4,000 children were reported missing to NCMEC from those two states. Adding the cases from the additional 48 states would up that number by a terrifying amount.

If legislation was passed mandating child care services across the nation report children missing from their care, Operation Cross Country could significantly increase the number of victims rescued. Kathryn Turman, Director of the FBI’s Office for Victim Assistance said more than six million children in the U.S. are involved in over three million reports of abuse each year. Turman said the victimization of these children severely affects healthy development and compromises their futures, which collectively comprises our nation’s future. She said the cost of not doing enough to protect and aid child victims of sex trafficking is colossal, stating:

“Doing all we can to bring these children with their often invisible wounds out of the shadows is our mission and our privilege. A hundred years ago a wise man stated, ‘If the children are safe, then everyone is safe.'”

The work that those involved in Operation Cross Country are doing to keep the children safe is incredibly admirable. They deserve the highest of praise.

—

Natasha Paulmeno (@natashapaulmeno) 

Featured image courtesy of [Milliped via WikiMedia Commons]

Natasha Paulmeno

Natasha Paulmeno is an aspiring PR professional studying at the University of Maryland. She is learning to speak Spanish fluently through travel, music, and school. In her spare time she enjoys Bachata music, playing with her dog, and exploring social media trends. Contact Natasha at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Operation Cross Country: A New Way to Fight Child Sex Trafficking appeared first on Law Street.

Since President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, there has been a debate on how to best give the poorest Americans a chance at a prosperous life. Federal assistance programs have come and gone with plenty of critics, but what if the solution was as simple as giving every American a check? Read on to learn about the plan that’s uniting liberals and conservatives.

What is a basic income?

A basic income is just what it sounds like: the government gives every citizen enough money to survive. This check would replace food stamps, unemployment insurance, and most of our welfare system. Most American proposals for a basic income provide for $1,000 a month, or roughly how much someone earning the federal minimum wage, $7.25 per hour, makes.

Why replace our current welfare system? If it ain’t broke…

It’s broken, very broken. This is partly because the term “welfare system” does not refer to one system. It is multiple social programs managed by different government bureaucracies. Food stamps, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF), and Child Nutrition programs (CHIP) are all examples of social programs that are broadly referred to as welfare. According to the Cato Institute, there are 126 different federal assistance programs. Anyone trying to receive government assistance has to apply to all of these separate programs which carry their own paperwork and contradictory requirements.

There is also the problem known as the “poverty trap.” This is when those receiving assistance risk losing money by taking a higher paying job. It sounds contradictory, but this anecdote from Harvard Professor Jeff Liebman explains the problem.

The woman in his story, let us call her Mary, moves from a job that pays $25,000 to a job that pays $35,000. This is great for her, except for the fact that she relies on government benefits. With this new job, she earns enough so that she no longer qualifies for many of the social programs she depends on. She no longer can get free health insurance, she has lost title eight housing benefits, she lost her child care voucher, she lost her EITC benefits, and she is now paying payroll tax. Added all up, Mary is actually making less money with a higher paying job. When welfare recipients are discouraged from taking higher jobs, they are discouraged from improving their lives to the point where they will no longer need welfare.

A basic income would get rid of the poverty trap. Mary could quit her lower salary job and even take her time to find a job that is right for her without having to worry about losing her support system.

For being such a failure, the current welfare system is also really expensive. America spends approximately $1 trillion on the welfare system. That’s $14,848 per person. This graph from The Heritage Foundation gives an idea of how that is split up between programs.

Basic income would also be expensive, but it would provide recipients the freedom they need to find good work.

Wouldn’t everyone just stop working?

It’s possible. While proponents of a basic income argue that removing the poverty gap is a huge incentive to work, critics argue that an unconditional check in the mail will disincentivize work. Belgian philosopher Philippe Van Parijs, describes the basic income as giving impoverished people “the real freedom to pursue the realization of one’s conception of the good life.” The good life in one person’s eyes could be having a lucrative job. In another’s eyes, it could be living off of the government dime and doing nothing. Proponents of the basic income, like US Basic Income Guarantee Network Board Member Alan Sheahen, believe that most people want to work:

This is a problem that nearly every welfare plan has to grapple with. Requiring work puts people in a poverty trap. Unconditional benefits allow them to coast without work.

Does any country do this?

There is no country that has replaced their welfare system with a guaranteed basic income. However, there are countries that give their citizens unconditional money and there are countries that have proposed this plan.

The best example would be in India, where a pilot program was implemented in 2011. This pilot program included an urban program, whose recipients were given 1000 rupees a month, a rural program, whose recipients were given 200 rupees a month, and a control group, whose participants received no basic income.

What happened next was amazing: Participants in the program spent more on healthy food than they did when they received subsidized food. These groups also spent more on medical services, and housing. The most impressive result was that these families spent significantly more on school supplies than the control group. As a result, school attendance in the participating villages increased to three times the level of the control villages.

Switzerland might become the first country to implement a basic income nationwide. They will soon vote on a referendum to their constitution guaranteeing the right of a basic income to all. However, it is unclear how a Swiss basic income would be implemented, if it were to even pass. There have been no studies in Switzerland, and only one advocacy group has been pushing the issue. Switzerland’s form of democracy requires only 100,000 signatures to get any issue on the ballot as a referendum, so the plan might not even have broad public support.

Has this ever been proposed in the United States?

The closest proposal to a guaranteed income in the United States was President Richard Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan (FAP). FAP was not a basic income for all, but it was similar. Any family with children where one of the parents worked or were registered with the United States Employment services was eligible for a minimum stipend. Once again, it was not a check in the mail for every American, but it was and still is the closest proposal to basic income this country has ever seen.

So, what happened? It passed the House of Representatives, but died in a Senate committee. Conservatives thought the idea of free money was too far to the left and Democrats thought the work requirement placed it too far to the right.

Here’s Nixon’s indictment of the welfare system and presentation of FAP, courtesy of the Richard Nixon Foundation:

In modern America, the closest example of a basic income is in Alaska, where the state unconditionally gives a portion of their oil revenues to their citizens. The payout varies depending on oil sales, so it is not a dependable source of income, but it is still significant.

Is this a liberal or conservative idea?

Actually, it is both. Liberals and conservatives have both embraced a guaranteed basic income.

Milton Friedman, one of the most influential conservative economists ever, proposed replacing the welfare system with a “negative income tax.” Every citizen would get a tax transfer, and would then be taxed on that transfer based on how much money they earned. Friedmann, like other prominent conservatives, supported the basic income because it took power away from the federal government and the many bureaucracies that managed the welfare state.

Liberals like the basic income because it works to reduce inequality. It also has the added benefit of giving workers the ability to demand better work conditions from employers without fearing a loss of financial security.

Since this is so bipartisan, is it going to happen?

Unlikely. Americans are not the biggest fans of redistribution, and a basic income is redistribution at its purest form. In a nation where 60 percent of the citizenry believe that the poor can become rich by trying harder, it is unlikely that a basic income will gain broad public support.

Watch this report from PBS to learn about the broad support basic income has amongst liberal and conservative thinkers, the movements in Europe to enact similar plans, and the opposition it faces at home.

Conclusion

While support for a basic income reaches across the aisle, it is too untested to be implemented in a country as large as the United States and it goes against the American ideal of earning every dollar made. Keep an eye on countries like Switzerland and India to see if this really is the solution to poverty that the world has been looking for.

Resources

Primary

Basic Income News: Indian: Basic Income Pilot Project Finds Results of India’s pilot program

Additional

PBS Newshour: Will a Guaranteed Income Ever Come to America?

City Journal: Why Not a Negative Income Tax?

Adam Smith Institute: The Ideal Welfare System is a Basic Income

Slate: EITC Isn’t the Alternative to a Minimum Wage, This is

Economist: The Cheque is in the Mail

Carnegie Mellon University: Truth in Giving: Experimental Evidence on the Welfare Effects of Informed Giving to the Poor

Harvard University: Fairness and Redistribution

Economist: Taxing Hard-Up Americans at 95 Percent

Cato Institute: The American Welfare State: How We Spend Nearly $1 Trillion a Year Fighting Poverty–and Fail

Washington Post: Thinking Utopian: How About a Universal Basic Income?

Bloomberg: The Swiss Join the Fight Against Inequality

Basic Income Earth Network: Quarterly Newsletter

Eric Essagof

Eric Essagof attended The George Washington University majoring in Political Science. He writes about how decisions made in DC impact the rest of the country. He is a Twitter addict, hip-hop fan, and intramural sports referee in his spare time. Contact Eric at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post No Strings Attached: Replacing Welfare With a Guaranteed Income appeared first on Law Street.