welfare coverage

[Max Sawicky]

> >Not legally, no, but certainly in practice. People kicked off AFDC often
> >assume they've lost eligibility for Food Stamps & Medicaid, and no one is
> >telling them anything to the contrary. I know this is happening in NYC -
> >where the welfare offices have been renamed job centers - and assume it's
> >happening elsewhere as well.
>
> This is a very important point. I see a kind of rough parallel between
> welfare reform and right-to-work legislation. Regarding the latter, many
> people in right-to-work states think that unions are illegal, the first
> amendment protection of the freedom of association notwithstanding. Surely
> the delegitimization of organized labor in the minds of many was not an
> unanticipated consequence of such legislation. I think the same holds true
> for welfare reform. Already facing Byzantine laws and Kafkaesque
> bureaucracies, welfare recipients have received the word from on high that
> "the end of welfare as we know it" has arrived and now it is time
> rely upon yourself because there are no more "handouts."

It's an empirical question with a political implication.

Empirical because we would like to see data that bear out or refute Doug's
thesis.  As I discussed, the first post-reform data are not inconsistent
with the thesis, but more needs to be said to determine whether his scenario
is in fact playing out on a significant scale.

It's a political issue because the fact that Medicaid eligibility is not
narrower, but broader, means that people can be organized to enroll.  Their
legal right to so already exists.  State procedures to discourage this can
be smashed.

This is in fact precisely what happened between 1968 and 1972, as the
welfare rights movement organized the poor to reject associations of welfare
with stigma and demand that their *existing* right to enroll in AFDC be
recognized.  This was the basis for an important movement, and if state
governments are stupid enough to persist in blocking enrollment, it can and
should be again.  The 'enrollment' movement (for which "Regulating the Poor"
by Cloward and Piven was the roadmap) had the great effect of overloading
state budgets, which lead to greater federalization and growth of
anti-poverty spending throughout most of the 1970's.

Another reason why, from a radical perspective, it pays to distinguish
between rhetoric ("welfare is gone") and reality.

mbs