California lawmakers again waging political warfare over welfare, By Chris Megerian, June 24, 2012, Los Angeles Times: “The bitter welfare battles that gripped American politics two decades ago were replayed in Sacramento this week, where a dispute over how hard the government should push poor people to rejoin the workforce threatened to derail the state budget plan awaiting the governor’s signature. The debate was as much about ideology as finances, and it carried particular weight in California, which has one-third of the country’s welfare recipients but only one-eighth of its total population. California’s welfare program has shrunk since President Clinton made good on his 1992 campaign promise to ‘end welfare as we know it’ by pressuring those receiving government checks to find work. But the benefits the state provides remain among the most generous and extensive in the nation, and California is one of the few states where families get monthly checks for children even if the parents are disqualified for not working or participating in other programs…”
Month: June 2012
General Assistance Program – Pennsylvania
Pa. to end program that ‘saved my life,’ man says, Associated Press, June 25, 2012, Patriot-News: “Jake Fleming had nothing: He would wash up in the bathroom of a fast-food joint and, as he tells it, didn’t have 99 cents to buy a hamburger. Determined to leave behind 30 years of alcohol and drug addiction, he entered detox for eight days in February 2008 and then lived in a recovery house while he sought daily addiction treatment for nine months. Pennsylvania’s Depression-era cash assistance program that he credits with paying his way back into the land of the living is now on Gov. Tom Corbett’s chopping block, while Republican-controlled Harrisburg is poised to shift the cash instead toward tax cuts for businesses and a business tax credit that helps subsidize private school scholarships…”
The Record Series on Poverty in Northern New Jersey
Hardship grows amid wealth: Residents face unexpected need in communities across North Jersey, By Harvy Lipman, June 24, 2012, The Record: “Karen Levi doesn’t think of herself as being poor. After all, she has a condo in Mahwah, 10 years’ experience in marketing and publishing and, before the recession struck, she was making $75,000 a year. But the fact of the matter is that Levi hasn’t had a full-time job in three years, even after returning to school last year to get her certification as a paralegal. A divorcée who supports a 20-year-old daughter in college, she took in $31,000 last year working a range of part-time jobs and collecting unemployment checks. When her jobless benefits run out for good at the end of this month, she’ll lose nearly two-thirds of her income. That will pretty much land her at the official federal poverty level of $11,170 for a single person – an amount that experts agree greatly underestimates the cost of living in a place like North Jersey…”