Perspective on welfare
McCloskey, Liz
LIZ McCLOSKEY PERSPECTIVE ON WELFARE Nobody goes it alone For reasons that may seem far removed from politics (and maybe a little convoluted) I find myself beginning 1996 with a fresh perspective...
...This is called perspective, and I find that it reaches far past my efforts to control the details of my personal and family life...
...rather because I surrendered to the knowledge (a) that the gene for ordered living is missing from my DNA...
...Let's say she's determined to take control of her life and has spent the past five years doing so...
...It appears that some welfare reformers can't...
...It may consider that government programs are not the only and may not be the most effective tools for changing lives...
...Poor politicians...
...This revelation came to me around Thanksgiving time, when I was to meet my closest woman friend, home for the weekend, but couldn't find my car keys, which were supposed to be in the heart-shaped locket hanging on a wall...
...The House majority wanted to let the states exempt up to 15 percent of welfare families from this deadline, the Senate preferred 20 percent...
...None of them, none of us, is self-sufficient...
...For years we have hopped in the car and driven to the mountains with nary a mishap...
...At a store that sells only things to put other things in or on, we spent more than our accumulated library fines (no small sum...
...Let's give her three kids...
...Not far into the trip we hit a huge pothole that destroyed a tire...
...Though she has no use for a car phone, she has to have carfare...
...and (b) that my effort to nurture it into existence had left me totally exhausted...
...Even in the heat of my personal organizational battle, I found that unforeseen circumstances often prevailed...
...No doubt they're all responsible, hard-working, focused-and virtually all of them have been nudged, pushed, pulled, or otherwise moved toward solvency and achievement by resources other than their own, resources mostly denied to welfare beneficiaries they are all too ready to condemn: resources of family, friends, neighbors, schools, counselors, role models, loan officers, medical caregivers...
...But we still had the car phone...
...Well, it won't...
...Though I'm blessed with happy relationships, sufficient resources, good health, good humor, I'll always find it hard to live life skillfully and gracefully...
...I can imagine...
...LIZ McCLOSKEY PERSPECTIVE ON WELFARE Nobody goes it alone For reasons that may seem far removed from politics (and maybe a little convoluted) I find myself beginning 1996 with a fresh perspective on last year's efforts to end the welfare system as we know it...
...But it should also rest on a consensus that a person who wants to get off welfare needs determination and energy-and a secure job, a living wage, a safe home, reason to hope and therefore to strive...
...We created antichaos systems-for mail, keys, change, toys, socks, catalogues, receipts...
...So when we returned to home base at summer's end, we went on a rampage to create order and predictability in our lives and in our new home...
...A constructive welfare debate might well assume the necessity of some kind of deadline...
...It is up to us to understand their problem, to require self-discipline of them, and help change the context of their jobs...
...But I have overwhelming doubts that "family self-sufficiency" can be created by punitive decree-or that it can be created at all...
...There would be no more unpaid bills, lost documents, moldy tea cups...
...They have no control over the circumstances that force them to act this way...
...Peace, said Augustine, is the tranquillity of order...
...During some of those months, my husband spent most of his time in D.C., leaving me with two small, confused boys, a full-time/part-time job launching a new nonprofit organization, and, for a time, no babysitter, few friends, and no family...
...Both the House and Senate versions of welfare reform put a five-year lifetime limit on welfare benefits...
...I recalled a past era when I would have mystically accepted my lot: My keys are lost, and it is O.K...
...We sold our house in the Washington area, moved to Saint Louis, Missouri, and then, six months later, returned to the Washington suburbs...
...If last year's efforts to reform welfare had succeeded, this fictional (but true-to-life) woman would be one of the many whose time ran out...
...I don't question that there are deliberate welfare cheats, nor that some teen-agers conceive children with no thought of how to care for them, nor that the welfare system can foster dependency...
...A disaster, yes...
...It struck me: What's it like for a woman who never misplaces her keys but who-for reasons outside her reach- has lost her job, her spouse, her health insurance, and may soon lose her home...
...but there is no welfare check, the rent is overdue, and her youngest may be getting the flu...
...Now let's take this woman who has lost job, spouse, and health insurance...
...Unfortunately, politics as we know it may preclude any such reasonable approach to ending welfare as we know it...
...Nice, hard numbers, useful for determining exactly how to distinguish the deserving from the nondeserving poor, without the trouble of inquiring into questions of context: individual circumstances, local or regional unemployment rates, the availability of adequate-to-decent housing, health care, child care, transportation, targeted job training, etc...
...The rhetoric surrounding what was at one point called the "Family Self-Sufficiency Act of 1995" has centered so exclusively on personal responsibility that we get no reminders of the context, the circumstances in which we all live...
...Our new planning mode, though, prompted us to get an oil change and new tires, and to make sure we had a current AAA membership, a working flashlight, and a usable car phone before taking our two-hour drive...
...The premise is that climbing out of poverty is a matter only of determination and energy, and that a deadline will provide them...
...Not because I won the war...
...For my family, 1995 was a frenzied year...
...They seem to believe that all such a woman needs to get her life together is a little self-discipline and a deadline...
...Neither I nor my family is self-sufficient...
...After lucking into a job-training program that provided day care, she's finding there aren't many jobs that match her new skills, and the few places that are hiring are distant, don't want workers with children, and don't pay all that much...
...We would fight for it...
...And now, peace (of a kind) is at hand (at least for me...
...An aspect of the legislative debate that fascinated me was the wrangle between House and Senate over the proportion of families that states could exempt from this five-year limit...
...Neither are the families of ardent, earnest, true-believing legislators...
...We all live in a context...
Vol. 123 • February 1996 • No. 4
