Editorials: Miles to go
S STAFF Editor: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Executive Editor: Paul Baumann Managing Editor: Patrick Jordan Production Editor: Tiina Aleman Senior Writer: Robert G. Hoyt Poetry: Rosemary Deen...
...Copyright © 1997 Commonweal Foundation...
...As Rebecca Blank (It Takes a Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty, Princeton) reminds us, "employment has become progressively less effective at reducing poverty...
...Web: http: / /www.commonwealmagazine.org...
...The imposition of time limits on benefits holds the prospect of great hardship for many of the neediest...
...Illustrations: Cover, Antonucci...
...Thankfully, fears that abandoning a federal entitlement to welfare would result in abandonment of the poor at the state level have not been realized...
...S STAFF Editor: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Executive Editor: Paul Baumann Managing Editor: Patrick Jordan Production Editor: Tiina Aleman Senior Writer: Robert G. Hoyt Poetry: Rosemary Deen Design: Emil Antonucci Screen: Richard Alleva Media: Frank McConnell Columnists: John Garvey, Abigail McCarthy, E.J...
...Single Copy, $2.25...
...In an econ Commonweal 5 September 26, 1997 omy whose rewards are increasingly skewed toward those who already enjoy great wealth and privilege, there is something petty and suspiciously self-serving in those at the top loudly demanding so much from those who have so little...
...columnist portraits, Elaine Mills...
...That's an astonishing and unprecedented 24 percent decline...
...p. 20, Schwadron, Rothco...
...405, New York, NY, 10115...
...Portland, ME 04106 (207) 799-4387, classified advertising correspondence to 475 Riverside Dr...
...Only 20 percent of welfare clients will remain exempt from being cut off come 2002...
...3, 17, Sam Emerson, courtesy Miramax Films...
...Indeed, states that have already been experimenting with workfare, such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and Tennessee, have pioneered the use of job training and placement, day care, community-service, and subsidized jobs...
...Moving these people from dependency to relative self-sufficiency requires extensive and expensive intervention programs, programs still viewed with suspicion by many taxpayers...
...Yet as Mother Teresa's life attested to, the gospel's declaration that the poor and the meek are blessed discloses an undeniable truth...
...But they are only a step...
...We serve Jesus in the poor," she told those who questioned the limited scope of the services provided by her order...
...Finally, one of the 1996 law's most noxious stipulations, the denial of Supplemental Social Security aid to elderly and disabled legal immigrants, was eliminated at Clinton's insistence in the recent budget deal...
...dollars by International Money Order or by check on a U.S...
...Seeing God as somehow present-indeed, paramount-in the midst of unrelieved human suffering is not easy to do...
...Wisconsin, for example, is spending $6,000 more this year than last on each recipient...
...In addition, the Labor Department has ruled that workfare recipients are entitled to the minimum wage and subject to federal labor regulations...
...Through voluntary poverty," Dorothy Day wrote, "we will have the means to help our brothers...
...Well-funded workfare initiatives are doubtless a step in the right direction, for they teach indispensable habits and skills while also strengthening the ties of mutual obligation and support between individual recipients and the community...
...foreign, $87...
...Special two-year rate: U.S...
...Last month, a year after signing into law the Republican Congress's "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act" ending welfare as a federal entitlement, Clinton announced that "the debate is over...
...Serials Data program No.: ISSN 0010-3330...
...Yet Wisconsin's experience under a Republican governor indicates that getting people off welfare permanently will require greater, not minimal, public investment...
...bank...
...other parts of the world, $99...
...Display advertising correspondence should be sent to Ruth E. Taylor, 11 Graffam Rd., So...
...Still, an economic downturn could easily put an end to these promising developments...
...Commonweal 6 September 26,1997...
...In founding and building up the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa gave comfort and spiritual consolation to the dying and destitute through the work of more than 500 missions in an astonishing 120 countries...
...Insofar as the old system treated its clients more like undeserving children than morally responsible adults, it dehumanized recipients and alienated taxpayers...
...But while moving people from welfare to work can be applauded by citizens across the political spectrum, it is far too early to declare the nation's new welfare regime an unalloyed success...
...Though opponents of welfare reform predicted dire consequences should the bill's work requirements and benefit time-limits become law, most observers concede that little additional hardship has been evident so far...
...Moreover, Mother Teresa's seeming indifference to the very this-worldly task of alleviating poverty could sometimes rankle even those who recognized the great value of her vocation...
...E-mail: commonweal@msn.com...
...That is a truth that needs constant rediscovering...
...Canada, $47...
...Yet she also had her critics, especially among those who bristled at her uncompromising opposition to abortion and her all-but-uncomprehending dismissal of contraception...
...She allowed herself to be held up as a model of a very gender-specific kind of piety by those eager to end the discussion about the current role and the historical treatment of women in the church...
...and monthly July and August, by Commonweal Foundation, 475 Riverside Drive, Rm...
...In requiring recipients to do their fair share, the larger community, both public and private, in turn binds itself more firmly to doing its part...
...To the extent that welfare is understood to be a two-way street, it promises to strengthen the average citizen's regard for what government stands for and consequently for what government is called upon to do...
...Will those exemptions cover all truly in need of public assistance...
...Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and at additional offices...
...1, 1924, to current issues available through University Microfilm, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 and on Microfiche from Bell & Howell, Wooster, OH 44691...
...More important, experts note that those welfare recipients who have found work are also, quite logically, the most employable...
...It is hard to argue that no good has come from last year's reform...
...Miles to 9o ccepting his party's nomination for president in 1992, Bill Clinton promised the American people that he would "end welfare as we know it...
...Telephone: (212) 662-4200...
...The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love...
...Brought to the wider world's attention by Malcom Muggeridge in the 1960s, she went from relative obscurity tending to and sharing the life of the "poorest of the poor" in India's teeming slums to international acclaim, including the Nobel Peace prize in 1979...
...We cannot even see our brothers in need without first stripping ourselves...
...p. , Schwadron, Rothco...
...3,19,Charlot...
...Too often seeing "Jesus" in the poor has allowed the better-off, and the church, to avoid really seeing the poor at all...
...Fairer wages and better benefits for the working poor are what will count in the long-run...
...We are not social workers, not teachers, not nurses or doctors...
...We now know that welfare reform works...
...Worldly renown brought her into contact with nefarious political figures, like Haiti's dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and the Nicaraguan contras, eager to acquire a kind of vicarious moral legitimacy in her shadow...
...But here, too, the real answers lie in the future...
...For Christianity has long taught, Day continued, that "the mystery of the poor is this: That they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for him...
...foreign, $50...
...But since the rolls have declined so dramatically, many states now have more money to spend on making workfare work...
...Clinton's willingness to tackle what were widely believed to be the outright fraud, inefficiencies, and "culture of dependency" plaguing the welfare system helped to convince voters wary of so-called "liberal" government handouts that he was a "new" Democrat...
...Devising a more reasonable or realistic welfare reform than the one enacted by the Republican Congress is not hard...
...As the welfare rolls shrink, those left are increasingly people lacking even minimal work and social skills and often struggling with drugs, illiteracy, or mental illness...
...POSTMASTER: send address changes to Commonweal, 475 Riverside Dr., Room 405, New York, NY 10115...
...p. 22, Baloo, Rothco...
...p11, Ross, Rothco...
...It also remains to be seen just how successful former welfare clients are at finding long-term jobs that pay a living wage...
...If faced with an increase in welfare rolls they will be free to spend more or to artfully rearrange how they spend federal dollars...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S., $44...
...True, the reform bill strictly capped federal spending for welfare at $16.5 billion, regardless of the growth of welfare rolls...
...How will states respond to a recession and a welfare emergency...
...Microfilm from Vol...
...Mother Teresa's death earlier this month at the age of eightyseven marked the passing of a woman whose heart seemed large enough to embrace all humanity...
...This is wildly off the mark, but such skepticism is understandable, especially in a world where so much can now be done to help lift people out of destitution...
...Republicans are promising to fight that ruling...
...Commonweal is indexed in Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, Catholic Periodical Index, Index of American Periodical Verse, Book Review Digest, and Book Review Index...
...But will they have enough resources and will they do it...
...p. 31, Bacall, Rothco...
...States now pick up roughly 40 percent of the welfare bill...
...Without entry-level jobs to go to, little movement off the rolls is possible...
...Requiring able-bodied welfare recipients to work need not be seen as a narrow or merely meanspirited victory for "conservatives...
...The poorest of the poor are for us a means of expressing our love for God...
...So as the welfare system begins to deal with its hardest cases, the renewed confidence in government generated by the early success of reform can, in the right hands, be a great asset in summoning the political will to provide for the neediest of all...
...Welfare rolls have indeed fallen dramatically-down 3.4 million during Clinton's presidency, perhaps as much as 1.3 million in the year since the federally guaranteed Aid to Families with Dependent Children program was replaced by block grants to the states...
...Indeed, Mother Teresa's harshest critics accused her of using the poor as "occasions of piety...
...Canada, $81...
...Europe, $89...
...Dionne, Jr., Sidney Callahan Editorial Assistant: Bernard G. Prusak Staff: Harriette Balsky, Carmen P. Alava, Sandra Smith Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor Publisher: Edward S. Skillin A Commonweal, [ISSN 0010-3330] A Review of Public Affairs, Religion, Literature, and the Arts, is published biweekly except Christmas/New Year's...
...Commonweal articles also are available at many libraries and research facilities on CDROM and in electronic data bases...
...Annual rates for air-mail delivery outside U.S.: Western Hemisphere, $84...
...All Canadian and foreign subscriptions must be paid in U.S...
...As the new law's progressively stricter eligibility requirements start to kick in at various times in different states-overall there is a two-year limit on receiving assistance without working and a five-year lifetime limit on cash assistance-what happens to the "truly needy" should be the overriding concern...
...The current law has the potential (largely unintended, to be sure) to reinvigorate a sense of social and moral reciprocity between this nation's haves and have-nots...
...Funding was also restored to help provide work for unemployed food stamp recipients...
...The spectacular decline in welfare lists can be attributed to several factors, above all the booming economy's ability to absorb even relatively unskilled workers and the progress made by experimental workfare programs in individual states...
...MOTHER TERESA, R.I.P...
...Faced with the prospect of losing their benefits, welfare recipients have found their way back into the job market with surprising alacrity and in impressive numbers...
Vol. 124 • September 1997 • No. 16
