Washblog

"WE WERE PRETTY GENEROUS"

"It's about time," said state Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, top Republican on the Senate budget-writing committee. He did give Gregoire credit for doing something her Democratic predecessor, Gov. Gary Locke, would not - put a limit on welfare payments.

"We were pretty generous bringing services to people and giving them a reasonable amount of time to find jobs or build work skills," Zarelli said. "At this point, I don't think we do anybody any good if we keep taking care of them."

I agree.

Something like Zarelli's statement was the situation I encountered from almost day one of my own experience as a state employee working inside a program of public assistance. Back then it was still the old AFDC which literally enabled a mind-think of entitlement that discouraged much of a sense of community citizenship where assistance is temporary - facilitating a return by someone needy to productivity and contribution themselves.

That sense of entitlement - expressed by the agency in terms of being "eligible" or "ineligible," quickly morphed into a sense of grasshopper thinking among thousands of welfare clients who had grown up under the generous and forgiving AFDC system which in effect handed out cash with little accountability or enforced responsibility.

One could say truthfully that the system created by the federal government and administered by state governments was something that in effect, hired and paid state workers to keep the needy at least semi-mollified and fundamentally provided-for in exchange for keeping them under the public radar - precisely because most citizens have no time nor willingness to take part in a discussion of what to do about the poor among us.

Inevitably then, that question always lurks on the political tool-shelf for whoever wants to take political power from whomever currently possesses that power. Sometimes, unavoidably, good comes from something done poorly and with a lot of public demagogic filth spewed in the name of civic responsibility and citizen compassion.

This then was the welfare-reform cake that was taken out of the Gingrich Congressional oven. Built on a manipulative radical Republican rhetoric Republican reformers helped generate and augment a national knee-jerk reaction against every single mother living on welfare cash grants but standing in the grocery line with food stamps.  

Stamps? Funny money - that immediately revealed and exposed the bearer as a welfare recipient who consistently found herself in an uncomfortable place - not unlike being a minority in an exclusive all-white club.

Or like those dreams we've all had of suddenly finding ourselves naked in a public place.

Capitalizing on national anger and resentment of images exaggerated to an extreme silliness by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Republicans acted to reinforce their grip on Congress which was there more important priority than mere reforming of a  system that had for the most part kept our poor out of sight therefore out of mind.

"To me, that's where the hammer needs to fall," Zarelli said. "There ought to be clear sanctions, a progression all the way to termination. I don't think the intent was to just give a free ride. We need to demonstrate we are serious."

Kicking 700 people off welfare would save an estimated $450,000 a year. The WorkFirst annual budget is about $780 million.

A "hammer" (no Tom Delay inference needed here) a "sword of justice" to the politically righteous indignant ... whatever. God knows, I've seen a few recipient grasshoppers who think a living is owed them by the government and if there were no government, then every body else in the community. But not that majority. Not 99 families out of 100. Politicos from both parties need to step back from the imagery generated by making a big deal out of where hammers are falling.

Otherwise, what happen's when an adult child with grandchildren of a political big mouth is caught standing in the checkout line at the grocery store with a Washington State Quest Card in their hand - the sure-fire sign that a sinner is among the worthy?