How the social safety net once saved me

By Libby

In my ongoing quest to lower my blood pressure, I've stopped reading the pundits that tend to raise it alarmingly with inane or intemperate rhetoric, relying instead on those bloggers who have a higher tolerance to keep me informed on their latest drivel. But those on my DNR (do not read) list do occassionally burst forth with something worth passing on and today it's David Gerson at the WaPo talking about the food stamp program.

Hunger exacts a social cost. Hungry adults miss more work and consume more health care. Hungry children tend to be sicker, absent from school more often and more prone to getting into more trouble. Larry Brown of the Harvard School of Public Health calculates that the total price tag of hunger to American society is about $90 billion a year. In contrast, Brown estimates it would only cost about $10 billion to $12 billion a year to "virtually end hunger in our nation."

And this raises a moral issue. We have in place an automated food stamp program that is generally efficient and effective. We know it could be expanded with little increase in overhead. And we know with precision when its benefit runs out each month. So how is it then possible to justify funding three weeks of food instead of four? What additional dependence, what added moral hazard could a full month of eating possibly create?

Many social problems seem complex beyond hope. But dramatic progress against hunger is not. There are many explanations why this effort has not been undertaken -- but there are no good excuses.

I had no idea they had computerized the program but I think that's a really good thing. I assume they got rid of those awful booklets, meant I suppose to resemble travellers checks, that fooled no one in the check out line. I expect they use some kind of debit card now, which is good for tracking certainly and also spares the recipients some embarrassment.

I know that embarrassment having once been on welfare for several months when my first husband was badly burned in an accident. He was self-employed as a carpenter and obviously couldn't work and neither could I since someone had to be there to change his dressings every three hours, a process made more labor intensive because he didn't respond to the Silvadene therapy and I had to cook up saline solutions every day.

I can't begin to tell you how awful it feels to see someone you know in the checkout line when you had to whip out your foodstamps in order to eat. And they always ran out before the end of the month, no matter how frugal you were. It was the most horrible time in my life, yet without the assistance of that safety net, we would have starved. And they're not exactly free. You spend a lot of time in the welfare office regularly reviewing your needs.

You hear a lot about welfare queens, and grumbling about people who look fit enough to work, living off the system. Certainly I fit that profile but in the long hours I spent in those offices, most of the women there were like me. Caught up in a situation over which they had no control and doing the best they could to ensure their minor children wouldn't unduly suffer more from it than they were already. We couldn't wait until the day we would be able to burn our welfare cards.

Gerson is right. We have a moral obligation to help our fellow Americans when they're in trouble and those who would seek to punish the few freeloaders who cheat the system by abolishing such programs would do well to consider that who they're really hurting are the innocent children and their families who have no other choice. [via]

Comments

[John]

Thanks for sharing your experience with welfare to help people understand this issue a little better. I am certain that you vote diligently and have not contributed to the current mess we are in either by failing to vote or voting Republican out of gross ignorance, or you would not be posting to this site. Keep in mind that 75% of our eligible voting population has either not voted in the last couple of decades, or has actively contributed to the current mess we are in by continuing to support Republicans regardless of how destructive their policies have been to their own personal welfare. Therefore while I have strong compassion for you I have little sympathy for the majority of the people in this country who are falling into poverty. Their laziness and stupidity is destroying them and they are largely too stupid and lazy to realize this even now. In our upcoming presidential election at least 40% of eligible voters will not vote and at least 40% of the people who do vote will vote for McCain (I really love the Hillary lost so I'm voting for McCain idiots). The vast majority of the people who fall into either of these categories will be guilty of gross negligence, and if McCain wins the upcoming election they will be clearly responsible for their own worsening situations. Yet they will complain about their problems bitterly and continue to blame everyone but themselves for their predicaments. Stupid American students become stupid American citizens, and these eventually create a stupid culture which self destructs. I have seen too much stupidity in this country recently to have any compassion left for most of us. I do hope it doesn't have to get as bad here as it is in Iraq for us to pull our heads out of our butts though.

[Enlightened Layperson]

I had no idea they had computerized the program but I think that's a really good thing. I assume they got rid of those awful booklets, meant I suppose to resemble travellers checks, that fooled no one in the check out line. I expect they use some kind of debit card now, which is good for tracking certainly and also spares the recipients some embarrassment.

Yes, they switched to EBT cards sometime in the '90's. Although tracking and sparing embarrassment may have been among the government's motives, I do not believe either was the primary motive. The primary motive was that recipients could use physical booklets as a substitute for cash, to trade informally for things besides food -- including drugs. The primary purpose of the card was to make sure they could only be used for food.

[Libby]

John I get irritated with the electorate too. I don't they're so much stupid as simply self-involved and incapable of understanding the big picture. I think that's partly a result of living in a consumer driven society.

EL, I had forgotten the drug trade scandals around using the booklets but again, this was among I think a subset of welfare recipients. Some people are going to cheat no matter what, and it has nothing to do with income. Which is not to say it isn't a good thing that they found a way to eliminate the fraud. It's the cheaters who ruin it for the honest people who really need the help.