California senator says "Welfare queen" law must go

As long as the fox is in charge of the hen house, the hens haven't a chance.
First we need to get rid of the liars. Who are they? Well, take a
look around. Who has decided that limiting the welfare assistance to
citizens will reduce the birth rate, but have no thought regarding
limiting the amount of money a citizen is allowed to stick away in
off-shore banks.
The rules are made by and for the Ruling Class.
For me, I pledge allegiance to the Working Class, and to the potential
We represent. One People, One World. Standing for dignity and respect
and love for all.
Carl Jarvis On 2/22/15, Charles Krugman <ckrugman@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> California senator says 'welfare queen' law must go
>
> By Christopher Cadelago -
> ccadelago@sacbee.com
>
> 02/22/2015 4:00 AM
> | Updated:
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> Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, talks to then-Senate President Pro Tem
> Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Sen. Kevin de Leon, D- Los Angeles,
> during a Legislative informational hearing on gun laws on Jan. 29, 2013.
>
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> Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, talks to then-Senate President Pro Tem
> Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Sen. Kevin de Leon, D- Los Angeles,
> during a Legislative informational hearing on gun laws on Jan. 29, 2013.
> Hector Amezcua / hamezcua@sacbee.com
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> The law passed two decades ago, with Democrats in charge of the Legislature:
> In California, a family that conceives and births an additional child while
> on welfare is barred from getting an increase in its grant.
>
> Today, with Democrats still in the majority, the measure's base of support
> is eroding. Advocates for the poor are mounting their strongest effort yet
> to repeal the so-called "maximum family grant" rule, a big-ticket spending
> item that could bleed into state budget talks.
>
> Sen. Holly Mitchell of Los Angeles, in her third attempt at abolishing the
> law, says it was based on the pejorative concept of the "welfare queen," a
> woman who has babies while on welfare to collect more cash assistance.
> Instead of discouraging welfare recipients from having children, she said,
> it helped the state achieve the "dubious honor" of having the nation's
> highest child poverty rate.
>
> She points to a UC Berkeley brief on the topic that found such family caps
> don't alter reproductive behavior.
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> "It is a classist, sexist, anti-democratic, anti-child, anti-family policy
> whose premise did not come to fruition," said Mitchell, the author of Senate
> Bill 23. "It did not accomplish what it set out to accomplish. So it's
> appropriate to take it off the books."
>
> Others believe reinstating grant payments, totaling about $130 per child
> each month, will not lift aid recipients out of poverty.
>
> Mary L.G. Theroux, senior vice president of The Independent Institute, a
> nonprofit research organization based in Oakland, said she doesn't dispute
> that the law did not prevent births.
>
> "The opportunity cost of them having another kid is not going to stop them
> from doing it," she said.
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> But she said financial constraints give growing families incentives to get
> help from charities, relatives or find higher-paying jobs.
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> "What these programs are doing is completely handicapping people from
> learning how to take care of their families and how to help their children
> have a better life than they do," she said.
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> In many ways, the debate today mirrors the one held on the Assembly floor in
> 1994, when then-Republican Assembly Leader Jim Brulte urged his colleagues
> to pass a bill he described as the first step in a comprehensive
> welfare-reform package.
>
> "When someone is on welfare for 20, 25 years, that is a serious problem," he
> recalled in an interview. "And part of that was incented by a system where,
> frankly, some people could make more money not working than they could
> working."
>
> In debate over the bill, Democratic Assemblyman John Burton disagreed,
> calling it a cheap shot at the poor masked as a push for self-sufficiency.
> He was on the losing end of the vote.
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> Efforts to change the system continued.
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> President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996, and Gov. Pete
> Wilson and lawmakers compromised on a state program called CalWORKs the next
> year. It stiffened work requirements and set time limits, sanctions, grant
> levels and eligibility requirements. Maximum family grants took effect in
> 1997.
>
> In recent years, the growing number of families living in poverty has
> generated new discussion. Anti-poverty advocates have been joined by a range
> of others who question the way the law seeks to regulate birth control use.
>
> It specifies that families must use certain forms of birth control - IUD,
> Norplant or sterilization - and must prove contraceptive failure to receive
> aid. It allows exceptions for children born as a result of rape or incest if
> reported to a health, social services or law enforcement official. The rule
> specifies that children born into families where any member drew government
> cash aid 10 months before a child's birth are ineligible.
>
> California Latinas for Reproductive Justice and others object to the
> government "using the threat of deeper poverty" if recipients don't use
> contraception.
>
> The current Assembly speaker, Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, said reversing the
> policy is critically important to families, telling a recent women's policy
> summit in Sacramento that the criteria are "invasive (and) insulting."
>
> Linda Wanner, associate director of government relations at the California
> Catholic Conference, said her group favors annulment, but for other
> reasons.
>
> "With this bill, we have the opportunity to remove burdensome county
> processes, reduce the number of children living in poverty, and, more
> importantly, eliminate the incentive to terminate a pregnancy," she said.
>
> Some 24 states put in place family caps over the past two decades, according
> to the UC Berkeley Law Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice. Dr. Elena
> Gutiérrez, who authored the study in 2013, found that caps remained in 15
> other states.
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> Targeting the rule in California has proved difficult. Former Assemblywoman
> Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, proposed a plan to phase it out and was
> stymied by the recession and budget crisis in 2007. Former Assemblywoman
> Mariko Yamada, D-Davis, later unsuccessfully sought to exempt disabled
> children. Mitchell introduced bills that stalled in both houses and returned
> last year with a successful resolution to repeal it as soon as
> "legislatively possible."
>
> Lieber questioned whether revocation was being adequately prioritized by
> majority Democrats. "Now that the money is there, we need to see if the
> political will is there," she said.
>
> Indeed, much of the debate will hinge on funding. An analysis prepared last
> spring estimates that overturning the rule would cost about $205 million in
> the first year. Some 131,400 children are affected by the grant rule.
>
> Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, has said he supports
> repeal, but he chaired the committee in which the bill previously was
> shelved. Last week, he unveiled a plan to reverse deep cuts to subsidized
> child care, another social services item that competes for scare resources.
>
> Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, said helping families in
> poverty is an important role for officials in government as well as people
> outside. The issue is whether repealing the maximum grant is the best use of
> money.
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> "Putting $200 million into an effective job training program or providing
> child care for working mothers would be a better use of resources," Huff
> said. He pointed to a long list of other needs, including services for the
> developmentally disabled and foster children.
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> Vivian Thorp, 48, of Oakland said she could have used the extra help.
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> After losing her job at Walmart to an injury, she and her family lived in an
> abandoned building when the house they were living in was foreclosed on. She
> had a job, but money was tight.
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> When her second daughter was born, Thorp was told that the maximum grant
> rule would prevent her from getting additional cash assistance. She
> successfully appealed, arguing that she was not clearly notified of the
> law's provisions.
>
> By the time her third child arrived, Thorp said, she stole diapers for two
> years and stuffed food in her bag when she ran out of money at the end of
> the month. She remembers visiting a department store and swapping her
> daughter's beat-up shoes with new ones. She said she was depressed and
> suicidal.
>
> "I went from Walmart to welfare to Wellbutrin," she said.
>
> Thorp, now a legal advocate for the homeless and others down on their luck,
> said she earns a "working class" living. She's been off welfare since 2011.
> The grant money she lost out on would have helped speed up her transition,
> Thorp said.
>
> "To actually deprive a child of having the ability to wear clean diapers
> should be a crime, especially when a parent like myself was in a
> welfare-to-work activity and doing everything right - playing by the rules,"
> she said.
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> With the cannonade for repeal growing louder, Brulte, now the chairman of
> the state Republican Party, said his belief in the bill hasn't changed. He
> brought up the measure at a recent dinner with former Democratic Assembly
> Speaker Willie Brown, where they addressed freshman members of the
> Legislature.
>
> "I told them it was important to do what you believe is right and stay true
> to" themselves. "Principles don't change," Brulte said.
>
> But, he added in his comments to the lawmakers, "Don't think what you do
> will last forever."
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> Call Christopher Cadelago, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 326-5538. Follow him on
> Twitter @ccadelago.
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> http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article10966202.html