5 Ways States Are Screwing the Poor By Making Welfare Almost Impossible to Get

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/hard-times-usa/5-ways-states-are-screwing-poor-making-welfare-almost-impossible-get



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1. Tennessee: Welfare Checks Contingent on Poor Students’ Grades

In April, Tennessee state Sen. Stacey Campfield (R-Knoxville) proposed “reducing TANF payments for parents or caretakers of TANF recipients whose children fail to maintain satisfactory progress in school.” Currently Sen. Campfield’s bill, HB 261, is still making its way through Tennessee’s legislature, having recently been assigned to the Ways and Means Subcommittee on July 11. Even though Tennessee's legislative session ended April 19, Sen. Campfield told AlterNet the Tennessee legislature would have a special committee to review his proposal this summer.


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2. Texas and Kansas: Drug Testing

This year, Kansas and Texas enacted suspicion-based drug testing for welfare recipients.


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3. Ohio: Diverting TANF Dollars to Anti-Choice Groups

Nobody likely anticipated that the cash assistance program would ever support anti-abortion groups, but that is exactly what is happening in Ohio. The Buckeye state, which received $777 million in TANF funding for this fiscal year, is directing some of those funds to crisis pregnancy centers.

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4. North Carolina, Texas: Cuts and Restrictions on Long-term Unemployment Benefits

Assistance programs like TANF work best when the economy is also doing well, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. However, attacks on welfare are coming alongside attacks on long term unemployment benefits. Texas, mentioned above as requiring drug testing for welfare recipients, also enacted drug testing as a condition for unemployment insurance benefits.

[mick063]

1. Culling the population through poverty.

It is a political/economic strategy. Self deportation at the state level.

An answer to population pressures and apparently more palatable then abortion or birth control. Population growth requires investment in government infrastructure. Stop the investment as a solution to stop population pressure.

[marmar]

2. k/r