{"id":28366,"date":"2016-05-27T16:07:34","date_gmt":"2016-05-27T20:07:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=28366"},"modified":"2016-05-27T16:07:35","modified_gmt":"2016-05-27T20:07:35","slug":"work-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=28366","title":{"rendered":"Work Works"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday The Daily Signal<\/a> posted an article about the House Ways and Means Committee<\/a> hearing on welfare reform. The Committee is seeking a way to help poor Americans<\/a> get out of poverty.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

The hearing, titled \u201cMoving America\u2019s Families Forward<\/a>: Setting Priorities for Reducing Poverty and Expanding Opportunity\u201d examined the welfare system. One area of reform examined was work requirements for individuals receiving welfare.<\/strong><\/p>\n

…\u201cI have a personal relationship with this situation, where I started out, and my family started out, in public housing<\/a>,\u201d Rep. Diane Black<\/a>, R-Tenn., said at \u00a0the hearing. \u201cI know what hard work could do to put me to where I am today, from living in the halls of public housing to serving in the halls of Congress.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his testimony, Bragdon ( Tarren Bragdon, CEO of the Foundation for Government Accountability) used two states as examples, Kansas and Maine<\/a>, that have restored work requirements for welfare programs. In Maine, \u201cThousands of able-bodied adults leaving food stamps found jobs and increased their hours, leading their incomes to rise by 114 percent on average. And in both states, that higher income more than offset the food stamps they lost, leaving them better off than they had been on welfare,\u201d Bragdon said in his written testimony<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt turns out work works,\u201d Bragdon said. Bragdon testified that work requirements for able-bodied adults would likely deal with much of the fraud happening in the welfare system.<\/strong><\/p>\n

President Lyndon B. Johnson<\/a> introduced the idea of ‘declaring war on poverty’ in his State of the Union address in 1964. The chart below shows the impact of the legislation that followed:<\/p>\n

\"PovertyRate1959to2014\"<\/a>Although we initially made some progress, it seems as if we have lost the war on poverty. It’s time to rethink our strategy.<\/p>\n

The article concludes:<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the Ways and Means Committee passed two bills<\/a> related to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families<\/a> (TANF<\/a>) program that provides assistance to families in need.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThese bills are part of a commonsense package of proposals to ensure TANF \u2013 one of the nation\u2019s most important anti-poverty programs \u2013 effectively spends taxpayer dollars to help those most in need,\u201d a blog post<\/a> from the committee says.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Robert Rector<\/a>, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation<\/a>, says the legislation \u201cundermines work requirements\u201d in the TANF program.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cRhetoric aside, the Ways and Means Committee legislation actually undermines work requirements in TANF,\u201d Rector, who played a key role in writing the original TANF legislation twenty years ago, told The Daily Signal. \u201cA key principle of workfare is that parents who refuse to participate should have their \u00a0welfare checks halted. Ironically, the legislation financially penalizes states for doing this. The bill shifts from the successful \u2018work first\u2019 strategy embodied in the original law to a social service and training model that has a very long history of failure.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

If Congress cannot figure out something that is so completely obvious, maybe it is time for a new Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday The Daily Signal posted an article about the House Ways and Means Committee hearing on welfare reform. The Committee is seeking a way to help poor Americans get out of poverty. The article reports: The hearing, titled \u201cMoving America\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10016,3458,8827,1963,4505],"class_list":["post-28366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-president-lyndon-b-johnson","tag-temporary-assistance-for-needy-families","tag-the-heritage-foundation","tag-united-states-house-committee-on-ways-and-means","tag-war-on-poverty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28368,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28366\/revisions\/28368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}