Welfare Reform Extension Act

[migrendel]

I must say it is shameful that we ever passed welfare reform. This is one of those issues that exposes how our nation's working class has sold its soul to the right wing.

We are all familiar with the familiar stereotype of the welfare recipient, of the stories of Jezebels who mother an enormous brood to increase their allotment, of career criminals who use it as a source of income as they pursue their dastardly endeavors. This has extraordinary staying power in our culture, but mythology, in this case the bourgeois folklore of an aspirational middle class, usually does. It is a sad fact that many people simply think that they have no obligation to the poor, that any money they earn should be theirs alone. Such a view can be safely held by a hermit, but we must remember that we live in a society. One of the sacrifices we make when we decide to live among people is an acceptance of certain foibles that befall many of us.

I would, however, like to address the ghastly exploitation of race, gender, and social class in this debate. Many Americans have a siege mentality. They feel their social and moral standards are under assault. One of these standards is that of white superiority. This began out of economic convenience, for I am sure we would all prefer to the reap the fruits germinated by the sweat on another man's brow, but it has an entirely different function in today's world.

 Much of our working class, which should support a measure to protect the basic sustenance of the poor, has been seduced by false promises. They have been told of how they are being financially squeezed by a government ladling out a brew of support to the mostly unseemly people in our society. For many, steeped in racism, their one way to act in a superior fashion, have blamed society's victims. They have blamed those who have grown up among unimaginable deprivation, reared by violence, and betrayed by many who did not care about their welfare. When such people act in a fashions deemed "anti-social", like a caged animal would run amok when freeded from its cell, no indictment is issued for the society, but the innocent are castigated. Racial minorities fall disproportionately among this class because of centuries of slavery and segregation, and some very real forms of racial discrimination that endure today. They have become scapegoats, and any measure designed to make even the most elementary improvements in their well-being, from affirmative action to slave reparations, are rejected by the multitude. They claim that minorities are unworthy, but they might also refuse to acknowledge the guilt that burdens them for tacitly accepting and thus perpetuating our racist society.

However, gender is slowly replacing race as the bete noire of this class of oppressors. When a woman bears a child out of wedlock, she is accused of harlotry, a social convention that our Calvinist forebears left us. When many suggested that family planning would be an effective remedy, this too was rejected, for one again, the poor are considered undeserving and abortion, when not used to preserve a family's honor when one's daughter is knocked up by the gardener, is outside the bounds of this stifling ethos. We begrudge poor women the means to preserve their childlessness, then we spite them for having children. Any child should be welcomed with open arms by an fair society which desires that the light of the dawn of life continues to shine, but those who so assiduously deny the right to make that choice also deny the children who come into the world because of that abscence. The spiteful air of cherchez la femme that informs this mentality while simultaneously finding men blameless is equal in its inequity to the racism at the heart of welfare reform.

The most important thing we must always bear in mind is to be charitable on a personal level. We must give of ourselves first and foremost, with open arms, but a chasm between charity and human needs will still exist, for we are not all generous. Such a gap must be bridged, and the government is the only thing which can do that. How sad that welfare reform denies it that ability.

[migrendel]

Unreformed welfare was only 1% of the national budget, far less than we give to useless missile shields, pointless public works programs, and a large group of old people who could survive on their savings without grasping for their Social Security check. The fact of the matter is that there is enough private wealth in this country to support every shiftless Faulpelz for the rest of his or her life. The only thing that stops us is an ability to countenance the suffering of others.