Don’t make War on Poverty into War on the Poor

Shaming people who are poor and need help for their children hardly delivers the aid they require or the results society wants — which is to lift people out of poverty. Yet too many U.S. programs designed to help those in need are unnecessarily cumbersome, intrusive and less focused on helping than on finding ways to deny assistance.

Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, over the years, has turned into a War on the Poor.

Take the federal requirements of a bedrock welfare program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, often known by its acronym, TANF.

Because of “reforms” 25 years ago, the program requires recipients — usually single mothers — to answer intrusive and often demeaning questions about their personal lives to qualify for assistance. States are required to ask these questions to receive anti-poverty block grants from the federal government. Shaming is built into the system.

A sobering piece by the nonprofit investigative journalism newsroom ProPublica showed how in New Mexico, the federal requirements are carried out by state Human Services Department workers to the detriment of families — and most of all, children.

The intent makes sense, at least at first glance. The government requires moms who need assistance to identify a child’s father. If dads (and usually, it is a father) are paying child support, the moms and children might need less government aid. But what sounds good in principle falls short in reality, ProPublica’s interviews with aid recipients discovered.

A woman might have an uneasy relationship with the father of her child. He could be abusive. Even in the best of circumstances, the process is demeaning. Women have to answer questions about their sexual history and at times, children are forced to submit to genetic tests.

In the article, which appears today in The New Mexican, women described how the state seemed more interested in chasing down dads than helping kids. One woman was told if she would not identify the father of her baby, there would be no assistance.

The initial conversations were followed up with a form in the mail requiring her to list her “baby’s father’s current and former addresses; his employer’s address; his vehicle’s make, model, year, color and license plate number and the state where it was registered; his bank account number; any real estate or other assets he might have; and the addresses of his mother, father and other relatives and friends.” All this to receive some $357 a month in aid, necessary to help the young mother pay a motel bill and replace possessions lost in a fire.

The state is following the requirements of the 1996 welfare reform bill, which mandates states must track down parents who aren’t paying child support. Not necessarily to help children, though. States generally pocket those payments, reimbursing themselves for handing out welfare checks.

A ProPublica analysis of federal Office of Child Support Enforcement Statistics found federal and state governments seized more than $1.7 billion in child support from fathers in 2020 because moms and kids had received welfare. This, during a pandemic when so many struggled to get by.

No one believes fathers should not pay child support. But laws should be written with the best interests of the children in mind. What’s best for kids is that they have regular meals, a place to live and parents who are not stressed about making ends meet.

The entire program, from the federal level down to actions of state bureaucrats, should be reformed.

Two Democratic senators want to reform the law at the federal level, too. They will be introducing legislation in the fall to forbid states and the federal government from keeping child support to recover welfare costs.

In Colorado, a 2017 state law now allows all monthly child support payments to go directly to children. The government has stopped trying to pay itself back, in other words. The law’s impact? Parents who know their dollars will reach their children tend to pay support using the official system rather than sending money as they feel like it. They keep their jobs, too, and are more likely to acknowledge paternity. All of this helps kids.

And in the end, helping kids has to be the goal.