[Army_of_One]

No Welfare Abuse Here, Part 1
By Matthew VanLandingham (12/10/03)

One of my left-leaning friends, to her dismay, has finally started to feel the righteous indignation so familiar to hard-working taxpayers, and so alien to the liberal, redistribution-of-wealth contingent.

“I'm all for peace and love and helping my neighbor, and stuff. But this is ridiculous, she said last week.

The object of my friend's ire is a female acquaintance, whom I will call Janine. Janine is a single mother of three children, struggling to survive while working 40 hours a week at a mere seven dollars per hour. She is a proud woman who boasts of her self-reliance and ability to support her family without the aid of Welfare or child support.

Of course, Janine does occasionally require a little assistance. For example, the state-affiliated Family Independence Agency (FIA), which administers the government food stamp program and Medicaid, provides Janine with $300 worth of groceries every month, an amount which she has a hard time spending unless she buys expensive cuts of meat. She purchases considerably more than she can use in a month, so she freezes the excess until a time of less abundance.

It's not like this woman is buying hamburger and stew meat, my friend exclaimed. She buys steaks and roasts. She spent $45 on three pounds of ribs! I can't afford to eat like that and I *earn* my money.

The FIA also provides Janine and her three children with medical insurance, to the tune of another $300 per month. This coverage, of course, includes both Dental and Vision, for it would be unseemly to make our single mothers pay for their own children's glasses.

“I don't even have the option of Vision or Dental in my company insurance plan, and she gets it for free! my friend said. Not only that, but she doesn't even have to pay for her utilities.

It seems that the FIA also provides emergency relief for its clients who are faced with non-payment shutoff notices on their phone, gas and electric services. In the winter, when heating costs are high, clever Janine stops paying her bills until the utility issues her a shutoff warning. Then she ambles down to the FIA office and has them pay it for her. Of course, it is not just that simple: The lines are horrendous.

She actually complained about how inconvenient it was to stand in line for three hours behind all the other people scamming free utilities, my friend growled. It's unbelievable.

Proud, self-reliant Janine rents a modest, three-bedroom house which she affords through the Housing Choice Voucher program, commonly known as Section 8. Section 8 is administered by a local Public Housing Agency branch, which, according to the HUD website, “executes a Housing Assistance Payment contract with the property owner. This contract authorizes the PHA to make subsidy payments on behalf of the family. If the family moves out of the unit, the contract with the owner ends and the family can move with continued assistance to another unit.

Janine's take depends on her monthly income, but at her current level of employment, Janine receives a $400 per month subsidy. However, during a recent 9-month-long period of unemployment, her effective rent payment was a very affordable “zero,” as provided by Title 24, Chapter 9, Part 982, Section 8 of the United States Administrative Code.

Fortunately, although Janine's housing voucher subsidy was greatly reduced upon her return to the workforce, by virtue of her employment she is now eligible for subsidized child care. The County Child Care Coordination (4C) Program currently pays her child care provider $150 per week (or $600 per month) to babysit her three children part time. The oldest child is thirteen years old. Janine has been on public assistance since he was born.

There is more good news. Because reliable transportation is crucial for Janine's continued employment, the FIA provides her with a $500 per year allowance for car repairs. This allowance, I am certain, is vital for the continued maintenance required to keep Janine's 2000 Dodge Stratus in tip-top shape, especially now that the warranty is almost up.

She makes a car payment. I think that's her only expense, my friend said.

Of course, Janine does not intend to remain on the public dole forever. She is attempting to better herself through education. She attends the local community college on a low-income full tuition grant from the state, which also covers the cost of her textbooks. She takes four classes per year at a cost of about $1100. Unfortunately, she seems not to value the opportunity provided her since she has routinely failed classes and been forced to repeat them. No matter. Don't cost nothin'! And unlike in corporate tuition reimbursement plans, when Janine fails a class she is not required to pay for it. In fact, when she resells her textbooks at semester's end she gets to pocket the cash.

It is perhaps this twice yearly windfall that has allowed Janine to afford the four television sets in her home, each equipped with either a DVD player or VCR, and each equipped with either a Nintendo64 or Playstation2 video game system. These, along with her digital cable subscription, likely provided Janine with all the entertainment she could possibly require during her nine-month stint of unemployment, as well as during the late nights she spent not doing homework for classes she did not pay for.
Were Janine a composite created to illustrate the potential hazards inherent in irresponsible and poorly managed government assistance programs, her story would still be chilling. Because she is, in fact, an actual person, and certainly not unique in her skill at squeezing the system for all she can get, her story should be a call to arms. One may, if one chooses, calculate the monthly assistance Janine receives from a variety of taxpayer-funded sources and compare her income to one's own. I have. So has my formerly liberal friend.

“You know what?” she said to me, putting down the calculator. “I think a bunch of us should stop by her house and ask if we can borrow her car. Or hang out in her Section 8 house. I think we deserve visitation rights for those three kids we pay to raise.”

At least there is no Welfare abuse going on. Well done, Janine.