Maine's welfare reform: model for the nation or cold-hearted cruelty?

Great Debates
1

Paul LePage was elected Governor of Maine in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. I wasn’t directly involved in any of that, but my understanding is that he made welfare reform a center-piece of both his campaigns and his administration. Currently, the maine.gov site lists welfare reform as one of his priorities, along with jobs, taxes, and domestic violence awareness. Generally he seems to have followed through on this campaign promise and conservative media outlets and organizations seem to have high praise for the effort. Here are some examples:

Forbes: Maine Shows How To Make Welfare Work

National Review: LePage’s Welfare Reform: Good for Maine, a Model for the Nation

Townhall: Maine is Leading the Nation in Welfare Reform

The Heritage Foundation: Maine Food Stamp Work Requirement Cuts Non-Parent Caseload by 80 Percent

Has it really been as successful as these articles make it seem, or is there some dark underside to all of this welfare reform that they’re ignoring? Would you support efforts in your state or across the nation to emulate Maine’s efforts, or would you oppose it? Do you think there’s a better way to reform welfare, or are you satisfied with the way the programs are working and don’t believe they need any reform?

2

I live next door to Maine and try to visit often. I spent part of last week in the Portland area, and I did think to myself a couple of times ( in traffic) that business seems to be booming. Went gift shopping at Old Orchard Beach one weekday, in the rain, and it took a while to find a parking space. That’s something.

That’s everything really, if you plan on sending your welfare recipients out to work in a state known for, among other things, structural unemployment. Usually in places that aren’t full of tourists and rich people. A paper mill or cannery closes and suddenly a whole town faces poverty, that sort of thing. But Maine seems to be doing well, and I’m sure the Governor deserves some credit.

Among your cites, two feature the fact that able-bodied food stamp recipients fled the rolls once work was required of them – thousands of people. But this is surely the low-hanging fruit of welfare reform, and other cites reflect that. One says 70,000 people have been removed from the food stamp roll, far above the 12,000-ish number of “able-bodied without dependent children” from the last cite, and this is due to people finding jobs. At least I hope so. It’s an equally important story that thousands of jobs were available to these people, but this isn’t surprising in the 2011-2016 time frame. It’s economics.

The same cite says 80,000 people were removed from Medicaid in the same period, and that’s where it clangs against sensibility. Those thousands of jobs came with full benefits, really? In this day and age? Yet no cite explains the feat, they chose to write about people wasting money on cigarettes instead?

Of course not. They probably just removed a lot of people from the Medicaid rolls and saved a ton of money in the budget. The head of Maine’s DHHS (cite 1) said that resources need to be protected for the truly needy. Truly needy = can’t work, so working people aren’t needy…it’s logically appealing.

Does Maine contrive its eligibility rules to avoid granting Medicaid to the working poor? Do the same people wanting to reform welfare also oppose health care subsidies, and habitually fail to see the reasons why working people might need Medicaid? I don’t know for sure but it’s likely yes to all. "Protecting resources” is such a common and strange priority when you’re the reason they are scarce to begin with.

So I’d say it’s both a model and a cruelty. A cruel efficiency.

3

Did you try to Google for a broader base of opinion? Why no cites from Sean Hannity, Washington Times or Ann Coulter? What does Alex Jones think?

4

Do you have a substantive rebuttal to the OP, or just snark?

5

Well, I see the National Review puff piece was written by the… 'chief operating officer of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services from 2014 to March 2017. He is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability’.

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6

What reforms did they actually put in place? It’s easy to just slash funding, and if your metric for how well welfare reform is working is how much it decreases spending, then that easy funding-slashing will be a resounding success. But you probably also want to look at the effect on the people.

7

It’s nothing new. They just kept optional work requirement for SNAP. It results in a lot of people who can’t get work finding other ways to get food. Makes conservatives feel warm and fuzzy, but doesn’t seem to significantly increase employment among SNAP beneficiaries.

8

SNAP otherwise-eligibles, that should say, obviously.

9

The “get work or you’re off SNAP” is nothing new or limited to Maine. I was subjected to it several years ago, but fortunately they counted my patch-work of odd jobs and day labor as sufficient employment/seeking employment. For quite a long time it’s always been “if you’re able-bodied with no dependents you have three months to either get work, enroll as a student, or prove you’re seriously looking for work”. This requirement was briefly eased in my state due to a glut of people being laid off in the Great Recession when there were about 3-4 unemployed able-bodied adults looking for work for every available job, which lasted a couple years. Once the economy picked up and there was better match between available jobs and job seekers they reinstated the three-month limit before kicking in the work/school requirement again.

But really, this at least, is not something Maine should be congratulated on or regarded as innovating.

I’ll also mention that my state made serious efforts to help people get jobs, including programs tailored to different groups as the assistance needed by a 22 year old high school drop-out without a GED is different than what is needed by someone 50 years old with an education and work experience whose prior job has been eliminated by technology/automation.

Government aid didn’t just keep me and mine fed, it also has a lot to do with why I now have a job that pays my bills, lets me save a few bucks towards retirement every month, and I no longer need government aid.

A program can be done humanely, but the devil is in the details.

10

Let’s use a stereotypical example … divorced mom of three … she has a Court Order in hand that says the father of these three has to pay $1,200 per month in child support, but he’s not paying a dime … so she has to work and earns $7/hr while her baby sitter charges $5/hr … net income of $2/hr or about $300 per month …

While she lives in abject poverty with the kids, the man lives an upper middle-class lifestyle free of the burden of feeding, clothing and housing the kids he helped make …

It’s just flat easier to give the mother $700 per month than to prosecute the man for contempt of court, and cheaper in the long run … especially if we include the costs of lodging the man in jail for any length of time …

I’ve been on the losing end of this deal … I walked into the ADA’s office one time and there were stacks of file folders four or five foot tall scattered all over her office … over 100 active cases for just one person … I got less than $500 child support over fifteen years … but luckily I’m a man and society automatically entitles a single father of three to a $35 to $50 per hour job … and free day care as long as I did the day care center’s taxes every year …

Written law says clearly the absent parent must pay their fair share of raising the kids … but we as a society refuse to see this law enforced … shame on us !!!

11

I imagine there are quite a few single fathers of three out there that are unaware of this entitlement.

To your larger point, you think better enforcement of child support / alimony payments is a solution to ‘the welfare problem’?

12

Perhaps not a final solution, our railroad infrastructure isn’t up to it.

13

Maybe it’s just the construction industry … it tends to have a greater than average number of woman-haters …

Absolutely … just doing this would cut the welfare rolls significantly … allowing for a more effective program going forward … there will still be cases where there is no other parent to tap for child support … but child support enforcement would prevent or limit cases of the government having to pay the way of children on behalf of “dead-beat” parents … reducing welfare participation would go a long way to fixing the problems …

Obviously, this will make the ‘child support enforcement problem’ much much worse … however I think the public’s perception of the problem, and their willingness to spend the tax money, would be better suited to working to solve the ‘problem of dead-beat parents’ rather than the ‘problem of welfare parents’ … some Orwellian New Speak thing …

Alas … doing the Right Thing™ is almost always the most expensive … even more so if We the People expect government to do all the work … at some point, society at large needs to ostracize these dead beat parents, this is taking food right out of the mouths of their own children, why should we stand for this terrible behavior in our midst … [/rant]

Anyway … it’s expensive feeding, clothing and housing children … if the parents won’t pay then We the People should … let’s enforce the written laws we do have, then see how much of a problem welfare is …