Clinton Attack Dog Claire McCaskill Implies Democratic Candidate Bernie Sanders Is A Communist

[PatrickforO]

114. If you've actually read the original law and its reauthorization,

you would know that it was written for the specific purpose of reducing the welfare rolls and 'to encourage marriage.'

Now, it seemed to work during the nineties and aughts because the economy was generally OK. Sure, Clinton's signature NAFTA was causing us to hemorrhage good jobs, which were being offshored in the hundreds of thousands, and those jobs - the good kind, the kind with pensions that you could raise a family on - were being replaced with lower paying service jobs.

But TANF people still found jobs because basically they get a letter that says their benefits will be cut if they do not try and find work, OR instead engage in 'volunteer' labor to 'earn' their welfare benefit. So they come in and get jobs.

But those jobs are fragile, and single mothers are economically and systematically brutalized in this nation. If you're in the first quintile of earners, what that means is that you literally cannot afford to eat nutritiously, you cannot afford to own a car and you spend the lion's share of your miniscule 'entitlement' on housing. So you get a job and try and 'make it.'

The problem is that you're a sick child away from losing your job because the kind of shitty job you can get without training is the kind of shitty job that fires people who get sick or whose children get sick. Or, your car might break down if you own one, because you can't afford maintenance on it, and then lose your job.

And if you get a raise, you might have to start paying more than that raise for your childcare which we don't adequately subsidize. And, hey, what can make your children more safe and well-balanced than being raised by people who make minimum wage?

So you know, you sound pretty right wing with that post. TANF sucks - it's a shitty program that isn't good for our economy because it has NO provision for any training, so it ends up being a revolving door. And Republicans keep cut, cut, cutting everything non-military like child care subsidies, Perkins and Pell monies - everything but subsidies for the corporate socialists in big oil and contracts for the MIC.

As to your question about why more poor families left the rolls, that trend reversed with the recent 'great' recession, when the rolls came back bigger than ever, illustrating how fragile demand for goods and services really is in our capitalist utopia. And, don't forget that some people have 'timed out' - there IS a five year lifetime limit now on TANF benefits.

And yet those we elect to uphold our interests routinely spend over a trillion a year on war, death drones, 'boots on the ground' in quagmires like Afghanistan, and domestic spying and 'security.' They don't give a shit about our interests, enid, just their profits.

That's why I'm so fervently for Bernie. He doesn't think that wanting to use OUR tax money to help Americans instead of forever wars is an extreme political position. He actually cares about our kitchen table issues, like shitty, rationed healthcare, and shrinking Social Security.

As to POC, isn't that a bit racist? Because the average person on (gasp) welfare (shudder) is WHITE. Did you know?