{"id":356946,"date":"2018-04-16T02:32:01","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T01:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trumps-executive-order-on-welfare-is-designed-to-pit-workers-against-one-another\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T02:32:01","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T01:32:01","slug":"trumps-executive-order-on-welfare-is-designed-to-pit-workers-against-one-another","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trumps-executive-order-on-welfare-is-designed-to-pit-workers-against-one-another\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s Executive Order on ‘Welfare’ Is Designed to Pit Workers Against One Another"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n

On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that sums up how little he understands about poverty in America.<\/p>\n

The order, titled \u201cReducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility,\u201d carries little weight by itself. It directs a broad range of federal agencies to review programs serving low-income people and make recommendations on how they can make the programs harder to access, <\/a>\u00a0all under the guise of \u201cwelfare reform.\u201d<\/p>\n

The order\u2019s main purpose appears to be smearing popular programs in an effort to make them easier to slash\u2014in part by redefining \u201cwelfare\u201d to encompass nearly every program that helps families get by. To that end, the order reads as follows:<\/p>\n

\n

The terms \u201cwelfare\u201d and \u201cpublic assistance\u201d include any program that provides means-tested assistance, or other assistance that provides benefits to people, households, or families that have low incomes (i.e., those making less than twice the Federal poverty level), the unemployed, or those out of the labor force.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Redefining everything from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps) to Medicaid to Unemployment Insurance to child care assistance as \u201cwelfare\u201d has long been part of conservatives\u2019 playbook, as my colleague Shawn Fremstad has pointed out.<\/a> The term has a deeply racially charged<\/a> history in the United States, evoking decades of racial stereotypes about poverty and the people who experience it. By using dog-whistle terms like welfare, Trump is erecting a smokescreen in the shape of President Reagan\u2019s myth of the \u201cwelfare queen\u201d\u2014so we don\u2019t notice that he\u2019s coming after the entire working and middle class.<\/p>\n

The fact is, we don\u2019t have welfare in America anymore. What\u2019s left of America\u2019s tattered safety net is meager at best, and\u2014contrary to the claim in Trump\u2019s executive order that it leads to \u201cgovernment dependence\u201d\u2014it\u2019s light-years away from enough to live on.<\/p>\n

Take the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. SNAP provides an average of just $1.40 per person per meal<\/a>. Most families run out of SNAP by the third week of the month because it\u2019s so far from enough to feed a family on.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s housing assistance, which reaches just 1 in 5 <\/a>\u00a0eligible low-income families. Those left without help can spend up to 80 percent of their income on rent and utilities each month, while they remain on decades-long waitlists <\/a>\u00a0for assistance.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the program that replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children in 1996 when Congress famously \u201c[ended] welfare as we know it.\u201d Fewer than 1 in 4 poor families <\/a>\u00a0with kids get help from TANF today\u2014down from 80 percent in 1996. In fact, in several states, kids are more likely <\/a>\u00a0to be placed in foster care than receive help from TANF.<\/p>\n

Families who do receive TANF are lucky if the benefits even bring them halfway to the austere federal poverty line. For example, a Tennessee family of 3 can only receive a maximum of $185 per month, or a little over $6 a day.<\/p>\n

Yet TANF is the program Trump is holding up as a model\u2014hailing 1996 \u201cwelfare reform\u201d as a wild success\u2014despite the fact that TANF has proven an abject failure<\/a> both in terms of protecting struggling families from hardship and in helping them get ahead.<\/p>\n

In particular, this executive order directs agencies to ramp up so-called \u201cwork requirements\u201d\u2014harsh time limits on assistance for certain unemployed and underemployed workers\u2014which were at the heart of the law that created TANF. But decades of research since TANF was enacted show that work requirements<\/a> do not help anyone work.<\/p>\n

Make no mistake: Pushing for \u201cwork requirements\u201d is at the core of the conservative strategy to reinforce myths about poverty in America. That \u201cthe poor\u201d are some stagnant group of people who \u201cjust don\u2019t want to work.\u201d That anyone who wants a well-paying job can snap her fingers to make one appear. And that having a job is all it takes to not be poor.<\/p>\n

But in reality, millions of Americans are working two, even three jobs to make ends meet and provide for their families. Half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and don\u2019t have even $400 in the bank. And nearly all of us\u201470 percent<\/a>\u2014will turn to some form of means-tested assistance, like Medicaid or SNAP, at some point in our lives.<\/p>\n

Trump claims his executive order is intended to eliminate \u201cpoverty traps.\u201d But if he knew anything about poverty\u2014aside from what he\u2019s learned<\/a> on Fox News\u2014he\u2019d know the real poverty trap is the minimum wage, which has stayed stuck at $7.25 an hour for nearly a decade. That\u2019s well below the poverty line for a family of two\u2014and not nearly enough to live on. There isn\u2019t a single state<\/a> in the country in which a minimum-wage worker can afford a one-bedroom apartment at market rate. Many low-wage workers are forced to turn to programs like Medicaid and SNAP to make ends meet, because wages aren\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n

If Trump were really trying to promote \u201cself-sufficiency\u201d\u2014a concept he clearly doesn\u2019t think applies to the millionaires and billionaires to whom he just gave massive tax cuts<\/a>\u2014he\u2019d be all over raising the minimum wage. In fact, raising the minimum wage just to $12 would save $53 billion<\/a> in SNAP alone over a decade, as more low-wage workers would suddenly earn enough to feed their families without nutrition assistance.<\/p>\n

Yet there\u2019s no mention of the minimum wage anywhere in Trump\u2019s order to \u201cpromote opportunity and economic mobility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which brings us back to the real purpose of this executive order: divide and conquer.<\/p>\n

Trump and his colleagues in Congress learned the hard way last year how popular Medicaid is when they tried to cut it as part of their quest to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And it\u2019s not just Medicaid that Americans don\u2019t want to see cut. Americans overwhelmingly oppose <\/a>\u00a0cuts to SNAP, housing assistance, Social Security disability benefits, home heating assistance, and a whole slew of programs that help families get by\u2014particularly if these cuts are to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. What\u2019s more, as polling<\/a> by the Center for American Progress shows, Americans are less likely to vote for a candidate who backs cuts.<\/p>\n

By contrast, vast majorities of Americans across party lines want to see their policymakers raise the minimum wage; ensure affordable, high-quality child care; and even enact a job guarantee to ensure everyone who is able and wants to work can find a job with decent wages. These sentiments extend far beyond the Democratic base to include majorities of Independents, Republicans, and even Trump\u2019s own voters.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why rebranding these programs as welfare is so important to Trump\u2019s agenda. Rather than heed the wishes of the American people, Trump\u2019s plan is\u2014yet again\u2014to tap into racial animus and ugly myths about aid programs in order to pit struggling workers against one other. That way, he can hide his continued betrayal of the \u201cforgotten men and women\u201d for whom he famously pledged to fight.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Via Common Dreams<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that sums up how little he understands about poverty in America. The order, titled \u201cReducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility,\u201d carries little weight by itself. It directs a broad range of federal agencies to review programs serving low-income people and make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":356947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-356946","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}