Legislation Would Limit Cash Assistance to 48 Months: MyFoxDETROIT.com
- As many as 14,000 families face life-time cut-off of cash benefits, food stamps and health insurance Oct. 1 as Senate votes on immediate effect of HB 4409-4410
- MARCH IN DETROIT THURS. AUG. 25 CADILLAC PLACE
Gov. Rick-tator Snyder faces mass protest in Benton Harbor at Blossom-Time Parade/Photo by Brett Jellinek
By Diane Bukowski
Aug. 24, 2011
DETROIT—As this article goes to press, the Michigan Senate is voting to give immediate effect to two bills that will cut the last life-line to housing, food, and medical care that as many as 14,000 families in Michigan have effective Oct. 1. The bills will then go to Gov. Rick(tator) Snyder for the final blow of the guillotine, his signature.
Clinton initiated national "welfare reform" that led to Michigan cut-off
“The four-year time limitation is part of TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families), the welfare “reform” bill that was passed in 1996 under the administration of Bill Clinton,” Marian Kramer of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization (MWRO) wrote in an earlier article posted on VOD at http://voiceofdetroit.net/2011/07/14/michigan-to-throw-12600-families-off-welfare-who-will-be-next/ . “However, it was left up to the states as to when they would implement this part of the bill. Some states rushed to implement it and others tended to leave the time limitation alone.”
Kramer explained further, “Come October 1, 12,600 families will be cut off the rolls. The family unit will also lose their insurance and their food stamps. Then every month, more people will be eliminated. If you have been on welfare for say three years, you only have one year left.”
The MWRO is asking everyone affected, and all of those who support them, to come out to the Resurrection March described above. They are also working to organize a National March on Washington as part of the Assembly to End Poverty, to be held June 30, 2012. (See flier at end of article.)
Families on TANF received the following letter from Michigan’s Dept. of Human Services Director Maura Corrigan Aug. 9.
“Where will those 12,000 people go the next day? Where are they going to go to get food? State Sen. Morris Hood (D-Detroit) asked on July 13, when the Senate passed the original legislation described in the VOD link above.
Detroit homeless shelter; currently famlies in these shelters still receive food stamps and health care from the state, but many will be cut-off Oct. 1, and more not currently in shelters will flood them as they lose their housing
“They have fallen upon hard times because of the economy and loss of jobs. It still begs the question of what’s going to happen to them the next day. Just imagine yourself sitting there with your children, your wife, your family, and a parent you are taking care of with no food on the table. You have babies crying because they are hungry and don’t have any food. What is a man or a woman sitting at that table going to say to their children when they say they are hungry? What are you going to say? Well, you are just going to have to go without because I don’t have the resources. . . . .”
Michigan State Sen. Morris Hood III
To those who are not on assistance, Hood said, “You are only one paycheck from being in that same situation. You are only one mishap in your life from being in that situation. In the twinkling of an eye your life can change. Think about it, you may be in that situation. What are you going to do and what are you going to say to your children?”
Many have forgotten, however, that it was Governor Jennifer Granholm who signed the original legislation leading to the current bills in December, 2006, after she had pledged on the campaign trail not to do so. (Click on http://blogpublic.lib.msu.edu/index.php/granholm-signs-off-on-various-bills-making-them-law-and-vetoes-others?blog=5 for source of citation below.)
Then Gov. Jennifer Granholm with Andy Dillon, now Snyder's chief hatchet man as state treasurer, and his youngest daughter Teagan in 2004 in Dearborn Heights; his family won't suffer.
She signed “The measure to limit Michigan welfare recipients to four years of cash assistance, with several exceptions, starting in October 2007. The measure also sets up penalties for recipients who dont comply with work or educational requirements. Recipients could apply for a fifth year of cash assistance if they havent been sanctioned and the job market is down.”
Republican legislators only added draconian provisions this year that further penalize poor and working people, as described in the VOD story link in the second paragraph of this article.
Granholm’s role, and that of Clinton in 1996, make it clear that the battle for the very lives of poor and working people in Michigan is not a battle between Republicans and Democrats. They have conspired since the Clinton era to bring about the further chaos, devastation and suffering that is about to happen in Michigan this October.
Dr. Cornel West on Poverty Tour in Detroit Aug. 8/Photo by Diane Bukowski
“In the name of deregulating markets, that leaves poor people socially neglected, economically abandoned, poor people have been demonized, poverty has been demonized,” Dr. Cornel West told Detroiters Aug. 8 during The National Poverty Tour he co-sponsored along with Tavis Smiley. “The line in the sand is between the greedy oligarchs and the working and poor people.”
Smiley directly criticized the debt ceiling legislation signed by President Barack Obama earlier this month.
“We have a piece of legislation that did not extend unemployment, did not close corporate loopholes, did not raise revenue on the rich or lucky,” Smiley said.
Tavis Smiley speaks in Detroit Aug. 8; Councilwoman JoAnn Watson sponsored the Poverty Tour's appearance.
“Corporate America got away scott free again, Wall Street got away scott free again. When these cuts [additonal cuts included in the debt ceiling legislation on TOP OF Michigan’s TANF cut-off] start to kick in, this is going to get ugly. As bad as it is right now, it’s going to get worse if we don’t find the courage annd the conviction and the commitment to speak truth about this suffering.”
Poverty Tour audience speakers including (center) Maureen Taylor, of MWRO, and Deborah Williams, of the Justice 4 Maryanne Godboldo Coalition
The large majority of people who came to hear Dr. West and Smiley in the Erma Henderson auditorium Aug. 8 were supportive and anxious to describe the travails they are facing as the budget ax, and the economic crisis created by the banks and big business, comes down on their heads.
But a small portion of those present, the most vocal of which was Ernest Johnson, formerly a high-paid executive with no assigned duties under Democratic Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano, disrupted the meeting continually. They purported to support President Obama because he is Black and a Democrat, and to focus energy on the elections in November, 2012, instead of building the mass movement of the people that Dr. West and Smiley called for.
Below is the flier for the National March on Washington which Kramer told the crowd Aug. 8 will help build that movement.
The call to action says The Assemby to End Poverty “is a coalition of 450 individuals and organizations throughout the United States. Its website is at http://www.oneclassonecause.org or it can be reached locally at 313-964-0618.
Monument to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Washington, D.C.
People also marched on Washington last week-end for the unveiling of a monument commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King was not only a leader of the civil rights movement, he was planning a national Poor People’s March on Washington when he was assassinated in 1968. He had also joined forces with the movement against the war in Vietnam, just as people today must assemble en masse to oppose all U.S. wars abroad, which are draining the country’s resources. At the forefront now is the horrendous U.S./CIA/NATO assault on the people of Libya, described in the stories below.
Audience at Poverty Tour event in Detroit Aug. 8 gives standing ovation to Dr. Cornel West and Tavis Smiley
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