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The Pope said it well, America is a nation that practices "Capitalism Without Responsibility." This
Thanksgiving, many families trimmed from the welfare and food-stamp rolls will be eating at soup
kitchens and homeless shelters.
"Welfare numbers may be going down, but our numbers are going up," Sister Johnice, director of
a soup kitchen in Erie County, N.Y. This is occurring around the country. For instance, in
Cuyahoga County, Ohio, welfare rolls have fallen 34 percent since 1994. Last year, the number of
hot meals served at food programs jumped 32 percent, according to the Greater Cleveland
Committee on Hunger.
Already, good programs and shelters are overwhelmed with soaring demand. In its 1997 survey of
hunger and homeless families shelter because of inadequate resources. One out of five people
needing food were turned away. By contrast, see how much money goes to our wealthiest
corporations as subsidies for mismanagement.
The federal government spends $125 billion a year of our tax dollars on corporate welfare.
That's more than the federal government spent in 1994 on Aid to Families with Dependent
Children, Supplemental Security Income, food programs, housing benefits, education aid,
child care, job training, the Earned Income Tax Credit and other programs serving low-income people, all put together.
Soup kitchens and food pantries surveyed by the New York City Coalition Against Hunger turned
away almost 59,000 people in January 1998. More than half of them were children.
But even if these food programs could serve every hungry person, they would not suffice. A new
study by Project Bread and the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Tufts University makes clear that
emergency food programs are no substitute for the regular, nutritious diet children need for healthy
development. Undernourished children are more susceptible to illness and have more difficulty in
school.
New waves of welfare cutoffs will keep adding to the problem. In Massachusetts, for example,
7,000 families face a December 1 welfare cutoff - a terrible time to deprive people of support just
as winter sets in. Massachusetts has been dangerously stingy about granting time-limit waivers.
Under time-limits for "moving from welfare to work," states are moving welfare recipients off
welfare even if they can't find work or child care. According to Mary Baker and Elaine Fersh of
Parents United for Child Care, in Massachusetts "many families leaving the welfare rolls are
offered only 'informal child care' - $2-per-hour baby-sitting by unlicenced and often untrained
care-givers.
When they do find jobs, former welfare recipients typically earn less than $10,000 a year. That's
not enough to support a family. They're joining the growing ranks of workers earning less than a
living wage. The Project Bread/Tufts University survey found that more than one out of four
adults requesting emergency food assistance were employed.
The government abolished the wrong welfare program in 1996 - the one serving the nation's most
impoverished women and children. The welfare system serving some of the nation's wealthiest
corporations - spotlighted recently by Donald Barlett and James Steele in Time magazine -
continues to grow.
The federal government spends $125 billion a year of our tax dollars on corporate welfare.
That's more than the federal government spent in 1994 on Aid to Families with Dependent
Children, Supplemental Security Income, food programs, housing benefits, education aid,
child care, job training, the Earned Income Tax Credit and other programs serving low-income people, all put together.
How many Thanksgivings will pass before we can celebrate the end of corporate welfare and the
end of hunger and homelessness here in the richest nation on Earth?
Portions of this article came from Holly Sklar's Chaos or Community? Seeking Solutions, Not
Scapegoats for Bad Economics, (South End Press, 1995,) and her commentary to The
Progressive Media Project.
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