WXXI: Anti-Poverty Groups Seek Incease in Welfare Grant (2008-09-18)

Anti-poverty groups are once again asking Governor David Paterson to increase the state's welfare allowance, which has not been raised in nearly two decades. They say the darkening economic times have made the need even more urgent.

The groups say the basic public assistance grant, at around $290 a month for a family of three, has not been increased since 1990, and stands at less than 50% of the federal poverty level.

Mark Dunlea, with Hunger Action Network, says in those 18 years, a whole generation of children have been raised , while prices for basic items, like clothing and school supplies, have gone up by a much higher margin.

"It's been an unfair situation to allow so many children to live in absolute poverty and absolute neglect," Dunlea said.

The request, by more than 50 anti-poverty and religious groups, comes as a study by SUNY's Rockefeller Institute finds that states all across the nation are spending less on cash assistance and basic social services to the country's poorest.

The study's author, Thomas Gais, says for a time in the 1990's, after the federal welfare reform act, states were spending more money on services like child care and transportation assistance, to help transition recipients to work.

He says now, though, those programs are "diminishing year after year".

Gais says the decreases in government spending on welfare don't mean that more people on public assistance have gotten good paying jobs. There are still great numbers of people living in poverty.

"It really means that there's less real dollars available for poor people in the Untied States," Gais said.

The trend holds true for New York as well, which is now spending over $400 less per welfare recipient, on average, than in the past.

The study found that one type of spending on the neediest has increased. Medicaid budgets have grown, as states have acted to expand health care to the working poor. Gais says the requirements for obtaining government health care are also much less stringent that for receiving welfare benefits. But he says with a growing recession and less money to go around, the increased health care spending could actually leave fewer resources for other types of aid.

Dunlea, with Hunger Action Network, says there is funding available to increase the public assistance grant in New York. When the federal welfare reform act passed in the 1990's, the state was eligible for a surplus fund of around $1 billion dollars a year. That money has been used for various programs to enhance services for the working poor over the years, including tuition assistance for college students, which welfare recipients aren't eligible for. But Dunlea says some of the surplus could be used to provide families with what they need to survive- more cash. He says volunteer groups can't make up the difference.

"Frankly, the bags of food we give out at our food pantries and soup kitchens are inadequate," said Dunlea, who said the volunteer groups can only provide less than half of the food that people need.

He predicts that with rising heating costs, the situation is only going to get worse.

Arguments over how to spend the federal welfare surplus are likely to escalate in the coming months, as the collapse of the financial markets on Wall Street swells the state's multi billion dollar deficit even higher.

Governor David Paterson, who represented Harlem in the State Senate for two decades, has been supportive of raising the welfare grant in the past, but he did not move to raise cash assistance in the state budget he oversaw, in his first weeks in office last spring.