Talking Point; Welfare

A family cover-up. A family cover-up. Talking point is a local production of WILT-L-L-T-V, Channel 12. There's a lot of people that's on welfare that you just it's just not enough, okay.

And then you get into the situation where the more children you have, the more you're going to make. I think the system is right now you have to go through a lot of rent, tape, and more to get help. A lot of people need help for just like a short period of time, it's not like a long carried out. The frustration is the first thing that comes into my mind. I have some friends who are currently in that program and for them it is just a series of frustrations. They can't get a job that makes enough money to get them out of the program, but if they get a job, they can't get the money in the program. I'd like to see the program implemented that relates to the work fair, those of them that are able to work for what they get, have them involved in some type of community service, which would hopefully cut down with some of the abuse of the system. I know graduate from college last year, it was hard to find a job that would pay my bills and somebody with kids, I know where they're going to find a job that pays everything.

So I don't think it's just welfare that needs to be changed. The ones that our own welfare would really pull themselves up, they could find them a decent job and they wouldn't have to have welfare. That's a trap. Good evening and welcome to Talking Point. What do you think of when you hear the word welfare? Idealists may say that welfare is government at its best, helping people who can't take care of themselves. Realists may counter by saying welfare is government, it's most inept, spending money year after year on programs that have failed to curb the growth of poverty. Welfare it seems is one of those places where ideals and reality meet head-on. Census Department figures show that last year the number of poor Americans stood at 35.7

million. That's an increase of over 2 million from the year before and the highest level of poverty for any year since 1964. Why is it that in spite of all the programs we've created to fight poverty and all the money we've spent, the number of Americans falling below the poverty line continues to grow. Does welfare help people or is it a trap and if it is a trap who's at fault, is it that people using the system or the people running it? Will we ever be able to declare victory in the war against poverty? Our topic this evening is the welfare system, as it is and as it might be. And joining us tonight we have three guests. Robert Weisberg is a professor of political science at the University of Illinois. His interest include public opinion and American national government and he's a member of the local business community. Joseph Antolin is the deputy director for field operations in the Illinois Department of Public Aid that department administers both federal and state welfare programs. His job involves contact between the department and the community he oversees activities

at the 130 local offices of the department across the state. And we have Anthony Halter, he's an assistant professor in the University of Illinois School of Social Work. He teaches courses in social welfare policy and planning. He's also worked in Pennsylvania and New York as a welfare policy analyst. Well, thank you all very much for coming in to talk with us. You saw the opening of the program and heard what people had to say and to me that seems to be a fairly representative cross section of the views people have about welfare. As you heard what they had to say, I'll start first with Joe because you work in the department. Do you think that they're right? Is their idea of welfare accurate? Sir, in aspects of what they said are right. I think we are moving increasingly to the concept of dual responsibilities and someone having to perform work or earn the grant. We're doing that with the general assistance program that's being called earned fair.

And with AFDC it's a little tougher because you have to deal with childcare. 67% of our families, the 230,000 families on AFDC in the state have children under six. You need to figure out how to fund, how to find preschool daycare, full time daycare before you can ask that mom to be working. The other thing I think I want to say is the fact that seems to be missing is nearly 500,000 children depend on welfare, either in assistance or for medical. One out of every three children born in the state is born as a result of the Medicaid programs coverage. One out of every two children in the city of Chicago is eligible for Medicaid services in our state. And it's mainly welfare today is mainly a children's issue. Telling. I think there are a lot of myths that a lot of people have about the welfare system and individuals on welfare.

One of the comments made by one of the people is that people just keep on having babies in order to make more money from welfare benefits. That's a real myth. The average woman who is on AFDC has less than two children is a 60% of the population that's on welfare is white. And they are victims of unemployment, desertion, separation, and domestic violence. So I think that's one myth that I'd like to bring up right in a very beginning. Let me go to Bob Weisberg and ask you the same question. Do you think those people's views of welfare are accurate? Well, I cannot speak to the technical aspects of their views. I'm not an expert on the number of people on welfare at certain characteristics. But I will speak, particularly the first gentleman who expressed the kind of frustration and exasperation. And I think that's legitimate feeling that a lot of people have. It's tough to make a living right now.

A lot of people are doing things they don't want to do. Working hours, working jobs, they don't want to really do. And they feel that there are individuals out there who have entitlements of one kind or another to have free rides. Now, that may not be technically true in every single respect, but there are a lot of people who are living in subsidized housing. I mean, participation in labor force has fallen off a lot. You can drive through these neighborhoods and you can see people milling around. And I think that reaction, I'm talking about the emotional reaction right now, should not be dismissed, should not be sort of written off as some kind of bizarre, perhaps racist, uninformed, and a misanthropic, misdirected kind of response. I mean, there really are people out there who legitimately feel, hey, I'm putting in 40 hours in a job I hate, why should somebody be out there not putting in their 40 hours and actually living a life, which isn't all that different from my own? I have to disagree with that, less than 18% of the families on welfare are in public housing.

The rest of them are competing in the same housing market as everyone else. We pay a grant of 200, and I believe it's $268 for a family of two, it's $368 for a family three a month. Now, if you think of what it takes to raise two children and to house yourself and pay rent and utilities and clothing and all the other purchases that you need to make on that amount of money a month, they're not living in the same situation as that person who was working. And they have the added problems of the increased health risks that are associated with poverty, which is statistically been proven in any number of reports, which I imagine that Tony can speak to better than I. And they have the problem, again, there's not enough childcare in this country for them to, if they wanted to, as one said, pick themselves up, it's not easy when you have a child. Let me ask you, I want to ask a different question. Go ahead.

You can areas come back and areas say, well, there's only 18% or you could say, there is many as 18%. But let's say 18%. But there's also other benefits as well, those interesting articles on the Wall Street Journal a couple of days ago shortly after release of statistics on the poverty level, which point, there are a lot of benefits that are not counted as the poverty index, such as food stamps and medical subsidies and things like that. Now, I have people who work for me who are earning less than that poverty level. And they receive no benefits for us. I know from food stamps, they pay their own rent and make their own car payment. They pay everything on their own. And my feeling is to get back to my initial point, is they have a legitimate gripe. They say, hey, I'm working. All these hours, I'm getting nothing. I'm not going to school. I'm not in a training program. I am paying $350 a month for an apartment. I am paying 100% of my food costs. In some cases, they have children. And they have a right as far as I'm concerned to express this anger. Let me pose another question. But I think it addresses the point. And let me pose to a tone of call to go back and forth. Something like, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong,

all of the any poverty programs that we have on the federal level make up something like 10% of the budget. It's a very, very small percentage. So we spend far more. We spend far more on other things. We spend far more, for example, in the SNL bailout. Why is it that welfare has such a bad reputation when we're spending so many more, so much more on other things? Why isn't people aren't up in arms about the SNL bailout, but we're spending much less on welfare. And yet it irritates people. I think it irritates people because of the fact that often there is one person or a few groups of few individuals who are on welfare who may take advantage of the system. And I'm saying that the percentage is probably less than 1% and they stand out, just like in any profession. I mean, you could look at academic professors. You could look at lawyers. You could look at doctors who have different standards. There's a whole other issue here, too. And that's how we define welfare. Welfare isn't just dealing with the poor. There

are other types of welfare. They're welfare systems for the rich. In essence, when I pay my mortgage rate, that's a form of a welfare system. I can quote Money Magazine in 1988 marched at a whole story on a couple in Pennsylvania who owned a dairy farm and they were making $70,000 a year because of a surplus of goods of dairy products. They were bought out by the United States Department of Agriculture. Over five year period of time, they would pay $146,000. They sold their herd for $35,000. And they continued to grow corn and hay. What I'm saying is subsidies may be good, but there is a question of equity here. And I think when we take a look at the individual on welfare, particularly the woman on welfare with two children who has to deal with childcare problems. And in many instances, most of these individuals who are on welfare on welfare for short periods of time. There

is employment that they go through. The job opportunity, the job that they are in last from maybe six or seven months, and they're back and forth the welfare system. They never get above that level of poverty. Is that fair about it? Is that a fair thing to say to say that we have all sorts of federal handouts? The government gives money to all kinds of people. Some of these are all over the place. So there are a lot of kinds of welfare. It's just that for some reason when people think about it. I know there's a moral to it. Go ahead and I'll come back. There's a moral dimension. In other words, for example, they feed the government by the side that homeownership is a good idea. And therefore, we will subsidize homeowners by having them ripping off on your taxes. So that's actually, I don't know if it's true today, but in the past, that was the largest single subsidy the federal government gave out by far. So that's a worthy project. We'll pay you to something worthy. But I think there's a moral dimension here, which I want to get back to. And

that is that a lot of people feel that you should, whatever you get, you should somehow earn. And welfare, particularly giving money to people who will not go to work or engage in activities and make them unable to go to work is viewed morally. I'm not going to make an economic argument. I don't want to make a moral argument on the thing. And what they are doing is reprehensible. And therefore, it's bad. Yeah. There's a part of this that I want to address. 20 years ago, 75% of the Department of Public Aid's budget went to cash grants. Today, less than 25% are to 6.6 billion dollars goes to cash grants. There has been, in that period of time, a 7.6% increase, which is hardly anything related to inflation. Where the growth in welfare is, and the common person is not realizing this, is in Medicaid. In the medical assistance. And where the biggest growth in the population of those who are receiving welfare benefits are from the working poor who

need our medical assistance and are not necessarily getting a cash grant. There is this discussion of the moral dilemma. And there's a discussion of wanting to impose things on those who receive cash benefits, but Medicaid is the big ticket in welfare. Let me follow with just a minute. I'll come back to you. Well, I suppose, maybe in my mind, one of the questions is, why is it that so often people in welfare are seen as bad people? Where does that stigma come from? I'll answer that question. I'm very concerned about this discussion of the motivator factor that people are not motivated when they're on welfare. I think that's a very, very small percentage. And I think, again, it's like anything. There are a few people that might stand out who maybe go to a job and then they don't continue unemployment, but that's a very small percentage. Most people who are on welfare don't want to be on welfare. If you take a look at the amount that people get in terms of their

cash grants, it's a very small amount of money. It's not a large sum of money. Most people would rather find a job. The problem is that there are a number of other barriers involved in that. And those barriers, particularly for AFDC, are employment issues, developing having a skill to do the job and having the educational level. Programs I ran in Pennsylvania individuals claim they went as far as 11th, 12th grade. But when we tested them, they tested it 5th and 6th grade level. So it's not just a welfare problem. It's a problem of is there a fit between the individual who's on welfare in terms of what they can do and the jobs out there. Many people have said, well, there are 100 jobs listed in the newspaper. Well, the types of jobs that are listed in the newspaper and what those people actually can do. And many instances are very different. And so I get very upset when somebody says, well, this person came to the job and they didn't show up and he automatically make this generalization that everyone is lazy or unmotivated. That is not true based

on what a number of individuals have said. And just so no one thinks that that's only true in Pennsylvania, that has been true when we've tested individuals here. The level of functional literacy is great. Many of the clients who are dependent on AFDC are essentially the failures of our educational system. And we have to remedy that before they can do the basic reading of instructions, the basic math, the kinds of things that are necessary for most jobs to think. I want to ask Bob Weiss, but I don't think anybody here takes really taking maximalist position. I am interested in knowing from you, what do you think is right with welfare? Is there anything about it? I think our system has done a marvelous job. I think that the kind of object poverty that you see overseas almost doesn't exist in the United States. I really recommend anybody who has any criticisms to travel. This is a really poor country and see what starvation

really is. And people who have no opportunity whatsoever. I think the safety net has pretty well worked, although there are some holes in it. If you look at the housing, you look at the certain level of medical care. The system has provided that. I think the problem is, and this is where I come down on this kind of saying, is this a permanent condition, or is it some sort of interim step on the way to something better? I think that's really the question we're talking about. What concerns me, and this is why I get to the moral aspects, is I see the moral aspects as a precondition for permanence. That is, once you give people a moral justification for being this way, and you give them a right to the thing. It becomes very difficult to dislodge that. Once you give a person a right, it's very difficult to take away a right. You can give a person a place to stay, and you can

say, well, you can stay until Tuesday and then out. That's fine. But if you give a person a right to housing, regardless of whatever they do, the destroy the property, or that's very difficult to take out. My concern, I think, is how do we improve the system? I mean, we're not talking about cutting out welfare or something like that. How can we get to the system so we can say, okay, fine. We have X number of people who are in the system right now. How can we reduce the number of people without increasing level of human misery? I don't think anybody wants human misery. We're not going to return to Elizabethian poor laws and work houses and things like that. I see now, which I didn't say before, the emergence of an entitlement ideology, which says that not only should we give welfare because people are in need, which I think nobody would argue with. We should give that to them because they are citizens and as citizens, they deserve welfare as part of their citizenship. It

comes along with such things as the right to drive, the right to vote, and things like that. And I think that should be dipped in the bug. I'll hold the thought just a minute because one thing I want to do here is just remind people who are watching at home that in a few minutes will be opening the phone lines for your questions and comments. The number to call is 333-345. And if you're outside the 217 area code, you may call collect. And if you want to start calling now and getting a line, that would be great. Coming back to this point where I think one of the things concerns people most about welfare is that people seem to get locked up in it. People don't, once they get on, they don't get off. And now, the question may be, is that a system problem or is that a problem with the people that are in the system? I think it was a system problem that I'm not sure when it developed, but I do think there was an ideology almost of a right to welfare that was created. I think with the administration here and what many of the state administrations are doing is trying to redefine that so that it's not an entitlement to cash without having

to do something for it. And there's a very wide variety of ways. One of the things that we were pushing with the Healthy Mom's Healthy Kids program that we were starting up later this year is to require parents to get periodic screening and immunizations. The kinds of well-baby, well-child care that are necessary to prevent greater problems with those children. That's a responsibility of the parent on welfare, or at least that's what we're trying to define it as. Similarly, in our employment and training programs, we will provide child care. We will provide medical assistance to someone. We will support them while they're going through their education or through a work fair program while they get trained, but then we expect them to move on. That's a very difficult lesson because I would say the ideology of a right to welfare has probably existed for the last 15, 20 years. So you think that it's there, do you think in people's minds that you deal with as clients, is it there? Or are you talking about it as something that exists on a policy

level? I think it started as a policy level and it exists in the minds of many of the people who are recipients. Welfare reform has been around for a long, long time. This whole phrase of welfare reform, John Kennedy started with it, something called the Amendments of 1962 with emphasis on work programs. I think the basic problem, first of all, I think most people do not want to be on welfare. Welfare is a last form of some kind of financial support. People who are on AFDC are on it for intermittent periods of time. The problem is they're on and off it because of the types of jobs that they fund. In many instances, those jobs do not provide them an opportunity to go up the ladder. So they end up going back on it. The Family Support Act is not that different from what went on in 1967 on it. There has

been always this emphasis on training and education. And that's important. But the one link that's missing is the fit between education and training and a job that fits with that training program. Oftentimes, there's a lot being offered in terms of education and training. But the next step is lacking. I want to get you all talking some more about the requirement that people receive benefits work because I think if there's any one thing that seems to top everybody's list when it comes to welfare reform, that is we require people to work. Some problems have been raised. Some questions. Are there jobs for those people? Can they get to the jobs if there are? Do they have the kind of skills that would allow them to do those jobs? And then if we say, well, maybe we'll find some kind of public sector, public service work for them to do. One's almost almost has to ask the same question. Are there's really appropriate fulfilling, meaningful jobs that we can give those people

to do in exchange for their benefits? I think part of the problem is just what you said, feeling meaningful jobs. Let me give you a very simple kind of thing. House cleaning. Now, there is a job that used to be very common in the art states, cleaning houses. I know people today who earn $10 an hour cleaning houses. That's not unusual to earn. Yet you ask people and I've spoken to people to clean your house. The answer is no. Why not? Well, nobody seems to know. I speak about my own experience. What is the problem? I have a business, for example, where we have looked for people to come in and do simple straightening, folding, and things like that. We have tried for several years to hire people to do things like that. We finally gave up. It wasn't worth

it. If you define a job as a career, a meaningful, fulfilling job, you're absolutely right. There aren't very many jobs like that, but those aren't the entry level jobs that people should be taking. Well, let's allow that maybe we can't give people a career. But what I hear Bob saying is that there are opportunities that people don't want them. If they've met all with the standard thing, there are jobs out there, but people don't want to take a job. What belies that, I think, is that 50% of those who are on AFTC move off of AFTC within two years. The numbers, when you look at a four-year period, is as high as 84%, and in county such as this one, there's a lot of movement on and off of welfare. There are other issues, too. I think it's how we define employability and what a person can and cannot do. I still go back to my original premise that people are motivated, and it is no fun

being on welfare. I think we also have to consider the fact that the majority of people who are classified as poor are children. I think that's an important part of this whole process of this whole discussion. When we take a look at the single parent on AFTC, we're talking about someone who has to have child care, someone who the other, the other barriers are educational issues. In some instances, what some studies have found, when states define employability, some of these folks really are questionably employable. They have other barriers, mental and physical health problems also. I wanted to go to some callers watching, see what sort of things are on their mind. I think first we're going to go to our line number one. Hello, go ahead. I'd like to direct

my question to Mr. Weisberg. I'd like to know, doesn't capitalism as we know in America necessitate a certain level of unemployment to keep the cost of labor down? If so, do you feel we should be moving more towards a socialized system such as Germany's or more towards some sort of mixed economy system? Well, my answer is no. I don't know whether as far as my understanding of capitalism is, is that you don't need a permanent proletariat working class to keep costs down and I don't consider the United States a purely capitalist system. Anyhow, it is a mixed system in many respects, certainly not as mixed as Sweden, but it is in many respects a mixed system. I think looking behind your question is an assumption that somehow unemployment is generated and created as a way of reducing the wages of workers. I think that's something

not true. Let's go again to the phones. Next callers up on line number three. Hello, go ahead. Yes, I'm going from Bloomington, Illinois. My question is, well, to kind of set the state, when you're in the grocery store in the checking line. The person in front of you hands in food stamps or maybe a couple of items. His items don't come to the full amount of the food stamps and he will be given point cash in return. I just wonder what was the thinking behind that and when was that started? It irritates people to see them, get coins in return when they can go ahead and buy whatever they wish with the coin.

You let us ask our representative of the Department of Public Aid? This is the way the federal program is designed and it's a function of the nominations of the food stamp dollars or coupons. The way we have determined to move away from that and it's several years down the road is to go to a debit card. It's similar to a credit card that has a food stamp account that the cashier would run through a machine and that would credit the account up to cents for what was purchased and the balance would be what was left over. We think that is going to ultimately be the way the food stamp program will go nationally. We would like to be implementing that as soon as possible in the state of Illinois. It's still, as I said, some time away though. I believe the state of Pennsylvania has already implemented the debit card system and it's fairly successful. In the city of Reading only. It was originally, as I'm sure everybody knows here, was pushed by the Department of Agriculture. It's not a welfare program at all in many respects.

It's a pay of increasing food consumption in our states and I think it's still administered by the Department of Agriculture. Any program that at least eliminates hunger for anything among children, you can't say that it's bad. There's certainly going to be abuses in the thing. I think that even though I recently saw a snippet suggesting that hunger is still rapid in the United States, my impression is from other studies that we are relatively a hunger-free society and to the extent that food stamps has contributed to that, that's a good program. In terms of some of Bob's comments, presently what's going on in the United States today, there are about 40 states that have either reduced or discontinued their welfare programs, and some individuals who are studying some of the changes in the state of Michigan are finding that there is an increase in a number of people who are not eating one two days at a time, so you may start seeing some changes in that whole thing in the next year or two. I'm told that by the way our phone lines are full, so if there are people who are trying

to call in or get a busy signal, please do be patient with us as we talk with some of the callers who are ahead of you, we will then work you in as we can. We'd like to work in as many folks as possible. The number, by the way, if you do want to call, it's a 217-333495. And we have someone else to talk with right now on line number two. Good evening. Go ahead. Hello. I think I want to address this comment. I thank two of the gentlemen from the Department of Public Aid. My son is 16 years old. He had resided with me for the last seven years. His mother and I were never married. I guess this is coming down to a family values issue. He decided that he had had enough of rules that I had established here at home in a nutshell. He decided to up and leave. When I asked his mother when I telephoned her and said, well, now, he had lived with me and I had received no support for this. I

said, how are you going to support him? She says, oh, no big deal. I'll just add him to public aid. She lives in the state of Arkansas. I guess what it is, is that I feel rather resentful of it. One, he had an out. I was supporting him and he's got an out to go and live in poverty. He had a good home here. He can't tie a 16-year-old down. It's ready to go. They're eligible to receive welfare benefits until 18 years of age. The issues go even further than that. I supported the young man with everything that I had. As I had received nothing at all in the way of support and God only knows we could have used it. There's a lot of things that I could have given him had I got in support. I guess

what I'm saying is that what's going to happen is that eventually, and I'm not encouraging this at all, but eventually the state of Arkansas is going to find out who I am. They're going to come back to me for support monies that I really feel that his mother ought to be paying them back, considering the fact that I've had to live for years without any assistance at all from her. I've had to do it on my own, but the law, as it is right now, states that I'm sorry, Mr. whoever you are, you will have to pay us back. We will take you to court. We will garnish your wages. We will attach to your federal income tax refund. As we have entered a judgment against you, I am frustrated with this. I think that the system, I realize that there are a lot of negligent fathers that the department of public

aid does need to go after them. I am an complete agreement with it. It takes two people to create a child, and both I feel should be financially responsible for that child. My fathers need to be held in account, but by God, I think that the mothers do too. I think he just took my answer is that it took two of you to create the child. The laws are that both of you are responsible until the age of 18. If the mother has no other source of income and the father does, I don't, I frankly think it's appropriate for the government to be trying to collect child support from the father or the mother. If you were in a situation when your child was living with you, where you needed assistance, whether it was cash or medical or food stamps, the department would have provided that assistance to you based on your economic eligibility the same way they would anyone else. It's hard to know, we could have a long conversation with the caller. It's hard to know

exactly what his situation is, but provided that he qualified, you're saying that he may have been eligible for some assistance. We have some, not many families where the head of the household is a father and some where there are two parents, but they're economically eligible. One of the criticisms that's been made of the system a lot is that it encourages families not to form. That is, it says, if you are a woman, you have children, we'll pay you benefits. If you marry, you won't get any more benefits. And again, one of the reform topics that's sometimes raised is that we ought to change that. We shouldn't penalize people for choosing to marry. I think that is, again, the moral underpinnings of the welfare system, that the idea was to support the mother and the children where the wage owner or the family had left. That's sort of the historic idea of the FDC program.

And it actually started, it was a program to support widows, originally, and it was a very, widows in their children. And it was a very, really small number of people. Most when welfare started in the New Deal, that was just a tiny part of the constituency. And there's still a lot of historic resistance to having two-parent households on welfare. The place where you see that most damaging is in young parents, the only time we allow two-parent households is where there's what we call a connection to the labor force on the part of the wage earning parent. One of the parents is a wage owner. Generally, when you're dealing with teen parents or parents in the early 20s, neither of them have that much work experience to qualify under our rules. So there, the federal law prevents a marriage if they need the assistance for their children. Do you, maybe I would ask Bob Weisberg and Tony might want to answer to, do you think that there's support within the political environment for making that kind of a change? Oh, yeah. I think even politicians learn after a while at certain programs are not successful.

I think if you change that, there would not be a human cry on the mass public. I think the present time with the tremendous emphasis on family values, you're probably going to see a requirement in the legislation that allows two-parent households to be on AFDC. Let's go to the phones again. We'll talk with Colin next, I think, on line number four. Hello, go ahead. Hello, I'm Champagne, Illinois. And I think the best thing that the government ever had was SEEDA. I don't know. They sent people through Dale Carnegie Motivation, Job Club. They found them good jobs, got good work experience. And then Reagan came along and canceled it. And I think we need another SEEDA. Hi, I'm Weisberg. Was SEEDA a good program? I'm not an expert on SEEDA, but it was discontinued. A lot of rap on the thing was that it was being used by communities to hire people. They would have hired any place. The

few studies I've seen other things have been largely negative. But I did not claim to be an expert on SEEDA. Tony Helper. The biggest part of SEEDA was public service employment. There were a number of other programs in the SEEDA program. But public service employment was the biggest. Like Bob said, there were some situations where people hired through SEEDA would have normally been employed in any way. But SEEDA did provide some job opportunities. And I think public service employment and I would tend to agree with the call of that public service employment is really worth looking at in terms of some of those folks who can't get jobs in the private sector. And maybe is a form where they start with public service employment and eventually find a job in the private sector. There are two successor programs. One is the JTPA program. And the other is the what we call project chance, which is the jobs program associated

with the SEEDA family's been a children program. The difference between the JTPA program and the SEEDA program is that SEEDA provided public service employment, JTPA just emphasizes training. And that doesn't that also involve some, I mean, the partnership part means that there is you want to get private business involved. That's correct. As a matter of fact, there is a council that represents the job training partnership administration called the private industry council, and normally 51 or 52% of the constituents of business. Well, again, let's continue. Let's see what's on the minds of people who are watching. We have call our online number five. Hello. I'm calling from Muhammad, Illinois, and my questions for Mr. Weisberg. And the question is, why is a welfare program or welfare services, a moral question? When it's for poor people, but it's not a moral question for middle class. And you seem to be stressing the morality as it relates to poor people yet. We have $68 billion tax

right off a welfare program for middle class or housing that we simply can't compare it off or housing for poor people. But yet, it doesn't really corrupt the middle class in terms of their values and their morals. Why is it just that we corrupt the poor people or that they would have moral problems? I think we sort of acknowledge the welfare has many faces. No, let me get done. I don't need to address that by making a more direct comparison than home mortgage subsidies. That is the veterans programs. The United States, as we all know, is a very elaborate system of veterans programs. We have veterans hospitals and we have all kinds of programs for veterans. In a sense, a very elaborate welfare system within the Department of Defense involving subsidized homes. Almost everything you can possibly think of outside is in there. And people don't object to that. I have heard nobody complain about pensions for veterans

and health care for veterans and things like that. And you ask, but why is that the case? And the answer I think is most people feel, well, the veterans have served their country. They have done something for their country. Therefore, they are getting this as a reward for doing something good. And I emphasize the reward element of the thing. In other words, nobody is saying you shouldn't get a reward. You keep your streets clean, maybe you get a reward. I think the problem is, is the one of having done something, that's the moral dimension to me is the tie of what you have done for your benefit. It morals the side of it. I mean, isn't one of the dilemmas we have that one of the allies that we have is that poor people don't have a very powerful political constituency. They don't lobby for themselves. They don't have very much clout. And there are a lot of people in line ahead of them that have more clout. And when 67% of them are children, we don't vote at all. I take issue with that. I really feel very strongly that that's not true. The constituency

is very clear. That's public bureaucracy. There are a lot of people, just like the educational bureaucracy, is the advocacy of children in the class. And they're saying the interests are the same. The interests are related. But I think that there are lots of people out there who make their living. And this is not negative. It's just a fact of life. There should be people out there who make their living. That's probably the best connection you have in advocating somebody. If you're bread and butter depends on someone else's welfare, you will be a good advocate for that person. But I think we should not forget that a lot of people in the United States do well by these welfare programs. And they are the interests of the program. Yeah, Bob has been kind enough not to say it. But there are a lot of people who would say that the system has grown so large that it has taken on life of its own and that incense the size, complexity, the is a problem and that you folks are end up being the constituency and not really the people that you serve.

Well, it's interesting. One of the biggest, smallest populations that we serve are some 60,000 individuals in nursing homes. It costs nearly a billion dollars a year. The growth of that program is going to, as the population ages, is going to be great in the future years. Yet it's routine that middle-class families, when their parent is now in a situation, an important situation that they have to go into nursing home, will try to figure out a way to make them medicate eligible. And there is no objection either. And it is right. I don't know who is the beneficiary or who are the advocates. I mean, I think the beneficiaries are very diverse in the program. A very powerful nursing home-loving, you know, it says too. Those people are well-heeled. Yeah, I'd like to just comment on the whole political issue of the poor. I think it also, if you take a look at some of the difficulties, some of these folks are facing. When you look at a single parent with a child living in a homeless shelter, I think that's the last concern about being, getting politically involved, and I think in many instances,

a lot of these folks have significant problems in that area. I just want to go back with the size of our grants, with the needs of the family, they did a life, consumes most of what our clients can deal with. And so they are not politically posed through. Let's go back to the phone again. I think next step we have to call our in line number six. Good evening. Go ahead. You have to call it there in line six. Maybe not. We probably got some other folks. We've got line one. Instead, hello, line one. All right, you doing, Dave. Good. Thanks. Listen, first of all, I'd like to say I definitely disagree that welfare is a right. I also think the premise of one of your panelists says that people are unhappy about being a welfare. I think that maybe one of the problems that people are becoming numb and they're not unhappy about being a welfare. In fact, they're exacerbated about being a welfare.

Several examples of people I know. I'd like to give you the example. There's been two times in me and my wife's marriage that we both could have qualified for welfare. We both have us working our way through college and also in my current job now. I was raised on the premise that you should work. If a man doesn't work, he shouldn't eat and I'm talking about healthy men or a woman. I refuse to get on welfare to take handouts from the government. Me and my wife, we buckle down and work as hard as we possibly could and we stayed off welfare. I'm so proud about that. Not looking in a disagree with your panelists also saying that a single mother in a situation like that, my heart goes out to him. But I definitely think you fund that some minority. That's the less percentage of people

on welfare. I don't have any statistics back it up. It's probably 5% to 10% of the people on welfare. Anyway, my question is, I always just talk about the government. You have to provide job training and everything like this. What happened to the American will of, hey, let the people motivate yourself if they want job training. So you'll go get it. We take your point. Is there something about the system that has destroyed? People's wilted to achieve? I greatly sympathize with the person who just called on this point about people doing things themselves. I mean, I speak to this as a person who has tried this on several occasions. You can dismiss this as one person's experience, one person's impression. But on several occasions I have tried to teach people skills. The oldest system in the world is the apprenticeship system learning on the job. I mean, long before government

programs existed, you had come to the job, show up on Monday and I'll teach you how the job works. I have had and the people who I've employed who have done this as well, just frustration after frustration in trying to do this with people. Now you can dismiss this out of hand. But when I speak to other people in the business community here, they will confirm this. Yes, we tried this. We tried to show them how to do this sort of thing. We gave everything. But they didn't seem really all that interested. And I don't see how, if you fail on the job, why you would succeed in school? What's wrong with what Bob says? Well, anecdotally, there are those cases. anecdotally, the department also hired a variety of women that they trained in clerical positions and found that they were among the most motivated of our workers. And in one of the few longitudinal studies that exist in the country is a program in Chicago and public housing and Cabrini Green called Project Match. And they have found what you've said to be somewhat true that people may not be trainable

or may have difficulty for a whole variety of cultural reasons that we don't entirely understand to do well on the job, but they need to better on the second job. They need to better on the third job, but it's not a question of not wanting to work. It's not necessarily knowing the rules of behavior at work. The Echolera also said that something like 10 percent of those on welfare are mothers and children. That's just flat out wrong. It's close to about 6 or 7 percent. Our two parent families on welfare, everyone else, our single mothers and children, our single parents. There was a program for single adults or childless adults called the general assistance program that we ended this past legislative session. I'm looking up to that. I, in my own experience, place a big difference between public and private organizations. And I'm not against people having jobs. I think it's a wonderful thing for their own self-sets of self-worth, independently of the income, the income

is certainly important. But I would draw a distinction between public jobs and private jobs. And I work in both fields. I mean, I see both. The project match was private jobs, because we're not public jobs. Well, my experience is that the university, okay, is that there are different criteria for employment than in the private sector. A large scale public bureaucracies, I think, are in some reason more forgiving. I mean, they have different settings that are wrong. They're more forgiving in certain aspects. Small private sector positions are less forgiving. I mean, you have, you have 10 employees and three of them are doing poorly. It's a serious problem. My concern is not simply finding jobs for these people. You can always create public sector jobs. My concern is these are productive jobs in the private sector. I'd like to kind of respond to the call. We've touched on this, but I'd like to speak in defense of the single parent. I think you also have to consider the child. And I think

if you take a look at the number of folks that are on AFDC, they're on AFDC for intermittent periods of time, over 50 percent, as was indicated on usually for less than two years. And in many instances, it's on AFDC into a job. On AFDC into a job. And the reason a job changes is because of either child care problems, problems with the children. It could be a variety of different things. So it's not just a question of laziness. As a matter of fact, what AFDC comes for a lot of these people is an unemployment insurance of an essence last resort. Often times, the types of jobs these people get do not bring them above the poverty level. And some of those jobs are only for short periods of time. There are a variety of reasons why this occurs. But I want to emphasize that a lot of it isn't just because of lack of motivation, but because of a concern for a lot of other issues that children being one.

We have a little less than five minutes left and I want to try to include at least one more call or so. We'll go to line number three. Hello? Go ahead, please. Hello. Yes. Yes. I'm calling for Rihanna. How much does public aid take in in a year's time? How much from the tax money? What is the yearly income that public aid gets? What? Can you, you know, what your budget is? Yeah, I do, right? Well, I can tell you what, I don't know when Illinois, but in general, I can tell you what the budget is for AFDC along the whole budget. What percentage is a part of the state budget? I believe it's somewhere in the area of 3.4% and previously for general assistance of the total state budget was less than 1%. Our budget is 6.6 billion, 1.6 billion of that comes from a hospital assessment. The remainder is majority of the remainder is from general revenue funds. Most of the programs are matched 50 cents on the dollar by the federal government. Some a little

bit higher, some a little bit lower. And as I said, 75% of that is for the provision of medical services, the payments, the dollars go to doctors, hospitals, nursing homes and other providers of medical care. So trying to squeeze just one more call. We'll go, I think, to line number two. Hello. Go ahead, please, but we'll have to ask you to be brief. Yes, I'd rather not say where I'm calling from, but the two gentlemen in the middle have made me absolutely curious. It's like they're not living in the real world with the situation. It was these people and what they're like to work with. I work with public gay people every day. We're announcing the third generation on it. It's a way of life for them. Their attitude is not enough. It's being done for them. The age of the recipient is becoming younger all the time. Their attitude is they are not interested in working.

I see a lot of science and Sanskrit food places that have worked available. I'll find an Oscars window the other day. I'll work available. I know that there are delivery services that you can deliver parts, stock shelves, clean houses. They show up for two days and not again. I hit to have to cut in and you'll be willing to have a lot of time. I want to give the guests a chance to respond. When I used to work for the Department of Social Services in New York State, at times I didn't feel that different from you. Based on a lot of information that has been done throughout this country, it seems that the intergenerational idea that will pass on from one generation to another is probably approximately 5%. It's not as big of a problem as a lot of people make it out to be. Well here's probably where we part company. I think the intergenerational problem and we

think in our department that it is a big problem. As I said, we are trying to address exactly what you're raising. There are too many people who think it's an entitlement. The only way we can move away from that entitlement is to help the parents, require the parents to embrace certain responsibilities towards their children, towards society, whether it's in terms of the good health of their children, supporting them in the education, or requiring that the person be involved in the training program and employment programs so that they move off of welfare. And I think those are the kinds of things we're trying to do with our project chance program, our Healthy Mom's Healthy Kids program, the opportunities program. We are almost out. Real quick. We know we want to fix welfare. Will we? Quick response. I think we're trying to. I think we're made a fair amount of progress this year in the legislature. I think what you have to do is emphasize more emphasis on job development and public service employment and fit between public service

employment and private sector. I'm very pessimistic. I think we've created a monster industry which eventually lives off human misery and that industry is very well and trashed and it's going to continue to be entrenched. Well, I'm certainly we could continue to talk longer and take further calls and I'm sorry to say we will have to go and leave it at that. We would like to thank our guests, Robert Weisberg, professor of political science at the University of Illinois, Joseph Antolin from the Illinois Department of Public Aid and Anthony Halter from the University of Illinois School of Social Work. We will be back in two weeks on October 1st. Our topic will be presidential politics. In the meantime, if you can, tune in for our radio talk show Focus 580. That's weekday mornings at 10 on AM 580. Thanks for calling. Thanks for watching and good night. Thank you.

To purchase a VHS copy of this program using Visa, MasterCard, or Discover, call 1-800-528-7980. Please have the credit card number and expiration date ready.

To order by mail, send a check for 2495, payable to the U of I, WILL TV, to videotape sales, WILL TV, 1110 West Main Street, or Bana, Illinois 61801. Please allow 3-4 weeks for delivery.