False Profits and Prop. 165

Bogus claims that punishing the poor will save society a cent qualify measure as the Taxpayer Deception Act.

The business and civic leadership--and the general public--are once again being deceived, a deception that reaches deep into their bank accounts and paychecks.

It’s not just Proposition 165’s cruel claim that taking food and rent money away from poor women and children will save the state and taxpayers significant dollars. Nor is it Gov. Wilson’s grab for questionably unconstitutional power through emergency edicts in Proposition 165.

The deception is buried in the additional cost to every taxpayer from what is truly the Taxpayer Deception Act. Proposition 165, if approved, will result in escalating costs through massive indirect and hidden administrative expenses.

Unwarranted legal and administrative barriers to public welfare in Aid to Families with Dependent Children already escalates personnel and administrative expense exorbitantly. AFDC workers are now stretched to the limit. Proposition 165, based on erroneous mythology, multiplies geometrically the paperwork and checking required for each Orange County Social Services Agency case.

More homeless and desperate people will be on the streets because of their inability to pay current rents with AFDC allowances, which are at 54% of the national poverty level. The radical 25% to 35% cuts in food and other allowances will increase the malnutrition and disease of AFDC clients, thus shifting those medical costs to those who can pay for their health insurance. More expenditures will be required for sicker people and for eventually fixing the sick health system.

The constitutional questions and overt inequities of Proposition 165 will surely create long-term litigation expenses, mostly borne by middle-class taxpayers. All facts point to massive financial fallouts of this political patchwork proposal.

Take, for example, a small piece of this social mandate for behavior control. Poverty and pregnancy can’t mix. A poor woman, if pregnant, would no longer receive an allowance for the child she is carrying until it is born, despite additional nutrition needs. For mothers with children already receiving AFDC, any future children are ineligible for at least two years. Just the administrative expense of computing and tracking these differentiated benefits is a major cost problem.

Some 60% of all families obtaining AFDC receive support for less than a year, with many families off and on several times as they obtain work or other income. Much more AFDC staff will be required to check and keep track of conception dates, income and payment records changes instead of helping clients.

Proposition 165 says teen-agers with children may receive aid only if they “reside in a place of residence maintained by a parent, legal guardian . . . or reside in a foster home, maternity home. . . .” Sounds fairly reasonable, doesn’t it?

But parent-child conflicts helped create those family separations, and how can social service agencies with current caseloads of more than 140 families take on more work without more funding? Or, do we just say “no aid” and leave parent and child to the streets?

Rigid laws are no substitute for professional judgment and help, but our society, where only 10% of “welfare” subsidies go to the poor, has never faced up to dealing with the fallouts from our family, workplace and education systems.

Forthright consideration ought to be given to the known socioeconomic causes for masses of decent people being trapped in the quicksand of unemployment, homelessness or defective education.

The public welfare system needs changing. But quick fixes like Proposition 165 in the mean season of political campaigns will only increase the costs to all and devastating pain to many.