Anderson’s Views on Welfare
I find it heartbreaking to read the seat-of-the-pants analysis of welfare recipients given by California Department of Social Services Director Eloise Anderson and applauded by The Times in its Nov. 26 editorial. You use the term “tough love” to describe her proposal to abolish completely Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or welfare. Let’s tell the truth; it is not love of any sort at all to starve children and their mothers as punishment for poverty.
I think what gripes me most of all about people like Anderson and Gov. Pete Wilson is their refusal to discuss the abundant data collected in reputable studies that show the vast majority of poor always work when there is work they can do. But there is not now, nor might there ever be again, enough of the living-wage work that was available when America made its own things. There aren’t enough fast-food restaurants to provide jobs for the millions who need them. The next level of manufacturing that builds this country’s future economy will take place on lab benches, not assembly lines. Surely Anderson must have known enough of the truly undeserving when she was poor herself to understand their unpreparedness for this new economy. And having been in government, she must also understand the inadequacy of taxpayer and private ambitions to provide training to fill this gap.
JONI HALPERN
Volunteer Attorney for
Legal Aid of San Diego Inc.
*
* I must take exception to your editorial giving guarded praise to Anderson. When she responded to me at the April 27 special meeting of the L.A. County Commission for Children and Families that she had no facts to substantiate my statement that a cut in AFDC payments will result in an increase in the numbers of abused and neglected children in our communities, I could not help but doubt her wisdom and ability to head our state’s child welfare programs.
The facts are that at the time of the 1988 cuts in AFDC payments, the number of L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services emergency response referrals and child placements was 114,597. This rose dramatically to 165,902 as of June 30, 1994. Children are the main recipients, almost 70%, of AFDC. They must not become hapless victims when adults are trying to “reform” the welfare system.
JEAN F. COHEN
Southern California Chair
League of Women Voters
Working Party for Children