Introduced in George Orwell's 1984 as part of the Newspeak lexicon, "Victory Mansions" was the official name for the dirty, decaying apartment complex that was home to the grim and defiant novel's protagonist. Obviously the name itself didn't obscure what anyone could see with their own eyes, but in Orwell's future world, people were conditioned by The State to deny the truths that might somehow spark questions and dissent.

Here in 2009, an argument can be made there are more nuanced controls at work to channel the way we think and view the world.  Aided by our own ignorance, incuriousness and materialistic diversions, we surrender individuality to the corporate and political hive and we speak its language, often unquestioningly.

When "welfare reform," also known as the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act," was passed in 1996 by President Bill Clinton -- hand-held all the way by an aggressive Republican Majority Congress -- it was supposed to bring an end to the cycle of poverty and social deconstruction brought on, said proponents at the time, by years of mismanaged, abused and dead-end entitlements in the form of welfare. Like "Victory Mansions," "Welfare Reform" sounded pure, proactive, perceivably positive. With its emphasis on putting men and women to work, the bill ended federal welfare reform as we knew it, ultimately cutting billion of dollars in food stamps and federal cash assistance programs, and shifting to a state block grant process, which gave states lump sums to fund their new welfare-to-work programs.

I revisit all of this because of the disturbing issues raised by the deft reporting in "Brave New Welfare" by Stephanie Mencimer in this month's Mother Jones magazine. She attempts to force the lens of truth on what seems to have become another government "revolution" fallen victim to poor execution and greed, and now endangering the lives of the very people we were told it was supposed to help.

Not only that, "Brave New Welfare" offers us a window into how the very poor and meek -- including the smallest and most vulnerable among us today -- are in danger of being left behind, brutally and unceremoniously,  by the current economic crisis. It is rarely spoken of in today's debate over "economic stimulus" and bank industry bailouts, but it seems that some state authorities are actually plugging holes in their shrinking budgets by turning the needy away -- all while wearing the mantle of "reform." This cut-throat bureaucracy is only bound to get worse as state coffers continue to decline, while the jobless rate soars and the once solid retail and service industries begin to collapse.

Whatever one feels about the need for "entitlement reform," this story tells how the very concept was cruelly perverted. Thanks to real -- and rare -- compassionate journalism like this, we know the truth behind the Newspeak and realize, hopefully, our responsibility not to ignore it.

Some excerpts:

 

 

In 2006, the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence conducted a survey to figure out why so many women were suddenly failing to get tanf [Temporary Assistance to Needy Families] benefits. They discovered that caseworkers were actively talking women out of applying, often using inaccurate information. (Lying to applicants to deny them benefits is a violation of federal law, but the 1996 welfare reform legislation largely stripped the Department of Health and Human Services of its power to punish states for doing it. Meanwhile, county officials have tried to head off lawyers who might take up the issue by pressing applicants to sign waivers saying they voluntarily turned down benefits.) Allison Smith, the economic justice coordinator at the coalition, says the group has gotten reports of caseworkers telling tanf applicants they have to be surgically sterilized before they can apply. Disabled women have been told they can't apply because they can't meet the work requirement. Others have been warned that the state could take their children if they get benefits. Makita Perry, a 23-year-old mother of four who did manage to get on tanf for a year, told me caseworkers "ask you all sorts of personal questions, like when the last time you had sex was and with who." Elsewhere, women are being told to get a letter proving they've visited a family-planning doctor.

Simply landing an appointment with a caseworker is an ordeal that can take 45 days, according to some of the women I interviewed—and applicants must clear numerous other hurdles, including conducting a job search, before being approved. Few complete the process. One study found that in April 2006, caseworkers in Georgia green-lighted only 20 percent of tanf applications, down from 40 percent in 2004. The lucky few who are accepted must often work full time in "volunteer" jobs in exchange for their benefits, which max out at $280 a month for a family of three.

Even as it blocks potential applicants, Georgia is also pushing current tanf recipients off the rolls at a rapid clip. Sandy Bamford runs a federally funded family literacy program in Albany where single mothers can get their geds. tanf allows recipients to attend school, but Bamford says officials routinely tell her clients otherwise: In a single month, one caseworker informed three of her students (incorrectly) that because they had turned 20, they could no longer receive benefits while completing their degrees. One was about to become the first in her family to graduate from high school. She quit and took a job as a dishwasher. Students as young as 16 have been told they must go to work full time or lose benefits. The employee who threatened to drop the students, says Bamford, became "caseworker of the month" for getting so many people off tanf....

Georgia isn't the only state that's found that dropping people from tanf is the easiest and cheapest way to meet federal work requirements. Texas reduced its caseloads by outsourcing applications to a call center, which wrongfully denied some families and lost others' applications altogether. In Florida, one innovative region started requiring tanf applicants to attend 40 hours of classes before they could even apply. Clients trying to restore lost benefits had once been able to straighten out paperwork with the help of caseworkers. In 2005, officials assigned all such work to a single employee, available two hours a week. The area's tanf caseload fell by half in a year...

Whatever their philosophical convictions, officials have another incentive for paring the tanf rolls: money. That's because the Clinton-era welfare reform turned what had been an entitlement program like Social Security—the more people needed help, the more money was spent—into a block grant, a fixed amount of money given to the states, regardless of need. The money, $16.5 billion a year, came mostly unencumbered by regulation. States could divert the funds to any program vaguely related to serving the needy.

Not only did the block grant doom the program to a slow death by inflation (by 2010, it will have lost 27 percent of its value), it also encouraged states to deny benefits to families, since they'd get the same amount of federal funds regardless of how many people received assistance. Georgia's share of the federal grant is nearly $370 million a year. "Even if caseloads go to zero, they get the same amount of money," notes Robert Welsh of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.

Some states have used surplus tanf money to expand child care, job training, and transportation to help recipients find jobs. But Georgia didn't use the bulk of its money for those programs—instead, it cut spending on child care and put the money into child protective services in the wake of a lawsuit against the state over the mistreatment of children in foster care. "The feds are just fine with that," Walker insists. "We use our block grant to support other vulnerable families. That was the intent of the block grant."

Georgia is not alone in shifting its tanf money to other areas. The Government Accountability Office found in 2006 that many states were moving federal welfare funds away from cash assistance to the poor, or even "work supports" like child care, to plug holes in state budgets. Yet over the past 12 years, federal regulators have cited states only 11 times for misusing their tanf block grant, and only two suffered any financial penalty, according to Ken Wolfe, a spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families, which oversees the program. "As far as the federal government's concerned, it's not a big problem," he says.

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