Some 23,000 Maine children lived in extreme poverty in 2014 in families struggling to survive on incomes that reached, at most, half the federal poverty level (about $12,000 for a family of four).
Just four years earlier, the number of Maine children living in extreme poverty was 6,000 fewer. And in those four years, Maine’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program dropped more than 15,000 children from its benefit rolls as a five-year lifetime assistance limit took effect. (Nationwide, the number of children living in extreme poverty nationwide actually dropped slightly in that time.)
As more Maine children have sunk into deep poverty and lost public assistance, the focus of political leaders in Augusta has increasingly turned to punitive measures aimed at limiting who can receive assistance and how recipients can spend their limited cash benefits.
Democratic leaders in the Legislature had a chance to move the policy discussion beyond the punitive last week when they introduced two proposals aimed at overhauling public assistance. But they squandered their chance.
Policy based on perception
One Democratic proposal would bar TANF recipients from using their benefits on a range of taboo products and services, including tobacco, liquor, lottery tickets, guns and porn magazines. Violators would have to repay misspent funds. Repeat violators would risk losing their benefits.
Legislators are hearing from constituents who complain that there are too many abuses in the system, said Sen. Justin Alfond, D-Portland, the Senate minority leader. “Right now, there’s no parameters, and there’s a real confidence problem,” he said.
But the mere perception that there’s widespread abuse doesn’t make it right to pursue a policy that legitimizes the inaccurate notion that families receiving public assistance are frivolous spenders, a policy that does nothing to help the growing ranks of Maine children living in devastating poverty, and a policy that would be unwieldy and resource-intensive to carry out. (In the absence of an EBT system that could block specific purchases with TANF cash, Massachusetts in 2012 had to resort to a manual enforcement system that produced 19 valid leads in its first year. After investigations, the state pursued reimbursement for a single, $7.17 tobacco product purchase.)
The proposal from Maine Democrats, sponsored by Sen. Nathan Libby of Lewiston, would set up a task force charged with developing a system to block prohibited purchases at the point of sale — precisely the type of system Massachusetts’ Department of Transitional Assistance couldn’t come by.
Policies that help people
While Maine Democrats gave into the easy politics of a product purchase ban, the bulk of what they’re proposing is worthwhile policy that could actually improve the lives of low-income Maine people.
The second piece of legislation in their welfare reform package, sponsored by Rep. Drew Gattine of Westbrook, would:
— Require that TANF recipients be provided services that help them overcome barriers that keep them from working.
— Make more low-income residents eligible for the highly effective Parents as Scholars program that allows TANF recipients to complete college degrees — a vital tool in helping them escape poverty. Since the start of the LePage administration, the number of TANF recipients participating in Parents as Scholars has dropped from more than 700 to 132, according to Maine DHHS.
— Provide housing vouchers to TANF recipients who spend more than half their income on housing.
— Subsidize on-the-job training opportunities for TANF recipients.
— Require that the Maine Department of Health and Human Services measure the effectiveness of its public assistance programs at lifting recipients out of poverty.
The state can pay for all of these improvements because Maine has spent progressively less of its federal TANF grant in recent years as LePage-championed policies have resulted in the number of TANF cases falling 62.5 percent since his administration’s start. In federal fiscal year 2014, the LePage administration spent just 39 percent of Maine’s available federal TANF funding, leaving $59 million unspent that’s still available to the state.
Democrats have a strong case to make for using those untapped resources to help people whom LePage administration policies have failed, but they’ve weakened that case by first joining in Republican efforts to shame Maine’s poorest.
