Tommy Washbush
Hands made of the April 4 referendum point in a shaming manner.
A misleading referendum question on the April 4 ballot asked Wisconsin voters if they agree that “able-bodied, childless adults” should be “required to look for work in order to receive taxpayer-funded welfare benefits.”
Eighty percent of Wisconsin voters approved the referendum, but the results make no difference. It was merely “advisory” and doesn’t put any actual policy into effect. But it’s also insidiously misleading. Anyone reading the question would think able-bodied, childless adults are not already required to work to receive public assistance in our state. But that’s not true. Wisconsin already attaches a work requirement to FoodShare benefits. Our state’s other major form of public assistance, Wisconsin Works (W2), is literally a workfare program, as the name implies. The only “taxpayer-funded welfare benefit” that might be altered by adding a work requirement is Medicaid. But the federal government forbids states from making work a condition of receiving Medicaid.
So the point of the welfare referendum, as the Wisconsin Council of Churches pointed out in a pre-election message to members, was simply to cast aspersions on the poor.
“[T]he term ‘welfare’ evokes negative stereotypes of people — especially Black persons — in poverty who supposedly are unwilling to work,” the Council stated. “‘Taxpayer-funded’ suggests resentment at having to support government antipoverty programs for those who are believed to fit the stereotype. (And it ignores the many publicly-funded benefits for wealthier taxpayers.) Absent is any understanding of the real lives of people in poverty and the challenges they face. Nor is there any sense that we all belong to an interdependent community, and we can only flourish to the extent each of our neighbors can flourish.”
Lately, campaign messages featuring lurid crime stories and seeking to stir up fear and resentment of immigrants, Black people and the poor, have been poisoning the airwaves in our state, seeking to destroy the more charitable, neighborly sentiments the Wisconsin Council of Churches wants to nurture.
The idea that middle-class taxpayers are victims of people who are living in poverty is not just toxic, it profoundly misconstrues how society is set up.
In his new book, “Poverty, by America,” Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond points out, “Most government aid goes to the families that need it the least.”
This truth is glaringly obvious during tax season.
The rich and the comfortably middle class can access a treasure trove of tax breaks, from mortgage interest deductions to tax breaks for business expenses, inheritance and investments to retirement and college savings accounts. Examining the numbers, Desmond writes, “you learn that we are doing so much more to subsidize affluence than to alleviate poverty.”
Thousands of dollars per person in government largess for the already well off dwarf the paltry amount we dedicate to programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which gives out on average about $6 per person per day.
In Wisconsin, according to the nonprofit group Feeding America, about one in 14 people is facing hunger. One in eight of those people is a child.
Desmond explores the powerful forces colluding to keep poor people trapped. Exploited workers generate profits for large corporations and low prices for consumers. Myriad bad actors, including payday lenders and slumlords, but also commercial banks and the residents of exclusive neighborhoods, all play a role.
Like the Wisconsin Council of Churches, Desmond sees a larger, community interest in ending poverty. Not just for the “hungry, homeless and humiliated,” as he puts it, but for those living in “a barricaded, stingy, frightened kind of affluence.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when the federal government temporarily changed policies to prevent millions of Americans from falling through the cracks, a fairer society suddenly came into view. The eviction moratorium, together with pandemic aid to displaced workers and families with children, cut child poverty in half. But only temporarily. Desmond decries the lack of media attention to those accomplishments, demonstrating to politicians that even if they act to make game-changing improvements in poverty rates, no one really cares.
This month, millions of families who benefited from expanded emergency food assistance are losing $90 per month in SNAP benefits. Some households with children will see a cut of $250 a month or more, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. And the cuts come at the worst possible time, as inflation drives the price of food higher.
Instead of asking voters whether they think people who are facing hunger should be forced to work for food (as they already are), we should be exploring how we can, as Desmond puts it, become “poverty abolitionists” refusing to live as “unwitting enemies of the poor.”
Ruth Conniff is editor-in-chief of the Wisconsin Examiner and the author of Milked: How an American Crisis Brought Together Midwestern Dairy Farmers and Mexican Workers.
