It is a challenge to respond to Rich Lowry’s column, “Positive side of welfare reform” (April 9), given that diatribe and the 65 years of resentment toward poor women and children that have elapsed since the first AFDC check was received in 1937.

I cannot, however, sit still while “stupid white men” as Michael Moore has dubbed us, express outrage toward women who are willing to get by on the minimal income of welfare, without the male partners who have impregnated them. In the 40 years that I have observed welfare “reform” and participated in the development of all too many versions, there is one thing in common: at the end of the day, poor women and children surface with fewer resources, a set of dentures here, a text book there, but always less.

This last version, unfortunately under Democratic leadership, is particularly onerous. Under the guise of presenting an incentive for the women to marry or work, Congress, in the first day of the new reform, sent 2 million children to bed with fewer resources and added tens of thousands each day thereafter.

Lowry would have us believe that the caretakers of these children magically developed earning capacity and that the children are faring ever so better than they would have with all those coins jingling in their pockets. Worse than stealing the money, it is the resentment toward these women that marks this culture’s insatiable need to steal from the poor to give to the rich.
James Tierney, Auburn

Copy the Story Link