“…We don’t strengthen families by hurting children…”

Governor Jay Nixon [2014 file photo].

Governor Jay Nixon vetoed SB 24 which would have cut a large number of poor Missourians from assistance:

April 30, 2015

“I don’t sign bills that hurt kids – period,” Gov. Nixon says of bill that would affect an estimated 6,400 needy children in Missouri

Kansas City, MO

Gov. Jay Nixon today joined advocates for children and families at Operation Breakthrough in Kansas City to announce his veto of Senate Bill 24, which would hurt needy children. The bill would remove an estimated 6,400 poor children from public assistance, including more than 2,600 children under the age of five.

“Children already suffer lifelong consequences from poverty; penalizing them further for their parents’ behavior is mean-spirited and just plain wrong,” said Gov. Nixon. “When it comes to adults, we can all agree on the need for personal responsibility, but these are children.  I don’t sign bills that hurt kids – period.”

The legislation contains two provisions that would negatively impact needy children.  First, the bill would reduce the lifetime limit for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits to 45 months, without providing an exception for children. As a result, if Senate Bill 24 became law, approximately 6,465 children would be cut off from benefits on January 1st, 2016.  An estimated 40 percent of these children are under the age of five.  In addition, the bill would also impose a penalty on the child of a parent who fails to engage in work activities and fails to authorize, as it has in other circumstances, a protective payee to receive and administer the child’s share of the benefits.

“There are ways that the legislature could ensure that parents are held accountable for their decisions while at the same time protecting kids — for example, by providing benefits through a responsible guardian,” said Gov. Nixon. “But again, legislators left children unprotected.  They say they’re trying to crack down on adults, but they’ve made kids the collateral damage.”

The legislation is opposed by Empower Missouri, the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence, Operation Breakthrough, the Missouri Association for Community Action, Missouri Faith Voices, Child Care Aware of Missouri, the American Academy of Pediatrics-Missouri Chapter, the Missouri Children’s Leadership Council, Paraquad and other groups representing children and families across Missouri.

“I cannot condone the hardships imposed on innocent children that Senate Bill No. 24 would require – first, by unnecessarily cutting the length of time that children can receive benefits even when their parents are working and second, by cruelly eliminating their benefits if their parents are not meeting work requirements,” the Governor’s veto message reads. “Missouri law should not mandate such meanness toward innocent children.”

In Fiscal Year 2014, 13 percent fewer families received TANF benefits than did so in Fiscal Year 2013.

[….]

The Governor’s office provided a transcript of his remarks:

Gov. Nixon announces his veto of Senate Bill 24

April 30, 2015

Good morning and thank you for joining us.  I’d like to first thank the many dedicated advocates, educators and caregivers here with us here today.

These folks see the devastating impact that poverty can have on a child’s well-being and development.  Through no fault of their own, thousands of Missouri children know what it means to go without.

Some of the signs are obvious, like kids showing up at school without coats in the winter.  Some of the more pernicious effects of poverty – hunger, homelessness, neglect — may not be as immediately obvious, but over time exact a heavy toll.

For thousands of Missouri children, going without can mean not having access to simple, but critical things, like books, preschool, healthy food and safe places to play and exercise. Things that help children thrive and grow in mind and body.  It can mean being unable to imagine a future outside of poverty.

As Missourians and as Americans – we want every child to grow up healthy and strong.

That’s why, this morning, I vetoed Senate Bill 24.

SB 24 is a misguided measure that punishes poor children in the legislature’s zeal to reduce reliance on government assistance.

Supporters of this bill have called it the “Strengthening Missouri Families Act.”

Let me be clear.

We don’t strengthen families by hurting children.

If this bill were to become law, an estimated sixty-four hundred children – twenty-six hundred of whom are under the age of five — would be cut off on January 1st – even if their parents are complying with work requirements.  

Six-thousand four hundred kids… and tens of thousands more in the future.

Now the legislature could have protected children and infants from this arbitrary cutoff with any number of safeguards – but they didn’t.

That’s fundamentally unfair and it’s wrong.

And that’s not even the only provision in this bill children would have to be worried about.

Senate Bill 24 would also penalize a child for their parent’s failure to engage in work activities.

When it comes to adults, we can all agree on the need for personal responsibility… but these are kids.

There are methods in use right now in other situations that the legislature could ensure that parents are held accountable for their decisions – while at the same time protecting kids.  For example, by providing benefits through a responsible guardian.

But again, legislators left children unprotected.  They say they’re trying to crack down on adults – but they’ve made kids the collateral damage.

Folks, I don’t sign bills that hurt kids. Period.

Now, I understand that members of the legislature want to do more to encourage people to get off public assistance and into the workforce.

I share that concern.  That’s why, as Governor, I have fought for affordable health care and public education and invested in workforce development and job-training programs that work.

When parents get the education and skills they need to find good-paying jobs that can support their families – it’s better for everyone.

And if you look at the current trend, the number of families receiving temporary assistance is declining as a result of our growing economy.

In fiscal year 2014, the number of families receiving temporary assistance was down by 13 percent from the prior year.

That’s solid progress.

Now is the time to build on this progress – not undermine it by hurting kids.

Here in Missouri, protecting children has never been about politics.

In fact, the last time I was here at Operation Breakthrough I was signing bipartisan legislation to improve children’s health and safety and strengthen requirements on child care providers.

Children already suffer lifelong consequences from poverty; penalizing them further for their parents’ behavior is mean-spirited and just plain wrong.

It’s not who we are and I will not support it.

Once again, there are ways to do this that protect kids.  The legislature should shelve this unfair and harmful bill, and work together to do the right thing by children, families and all our citizens.

Thank you and now I’ll be happy to take any questions the press may have.

The Missouri General Assembly is dominated by a number of mean people.

Some time ago, I wrote a piece that I put on the DailyKos rather than SMP since it was not focused on the specifically Missouri politics that provide SMP with its raison d’etre, but addressed a general issue. I wrote that the Republican Party was becoming a pretty costly proposition for taxpayers:

The one-time home of fiscal conservatives, the GOP has become the home of wasteful spenders who, while spouting simplistic economic platitudes intended to enhance an image of financial rectitude, have been pissing away public funds with abandon.

I wrote that one of the ways that Republicans create waste is through “ill-considered, ideologically-driven policies that ignore the facts of real life.” One of the examples I cited was the Republican fetish for tying welfare benefits to drug-testing; I noted that “the rationale reflects the belief in a particularly ugly, often racist, stereotype about the average welfare recipient that does not hold true often enough to justify the effort – and since the state pays for the drug tests, it ends up footing a big bill for little or no return on the investment.”

At the time, I cited* the case of Florida where analysis indicated that drug-testing welfare recipients was an expensive waste of time. Now the numbers are in as far as the drug-testing of welfare recipients in Missouri are concerned, and, according to a report in the Kansas City Star, it seems that the Florida experience isn’t unique:

Missouri this year became the most recent state to install drug testing for welfare recipients. After eight months and 636 drug test requests, the program turned up 20 people who tested positive and about 200 who refused to comply. Roughly 32,000 people in the state have applied for assistance since testing began.

The program’s price: nearly $500,000.

“I think it’s just astronomical,” said Rep. Stacey Newman, a St. Louis County Democrat. “It’s a horrible waste of state resources.”

As Steven Benen elaborates about the Missouri numbers, “even if all 200 [i.e., those who refused to be tested] were drug users, that still comes to more than $2,200 per positive result, which is more expensive than the median benefit in the state.”

You’d think that folks who have traditionally billed themselves as members of the party of business would understand the importance of reliable, empirical data to a cost-benefit analysis and would also be able to factor in administrative overhead. It’s just too bad that during a period when state services are being trimmed to the bone, Missouri taxpayers are going to have to pay for one more expensive failure engendered by the false premises that inform GOP ideology.

*In the original DK posting from May 2013, I incorrectly stated that Missouri had failed to pass a law tying drug-testing to welfare benefits. Wishful thinking maybe?

Today Rep. Marsha Haefner (R-095) expressed her concerns about the over-burdened and under-staffed Department of Social Services (DSS). More exactly, she expressed outrage that the DSS was devoting resources to register its clients to vote:

“I had no idea that that was the function of Missouri (Dept. of) Social Services,” Haefner said.  “We are paying state employees, who are having a problem getting their paperwork so we can get reimbursed from the federal government, we’re paying them on our nickel to register voters.”

Perhaps if Rep. Haefner had been paying attention to the issue back in 2009, she might have remembered a successful suit that was brought against the DSS precisely because it was not fulfilling its legal obligation under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) to assist its clients to register to vote – and that many counties were, in fact, obstructing registration through actions such as failing to maintain adequate supplies of voter registration forms and not turning in registration forms that had been filled out. As the Acting DSS Director Brian Kincade noted, Missouri must comply with the federal law and “not registering voters is not an option.”

The intent of the NVRA is to make it easier for citizens to exercise their right to vote. Surely Rep. Haefner must agree that it is important to facilitate voting for everyone, especially for those who might experience difficulties getting information about, or access to voter registration. Missouri benefits when its citizens are heard in Washington and when their true interests are represented – and quibbling about whose nickel is involved is a stupid waste of time. We get what we pay for, though political representation for all is priceless.

An easy way to deal with the problems of the DSS would be to allocate sufficient funds for its staff to carry out all their duties in a timely fashion. That would mean raising revenue which would require real tax reform – and by tax reform I don’t mean corporate giveaways like SB253. Instead, Rep. Haefner, during her campaign in 2012, went on the record with a solution that involves that good old GOP standby, downsizing the client population:

… We must work on developing systems that do not provide incentives to remain dependent.  There has to be a reasonable path to eliminate the need for state and federal assistance.

God forbid that folks in need who get kicked off public assistance might vote – they just might kick out the politicians who think that government does too much for those on the bottom and not enough for the one percent.  

Who are the demonized 47 percent of Americans labeled as takers and who only “want free stuff”? Let me give you a portrait of one of them.

While traveling to Jeff City for a hearing, I stopped for a restroom break at Kingdom City. It was a little before six in the morning, and I was greeted with a pleasant hello from an employee cleaning the urinals in the men’s room. He is the face of the 47 percent, the working poor.

Unfortunately, right wing extremists would have you believe this attendant is a taker.  Instead he really is a hard working underappreciated contributor. He is joined by dirt poor share croppers like my grandparents, the waitress at your favorite restaurant, the immigrant who mows your lawn, and close to half of America’s population who are working below or close to poverty wages.

We want our 79 cent tacos, our lawns mowed and homes cleaned for as little as possible, and the cheapest price at the pump. In order to for that to happen, we have sanctioned the one of the lowest minimum wages in the world as a percentage of average income.

Here is how our perverse welfare system works: Big business, especially agri-business, has convinced too many of us to drink their Kool-Aid laced propaganda claiming they cannot possibly survive without the lowest possible minimum wage coupled with almost zero benefits. Because their employees cannot survive on these wages, society is forced to supplement their pay with compensation for food, housing, and medical care.

So, who’s really on welfare? The employee who is willing to clean urinals at six in the morning? His employer whose poverty wages have to be augmented by our tax dollars? Or us? After all, we’re the ones clamoring for lower and lower prices.

It is disingenuously to call the low wage workers ‘takers’. We’re the ones who want a 79 cent taco and a burger for dollar.  In fact, our welfare system is really best described as a pay me now or pay me later system.  Low consumer prices demand low wages, which begets more people unable to survive on their salary, which leads to higher taxes to provide the working poor with a livable income.

As if low wages weren’t bad enough, America stands virtually alone among industrialized countries by not providing universal healthcare. Missouri’s legislature has been locked in a bitter and divisive political battle over whether or not low income workers should be provided healthcare.

Omamacare says: If you are employed but making less than 135 percent of poverty you are eligible for Medicaid. Last year, the US Supreme Court ruled each state can opt in or out of this expansion of Medicaid.

State after state, including conservative ones like Florida and Arizona, has lined up to finally bring healthcare to the working poor. Sadly even though the federal government will fund 100 percent of the cost for the first three years and 80 percent thereafter, Missouri has opted out.

Opponents say they are worried the federal government won’t keep their promise, but that’s a red herring. Other states have put in codicils saying they can withdraw from the Medicaid expansion if the feds don’t keep their word. Governor Nixon has offered the same proposal; yet, Republicans have stubbornly held fast.  

Thousands of St. Charles County working poor will be unable to afford medical care while Missouri needlessly loses out on billions of dollars of federal revenue. In addition, our local hospitals will be major losers.

Ronald Reagan setup a system of over 2000 hospitals which were mandated to care for indigent Americans. These hospitals draw from a federal fund of over $19 billion a year to compensate them for their losses. Missouri hospitals currently receive over $700 million in what is called Disproportionate Share Care. Under Obamacare this DSC money goes away, because the low wage workers will be covered under Medicaid. Unless our legislature does the right thing, St. Joseph’s two hospitals in St. Charles County stand to lose almost $90 million a year.

It’s time to stop the political pandering and the demonizing of the working poor and Obamacare. Those who mow our lawns, cook our food, pick our fruit, carry our bags, wait our table, and clean our restrooms deserve better. We can never call ourselves a great country while leaving so many without hope of achieving the American dream.

Politicians and actors may have some things in common, but as far as Vicky Hartzler is concerned, it’s just a cryin’ shame that politics isn’t more like show business where no publicity is bad publicity. Think Progress looked into Vicky Hartzler’s  background and found that the self-described “lifelong farmer and a small town girl” had received “$774,325 in federal subsidies from 1995 to 2009.” Nothing wrong there – unless, like Hartzler, you tell a conservative radio host that “we just want the government to leave us alone here in Missouri’s 4th.” It seems that Hartzler’s slogan is no government interference except when it comes to taxpayer financed farm subsidies. Isn’t this what they call biting the hand that feeds you?

To her credit, Hartzler, as Think Progress notes, seems to knows that there are some people out there who might consider her stance hypocritical and, consequently, does not mention the subsidies when she discusses agriculture on her Webpage. However, if she did decide to “come out,” she would have plenty of Tea Party and GOP company. It’s hard to count all the Tea Partiers who seem to have their hands out for a hand-out – Joe Miller in Alaska and Sharon Angle in Nevada are two of the more recent cases to come to light. Steve Benen, on the topic of Tea Partiers’ proclivity for government welfare, summed  it up beautifully:

For the right-wing crowd, subsidies for 32 million Americans with no health insurance is outrageous, but subsidies for conservative farmers is not an issue “at all.