Thanksgiving this year arrives just as a debate over the size of the state’s social safety net is heating up in Augusta, and as that safety net itself is showing signs of fray.
Gov. Paul LePage has long made welfare reform a central part of his administration, calling for more diligence in the preventing and prosecution of fraud and abuse in public assistance programs. Just in the last month, LePage said he wants welfare recipients to take drug tests in order to receive benefits, and that welfare spending must be lowered if the state wants to avoid further cuts to education funding.
At the same time, the community organizations that provide a kind of private social safety net are finding that demand is up, in many cases marking a new high in what has been a particularly difficult past few years.
At the South Portland Food Cupboard, distribution is up dramatically this November, according to the pantry’s director, Sybil Riemensnider. Recipients must show they make no more than 150 percent of the federal poverty level – about $1,300 per month for a single person – and about 40-50 families are typically using the service at any given time. On Nov. 3, however, 73 families qualified for help. That number rose to 99 on Nov. 10, and 113 on Nov. 17.
“We always have more requests in November, but never in this amount,” Riemensnider said. “And, while we knew we were going to have a lot this time, we never imagined how much.”
The case is the same in Windham, where the food pantry expects to serve 250 Thanksgiving baskets this year, as compared to 167 a year ago, and in Standish, where Catherine’s Cupboard expects to hand out 200 baskets, 75 more than a year ago.
It is clear that the demand for social services is on the rise, and unlikely to level out any time soon. Resources are scarce, so it seems natural to target waste and fraud, so that those resources find their way to the Mainers that need them most. However, much of the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform is counterproductive, and only serves to mask the facts of the debate while diminishing the plight of the majority of residents accepting public assistance.
There is little evidence that welfare abuse is anywhere near as widespread as LePage claims, and significant proof that ferreting out that waste is more costly than it is worth. And while law enforcement priorities should not be a matter of simple financial calculus, it makes no sense to use up valuable resources searching for waste that is unlikely to be found.
By constantly portraying the welfare system as rampant with abuse and fraud, officials play to the worst in taxpayers, and dehumanize the majority of welfare recipients who are using the system as it is meant to be used. Soon, all people can see are welfare rolls full of faceless freeloaders.
Maine’s public assistance programs are far from perfect. Too often welfare provides just enough to keep people tethered to the system. It breeds a sort of hopelessness in those getting assistance that is not helped by an economy that can’t provided employment for even the well-qualified.
But by focusing too heavily on the relatively small problem of fraud, the systemic causes of poverty go unnoticed and unaddressed. Reform must include the development of realistic educational and training opportunities, so that recipients can work their way out of the system. The mish-mash of assistance programs could be better coordinated, so that together they truly push people toward independence. Finally, lawmakers and the general public should be made to understand that cuts in services lead in most cases to real human suffering.
That last point is something that can easily be missed in a political debate.
Ben Bragdon is the managing editor of Current Publishing. He can be reached at bbragdon@keepmecurrent.com or followed on Twitter.
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