ONBB: It baffles me that schools throw away kids’ food or deny them a hot lunch because of inability to pay, BUT Covid hits and now my county provides 6 full meals a week to any kids under 18yo, enrolled or not. They always had the ability to feed kids, they just didn’t want to.

The proposal, drawn up by the federal Administration for Children and Families, is open for public comment until Dec. 1. Once comments are reviewed, officials plan to issue final regulations that could take effect in the months after that, heading into the 2024 election. The first change would prohibit states from counting charitable giving by private organizations, such as churches and food banks, as “state” spending on welfare, a practice that has allowed legislatures to budget less for programs for low-income families while still claiming to meet federal minimums. ProPublica documented how Utah avoided more than $75 million in spending on public assistance over the past decade by taking credit for aid to the hungry and homeless provided by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Many of the vulnerable Utahns we interviewed felt that in order to access desperately needed aid, they had to participate in Mormon religious rites they didn’t believe in.)

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The new rules would also restrict states from spending TANF funds on child protective services investigations, foster care or any other programs that don’t meet the fundamental purposes of welfare: strengthening poor families and keeping them together. ProPublica found that in Arizona and elsewhere, money meant to help parents struggling to raise their children is instead used to investigate them for alleged child maltreatment — which often stems from the very financial circumstances that they needed help with in the first place. Under the Biden plan, Arizona would likely have to find other ways of funding its aggressive child protective services investigations of poor parents and use welfare dollars to help families stay together rather than removing their kids into foster care.

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As ProPublica has reported, many of welfare’s failures originated with a 1996 law signed by then-President Bill Clinton. That legislation, which Biden supported at the time as a senator, gave states broad flexibility over how to spend their annual grant of federal dollars intended for the poor. In the decades since, legislatures, especially in the South and Southwest, have found ever more creative outlets for the funding, including diverting it to anti-abortion clinics or not spending it at all. The Biden administration’s proposal would mandate that states provide concrete evidence, including social science research or real-world examples, showing that they are using their TANF spending in ways that truly help families in need. One of the best ways to do that, according to the administration: direct cash assistance. “We remind states that there is a large body of research that shows that cash assistance is a critically important tool for reducing family and child poverty,” said the announcement of the proposed regulations. “Studies have found that when families receive TANF and are more financially secure, they are less likely to be involved in the child welfare system.”

The newly elected Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives has previously proposed trillions of dollars in cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and suggested that slashing the programs should be the top priority of Congress.

Raise the age at which you can receive social security to 69 (which is your money, taken out of your paychecks for your entire working life - hoping you DIE first, the age for retirement used to be 55)

Cut annual costs-of-living benefit increases

Open up to privatization, public expense, private profit

turn Medicare into a voucher program

vastly cutting Medicaid

gut the Children's Health Insurance Program

remove Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) subsidies

24-hour libraries would be pretty punk rock

it's actually kind of fascinating to me when people automatically equate "improve social programs" with "become a communist dictatorship". they're basically admitting that they would never do anything to help other people unless forced. as though their whole concept of freedom revolves around being able to be as selfish as possible, and getting to treat others like garbage, and they don't see anything wrong with that.

President Joe Biden will press House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for a detailed list of spending proposals when the two meet at the White House on Wednesday, officials said ahead of the meeting.

Biden advisers Brian Deese and Shalanda Young said in a memo to reporters Tuesday that the White House would release its own budget in early March.

“It is essential that Speaker McCarthy likewise commit to releasing a budget, so that the American people can see how House Republicans plan to reduce the deficit,” Deese and Young wrote.

A Republican budget proposal, the advisers said, should specify whether Republicans would pursue savings through cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, health insurance subsidies, research or public safety spending.

Republicans should also specify “how much their budget will add to the deficit with tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and large corporations, as in their first bill this year.” House Republicans approved a symbolic bill cutting IRS funding for tax enforcement, which the Congressional Budget Office said would boost deficits by more than $100 billion.

Republicans have signaled they want a major spending showdown with Biden, and that they would use the so-called “debt ceiling” as leverage. The federal government is already butting up against a legal limit on how much it can borrow in order to cover expenses, and if Congress fails to raise the limit, the government would default — potentially triggering a financial crisis and a recession.

Biden has said he would refuse to negotiate over the debt limit, but has nevertheless engaged in a back-and-forth with Republicans, skewering them for suggesting they’d cut spending on popular retirement programs and demanding they be specific about what they want.

Republicans have struggled to define what they’d like to see cut from the federal budget. Some have proposed vague across-the-board cuts to discretionary spending, while others have suggested that it is Biden and the White House who should identify spending restrictions. A top House Republican on Monday said the GOP would seek to cut the “woke agenda” in negotiations with Biden.

Since last week, McCarthy has claimed that Republicans would not propose changes to Social Security or Medicare as part of their spending demands. GOP lawmakers typically sidestep political blowback over such proposals by promising to “strengthen” or “save” those programs instead — with changes for future beneficiaries.

Deese and Young noted Tuesday that the Republican Study Committee, a policy-focused group of House lawmakers, last year proposed cuts to Social Security and Medicare through higher eligibility ages and reduced benefits for some recipients.

McCarthy insisted Sunday those programs should be “off the table” for now and that it was a shame congressional Democrats had refused to produce a budget.

“They won’t even negotiate,” McCarthy said on CBS. “I want to make sure we have something responsible, something that we can move forward on and something that we can balance our debt with. So I’m looking [forward to] sitting down. That’s exactly what I’ve been asking for.”

The White House is expected to submit a budget proposal to Congress in the coming weeks, as mandated by federal law. But such plans are often ignored on Capitol Hill. It’s unclear whether the divided and narrow House GOP majority will also produce a budget of its own.

Asked Monday what his message was for McCarthy ahead of their sit-down this week, Biden told reporters: “Show me your budget, I’ll show you mine.”

Hi, hello?

By Stephen Millies

Since the 1990s, the need to raise the debt limit has been used to demand cutbacks in any programs that benefit poor and working people. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP benefits (food stamps) are the biggest targets. Cruel, lengthy lockouts of government workers took place during 1995-1996, 2013, and 2018-2019. The last one lasted five weeks.

Lmao

"We have really been welcomed even more than originally thought,” Bediako said.

Numbers provided by the Community Safety Department, which oversees the program, show the unarmed responders went to 199 calls from June 28-Aug. 30. The CRT dispatches an unarmed three-person group of first responders to non-violent behavioral health and quality of life calls for service.

Prior to the program’s launch, some community members were worried about the responders' safety.

The data shows they reported feeling safe 100% of the time. As of Tuesday, the HEART team has never needed police backup for safety.

Smith said his department has a strong collaboration with the Durham Police Department. He also said he’s gotten calls from cities like Austin, Texas; Seattle and Winston-Salem, wanting to learn more about Durham’s program.

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"To see the team that we’re building here, to hear them talk about the calls, yeah, I’m a believer,” Smith said.

During the pandemic, lawmakers dramatically, but temporarily, expanded the social safety net, including more money for families with children. The impacts of those changes are still being felt and debated to this day. Amna Nawaz and producer Sam Lane report on that for our series, America’s Safety Net.

Efforts to vet applicants and prevent fraud are keeping eligible people from accessing government assistance.

December 15th, 2023: I have had a change of heart. I used to think that I didn't need to try to get any financial assistance from the government, even though I might very well qualify for it, because I do make enough to get by with a few temporary challenges every now and then. I suppose that deep down I felt as though there might be some virtue in struggle while willingly turning aside from government assistance.

However, in light of the fact that this U.S. government has been sending billions upon billions upon billions of our tax revenue - money that we are made to give up from whatever income we might be fortunate enough to make - to racist colonizer-settler projects like Israel and thoroughly corrupt governments like the Ukraine - all while the federal deficit continues to climb with no end in sight - I see no reason why I should feel any guilt whatsoever in aggressively & contentiously applying for any governmental assistance for which I might qualify. Let at least some of my tax dollars remain within this country working for me - a U.S. citizen and a U.S. taxpayer.