Melissa Gutierrez                                                                                                            September 15, 2010

Autobiographical Statement

I am researching the United States and individual states’ welfare policy. I am going to examine the policy from its origins up until the present, but a larger part of the research will focus on the current welfare system. I will examine five states, and I am still researching which states will work best, to illustrate the vast differences in benefit levels and rules/rights for recipients. I am also going to examine the United States federal welfare policy to illustrate the control it has either retained or given to the states in welfare’s balance of federalism.  After the enactment of TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) as part of federal welfare reform in 1996, the states have gained broad discretion in determining eligibility and to give sanctions. When examining this current system, I am going to specifically look at both federal and state level sanction policy, criteria, and statistics as well as eligibility criteria, policy, and statistics. I am very passionate about and excited to research the standards or criteria that a person must meet in order to remain eligible for welfare benefits on the state and federal level. I want to illustrate how the government uses sanctions and eligibility standards to keep recipients in a cycle of poverty and to oppress and exploit this minimally trained low wage work force.

I am motivated to write this honors thesis based on my own experiences with the New York City welfare system. After my son was born and his father lost his job, we had to go on public assistance. I was a student, still a freshman at CCNY, and I was told I needed to work to remain eligible for public assistance by my former case worker. I did work-study, for twenty hours a week, but began to be sanctioned in my spring semester for non-compliance.  A recipient must be involved in an approved training program for 35 hours per week, and although GED’s and Associates degrees are counted toward this 35 hour requirement, going to a four-year college is not an approved training program. So, because I had a newborn and was working twenty hours a week and taking five classes already, I refused to be assigned a TAG assignment, which is given to people who “do not meet” the approved training program requirement. TAG assignments are when a recipient is placed in a welfare worksite or a welfare approved training education program. TAG caseworkers determine if you are complying or not with approved training programs. One of my goals is to determine who sets this criteria as what constitutes as “approved training.” I was meeting the 35 hour per week requirement and going beyond it, but because I was in a four year college,-not an approved program- my case was continuously sanctioned for two and a half years. I still received food stamps, but no other assistance for which I should have been eligible and needed.  Last month, my food stamps were cut as well. So now I must do another “fair hearing” (an administrative appeals process) just to get my food stamps back. Now that I am a single mother, this assistance is more necessary than ever. I am not the only one who is being sanctioned and denied; the system is not simply picking on me. I see numerous friends and their families denied or sanctioned every day. I hear their complaints, I listen with empathy. Their pain and my own is my motivation. I witness all of us poor mothers being exploited and kept as a low wage work force. We exit the welfare system with no real-world training, and skills so minimal that if put on a resume, would only land us a job that will not allow us to make enough to reach the federal poverty level. We will still be earning well below this level, in deep poverty. Furthermore, we are trapped by our inability to obtain an education that would demand that we are paid at least enough to support ourselves and not have to rely on any form of government assistance.

Based on my own experiences I believe that the welfare system is a system of exploitation and oppression, in which the recipient is denied equal citizenship with non-recipients. Only recipients are compelled to work outside the home for their government assistance. Social security recipients and unemployment collectors are not. Though, the idea is that these people earned their benefits, but my theory is that a recipient is also earning her benefits through participating in workfare. Recipients are exploited by being denied an opportunity to train for higher earning power by being denied access to higher education. By this denial, they are further being denied an opportunity to choose their profession. This is one of many factors that separates recipients and treats them as other or as sub citizens when compared to non-recipients.

I have a few goals with this honors thesis. One would be to shed light on this fact that recipients are denied an opportunity to obtain a bachelor’s degree, hence denied the opportunity for a real self-sufficiency, and are therefore are denied equal citizenship. My second goal is to expose the eligibility criteria and sanction criteria and to expose the number of eligible families kicked off of welfare each year by sanctions and the number of eligible families that are flat out denied by eligibility standards. My third goal is to examine past and current federal and state welfare policy to accomplish my second goal. My third goal is to interview recipients, scholars, and government officials. With the recipients, I will discuss their experiences and if they got sanctioned or denied and why and if they’ve ever worked in a welfare center and what that was like. With the scholars, I want to discuss this rising rate of sanctions and denial of assistance as well as the fact that recipients are denied equal citizenship. With government officials, I want to discuss their positions, their policy ideas on welfare, and ask them if they are aware of this denial of an education as well as the denial of assistance to many needy families. Another goal, a huge one with this project, is to attempt to break the stereotypes people have of welfare recipients. I believe that if these stereotypes are not broken, then the recipients will continue to be stigmatized for their poverty and it would be hard to unite the recipients at that point for a new welfare movement. I will use books, articles, interviews, and statistics to make my argument. I am still working out some details at this point but I am excited to begin this honors thesis.