Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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Margy's Blog & Updates
Here’s why I don’t think it’s puzzling that conservatives oppose child care funding: they don’t want the federal government to be stuck with the cost of these reciprocal employment benefits. So, they endeavor to stigmatize the parents and make it easier to cut/harder to defend federal funding for child care. This motivation explains why the debate over reauthorization of the Temporary Assistance (welfare!) block grant turned into a debate about work requirements for the remaining few, non-working cash assistance recipients – when many more low-wage workers were the true beneficiaries of the block grant. These workers got help with child care, transportation, and other employment benefits. In order to reduce support for the block grant and its benefits to low-wage workers – conservatives focused all of the public debate on cash assistance issues: work requirements, etc. Thus, the debate was as though state and local policymakers STILL used all the funding for “welfare checks” – just like 1996. Conservatives understand that there was public support for “making work pay” and they wanted to avoid a debate over the inadequacy of funding for those services. And they succeeded. They are just on to the next phase of their campaign now: stigmatizing what’s left of the federally funded system of employment benefits for low-wage workers.
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