Bush wants $100M to urge welfare moms to marry

January 27, 2002 10:35 PM

Bush wants $100M to urge welfare moms to marry What will he want next $100M to urge Atheists to become Christians.
posted by onegoodmove (38 comments total)

He's been reading the Nation! I've heard of these programs set up by states, among many roll-reduction incentives. Like a free bus ticket out of state.
posted by rschram at 10:40 PM on January 27, 2002

Encouraging traditional families where children have a dad? What a horrible thought!
posted by aaronshaf at 10:49 PM on January 27, 2002

This is funny. Is GWB some kinda lib-rul? Hehe.
posted by owillis at 10:50 PM on January 27, 2002

Bush and his advisers believe the landmark welfare overhaul adopted in 1996 is working well...

Is that an acknowledgement that Clinton might have done something right during his tenure? Yikes.
posted by chicobangs at 10:58 PM on January 27, 2002

This sounds like a good way to get them off welfare. The next step would be to encourage them to divorce to collect alimony and child support in addition to a smaller welfare check.
posted by peterbaer at 11:02 PM on January 27, 2002

Encouraging people to get married by paying them means people will get married who shouldn't. What you end up with is loveless marriages and unwanted children. The military already does this by increasing (by a significant amount) housing allowances for people who are married and who have kids. When I was in the Navy, I saw so many dysfunctional families, and then divorces and broken homes that were a direct result of this policy, and it is very unnecessary and sad.
posted by greasepig at 11:50 PM on January 27, 2002

we should stop giving money to people, but i'd start with farmers, then move to corporations and immediately follow that up with social welfare.
posted by thebigpoop at 12:12 AM on January 28, 2002

social engineering through contolling the purse-strings is wrong, pure and simple.
posted by thebigpoop at 12:14 AM on January 28, 2002

This is funny. Is GWB some kinda lib-rul? Hehe

exactly. big gov't BAD. big christian values gov't GOOD.

ugh.
posted by victors at 12:19 AM on January 28, 2002

If Bush wants to give me money in order to urge me to become a Christian, he can feel free to go right ahead.
posted by kindall at 12:32 AM on January 28, 2002

> This is funny. Is GWB some kinda lib-rul?

He certainly spends like the proverbial liberal. "[Bush's budget] will propose a spending increase of around 9 percent for next year, more than any big-government Democrat would dare to put on the table. It will cast aside all the promises about maintaining budget surpluses and paying down the national debt that both parties made in recent years, and instead will project at least several years of budget deficits."
posted by pracowity at 1:30 AM on January 28, 2002

(from NYT opinion piece linked to by pracowity, above:)

Some of Mr. Bush's Democratic opponents are beginning to view the forthcoming budget as another example of how this administration regularly repackages positions it has advocated all along to take advantage of changing circumstances.

Egad! That's unprecedented, isn't it? [rollseyes]
posted by verdezza at 2:29 AM on January 28, 2002

Well, the idea is sound. Hard enough to raise rugrats WITH two parents. If you can turn off the sarcasm button long enough to consider the children.....is there anything wrong with a child having two parents that love it, and are working together to provide for it?

My husband and I were broke as snot when our three were small....if I had been single when I had the three I would still be in poverty. Did I think husband was the bee's knees the whole time? heck no.

But I do now...
posted by bunnyfire at 3:48 AM on January 28, 2002

I've got to do it. Sorry

Won't someone please think of the children!

Thank you, goodnight.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:00 AM on January 28, 2002

> is there anything wrong with a child having two parents
> that love it, and are working together to provide for it?

Nope. But you don't have to be married to do that.

What are these "experimental programs aimed at getting single welfare mothers to marry" and would they include, for example, gay couples?

And is there anything wrong with a child having three parents that love it? Maybe the government should change the marriage laws and let polygamists have a share of that government cash?
posted by pracowity at 5:20 AM on January 28, 2002

What about including necrophiliacs? It'd bring a new meaning to 'dead beat dad'.
posted by dodgygeezer at 6:04 AM on January 28, 2002

I'm an Atheist. I'll become a Christian for 50 bucks. Throw in a carton of Camels™ and I'll even do some hail-marys.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 6:46 AM on January 28, 2002

Encouraging traditional families where children have a dad? What a horrible thought!

Encouraging people to marry for the wrong reasons? What a horrible thought, indeed.
posted by holycola at 7:00 AM on January 28, 2002

Won't someone please think of the children!

damn, you beat me to it!

The military already does this...

Yeah, I once had a roommate who had just gotten out of the Army. He had a 'wife' that he married just to get the extra bucks. He barely knew her, and hardly ever saw her. He said lots of people did that. Now, I don't really have a problem with what he did, but I do have a problem with the gov't pretending that it is a solution to anything.
posted by spilon at 8:19 AM on January 28, 2002

The problem is that it is pushing the morality of the "traditional" family, even though other, "non-traditional" families are doing quite well. If the mother brings her lesbian lover into the house, then that should be just as good.

Or what if someone doesn't believe in marriage (and those people exist). Why should they have the forced morality pushed to them?
posted by benjh at 8:23 AM on January 28, 2002

Maybe the government should change the marriage laws and let polygamists have a share of that government cash?

Anyone ever read Joe Haldeman's Worlds? He re-introduced Heinlein's concept of line families - families constructed a little like small companies, with multiple fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, etc., and appropriate division of labor. A prospective "husband," once invited, basically bought a share in the family, either with straight cash or by bringing some valuable skill. What happened was that you'd have a built in familial network of resources - type A's out earning the bucks, matrons caring for the children, students earning degrees, handymen reparing the home and car. Individuals are far too specialized now to have a functional pairbond - the previously simple idea of child care is thrown for a loop at the equally simple prospect of both parents working. But these line families, you could basically build a family to spec, and thereby divsersify resources and skills. It seemed enormously sensible - even natural, like modernized neo-clans.

This is not to say that the people didn't love one another. Imagine that your, your current spouse, and a dozen of your closest friends bought a big house and formed a family...? It is also not to say that there were orgies every night - relationships were maintained by and large in traditional monogamism, gay or straight.

Why can't we have some sort of initiative for creating a legal framework to allow this instead of the idiot social regression we get? Guh.
posted by UncleFes at 8:39 AM on January 28, 2002

Won't someone please think of the children!

Why force people to get or stay married who will be miserable for the trest of their lives. Most likely the kids will be miserable because of this.
posted by jeblis at 8:42 AM on January 28, 2002

Fes, can you imagine the outcry against what is basically... *gasp* corporate marriage? ;) What you should do is spin it the other way, so it becomes neo-tribalism; that way someone is sure to form an advocacy group for it.
posted by darukaru at 8:57 AM on January 28, 2002

Sorry, gotta speak from my PoV, man. There are, you know, some things about corporations that are good.

::ducks, runs::
posted by UncleFes at 9:03 AM on January 28, 2002

Unfortunately, this is simply the choice of the lesser of coercions: either unwed parents are coerced to marry, or taxpayers are coerced to support the children of unwed parents.

And, anyway, the middle class imposes this coercion anyway. Marry before baby, even in these days, is still something that your typical lawyer or insurance agent believes in very highly. One important role of welfare is to be a remedial values system for lower classes who've somehow lost the plot.

I have no problem, whatever, with imposing upon consumers of my taxes the "burden" of the same moral and social behavior that I impose upon myself, without consuming any taxes as recompense.
posted by MattD at 9:36 AM on January 28, 2002

"Unfortunately, this is simply the choice of the lesser of coercions: either unwed parents are coerced to marry, or taxpayers are coerced to support the children of unwed parents. "

Not all single parents are on welfare. Not all married parents are self supporting.

This is just another way of making everyone fit into one standard mold. You have to a) marry b) have babies c) stay that way.

At least to fit GWB's standards.
posted by SuzySmith at 9:47 AM on January 28, 2002

Every day that passes, I feel more and more that I live inside Terry Gilliam's "Brazil".
posted by eljuanbobo at 9:49 AM on January 28, 2002

This is just another way of making everyone fit into one standard mold. You have to a) marry b) have babies c) stay that way.

Well, not exactly. One may still choose to refuse the money. If your mold is nonstandard, eschew the cash.

I live inside Terry Gilliam's "Brazil".

That explains the damnable mail tube and Fresnel lens they just installed in my office!
posted by UncleFes at 9:53 AM on January 28, 2002

well, parking my beliefs at the door for a moment, the reality is a lot of these gals are flying solo, period-except for the guys who come along just long enough to eat the food in her refrigerator, smoke her cigarettes, then disappear till the next month, contributing nothing to her household.

I have SEEN it with my own two eyes. These guys are leeches, and these gals are clueless.
posted by bunnyfire at 9:54 AM on January 28, 2002

Addendum: remember, if you take the government dime, you have to play by the government rules. And the government rules suck.
posted by UncleFes at 9:55 AM on January 28, 2002

i want $300 million to urge people to keep their underage kids from drinking, keep people from driving drunk, and prevent people in positions of authority from being hypocrites.
posted by jcterminal at 10:10 AM on January 28, 2002

Over half of the women on welfare are abused and/or battered women (see also PDF link at bottom of page). Nothing like giving desperate women a fistful of cash to marry their batterers. I'd rather see this money go to job training and child health programs, or perhaps a community center/daycare program like those that existed during WW II.
posted by kittyloop at 11:08 AM on January 28, 2002

But if those guys are just leeches, why would having them marry solve anything? In fact, those guys might be the most likely to marry, because they would just be willing to do it for the money. But there would probably be little benefit to either the children or the mother, especially if the father continues to be nonsupportive. Not only that, if the mothers marry, they might not marry the father of the children, but some other guy. These stepfathers might turn out to be neglectful or abusive of the children not biologically theirs.
posted by Charmian at 3:08 PM on January 28, 2002

If these marriages are so bad, then the women (being rational) won't take the money for it.

All that's being attempted here is to remediate out of the American lower-class culture a particular insidious meme afflicting it: the acceptability, as an unobjectionable default, rather than as a occasional and necessary evil, of unwed parenthood.
posted by MattD at 4:06 PM on January 28, 2002

If these marriages are so bad, then the women (being rational) won't take the money for it.

All that's being attempted here is to remediate out of the American lower-class culture a particular insidious meme afflicting it: the acceptability, as an unobjectionable default, rather than as a occasional and necessary evil, of unwed parenthood.
posted by MattD at 4:07 PM on January 28, 2002

If these marriages are so bad, then the women (being rational) won't take the money for it.

If they're really rational, they'll make the right choice for free.

All that's being attempted here is to remediate out of the American lower-class culture a particular insidious meme afflicting it: the acceptability, as an unobjectionable default, rather than as a occasional and necessary evil, of unwed parenthood.

Translation: I don't really think they're rational.
posted by boaz at 4:29 PM on January 28, 2002

Won't someone please think of the children!
---
Why force people to get or stay married who will be miserable for the trest of their lives. Most likely the kids will be miserable because of this.

The 'think of the children' thing was a joke, jeblis. An old one 'round these parts. I personally prefer children slow roasted, with honey mustard sauce.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:36 PM on January 28, 2002

How about using the money to prevent some of those births in the first place?

Birth control, abortions, RU482... voluntary free sterilization?
posted by seitz at 10:41 AM on January 29, 2002