Education pathway out of poverty

The letter from Dr. Wade Horn, the assistant secretary of the Administration for Children and Families of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“Of welfare and work,” BDN, July 13), caught my attention as it so clearly expresses the shortsightedness and prejudice of this administration. Dr. Horn concludes, “… the only pathway out of poverty is work.”

That is simply not so. A better pathway out of poverty is education.

I began law school as a single mother of a 2-year-old child receiving no “welfare” assistance. I would have gladly borrowed the money for school, but under the student aid rules my loans and work study were cut by the amount of AFDC I was deemed able to receive.

Therefore, in order to continue my education, I was compelled to apply for welfare. I chose to do so rather than return to my prior work which included such jobs as hand weaving rugs, cleaning horse stalls and cutting linings at Aroostook Shoe Co. Dr. Horn sounds convinced that I made the wrong choice, but I must say I prefer life as a lawyer.

Under the new rules governing the Welfare to Work program (TANF), will women now have the same opportunity that I seized upon 30 years ago? I fear not. Under the new regulations published in the Federal Register of June 29, the TANF program is defined as a “subsidized work program” and the states are prohibited from including all but the most limited vocational educational programs in their definitions of “work.”

The administration justifies this heretofore unheard of limitation on states’ rights as follows: “Some existing state vocational educational training programs allow other educational activities such as basic skills, language training, and postsecondary education leading to a baccalaureate or advanced degree. We are explicitly restricting these practices to prevent the use of the term ‘vocational educational training’ from covering virtually any educational activity. In particular, the TANF program was not intended to be a college scholarship program for postsecondary education.”

Maine and the 20 other states that did allow participation in postsecondary degree programs to meet the state work requirement will no longer be able to do so. Rather, according to the new regulations, the need for postsecondary education is supposed to be met by “programs authorized by the Higher Education Act.” But in February, Congress cut federal aid to education by $12 billion.

Why impose such limitations on the ability of states to determine how welfare recipients can best improve themselves? The Republican Congress has recently again refused to raise the federal minimum wage (currently $5.15 an hour, less than the poverty level for a family of two). The restrictions on using TANF funds to educate welfare recipients, the refusal to raise the minimum wage and the cuts in education funding combine to ensure that many transitioning from welfare to work will, in fact, remain in poverty.

It looks like the intention really is to maintain a permanent under-class of cheap labor.

Martha Grant is a lawyer in Presque Isle.