{"id":9376,"date":"2013-07-04T11:25:30","date_gmt":"2013-07-04T15:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=9376"},"modified":"2013-07-04T11:25:30","modified_gmt":"2013-07-04T15:25:30","slug":"how-do-we-think-about-welfare-fraud-in-the-north-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2013\/07\/04\/how-do-we-think-about-welfare-fraud-in-the-north-country\/","title":{"rendered":"How do we think about welfare fraud in the North Country?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: 401(k) 2013<\/a>, Creative Commons, some rights reserved<\/p><\/div>\n

A press release and an article this week have brought to my attention the possibility that some people in our fine region are skimming off welfare programs. In St. Lawrence County, Senior Department of Social Services Investigator Elizabeth Thomas and District Attorney’s office Investigator (and former Potsdam village Police Chief<\/a>) Edward Tischler released their results for last month on welfare fraud:<\/p>\n

During the Month of June, 2013, Investigators from the St. Lawrence County Department of Social Services and the District Attorney\u2019s Office investigated numerous cases of reported fraud. These investigations focused on the crimes of Welfare Fraud, Offering a False Instrument for Filing, Unlawful Use of a Benefit Card, Forgery and other violations of the NY State Penal Law.<\/p>\n

The programs affected by the reported fraud include SNAP (Food Stamps), Temporary Assistance, Day Care, Medicaid, and HEAP.<\/p>\n

During this period, the County obtained judicial settlement of $20,194.00 and sanctioned individuals preventing them from receiving further benefits from the programs they defrauded.<\/p>\n

Investigations are ongoing and arrests are pending.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office reports (via the Glens Falls Post-Star<\/a>) that it’s arrested four people on welfare fraud-related charges. Much more on them and the allegations in the article.<\/p>\n

These announcements put me in mind of the whole discussion of welfare fraud (and why it’s such a sore spot for so many), and got me thinking about the first time I ever heard about it.<\/p>\n

Remember welfare queens? I mean, that’s a phrase that’s been bandied about a fair amount over the last few decades, but it began gaining currency during Ronald Reagan’s 1976 presidential campaign, when he “outed” this lady, on Chicago’s South Side:<\/p>\n

She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran’s benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000. (This quote is from Wikipedia<\/a>, but links to a paywalled New York Times article.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was born in 1974, and was as a result about six when Reagan made his successful run for the presidency. In a weird, childlike way, I actually remember the “welfare queen” narrative, although my analysis of it at the time may not have been that high-level.<\/p>\n

Many have argued that the “welfare queen” narrative is an example of race-baiting by Reagan<\/a>, but putting that aside, it did, for a lot of people, provide a compelling narrative to the already-existing notion of fraudulent long-term welfare recipients sponging off the state, able-bodied men and (especially, since the 1970s) women who worked the system like it was their job.<\/p>\n

The scene has changed a lot since the ’70s, and with Clinton-era changes making permanent cash assistance pretty much a thing of the past (it’s now known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, and generally offers a maximum of five years of cash aid), but the idea of cracking down on welfare fraud is still politically popular. Just last month, the Senate passed a bill (now known as A2386-2013)<\/a> to prevent people from using EBT (that would be ATM) cards with money from cash assistance programs at liquor stores, gambling halls, or adult entertainment venues.<\/a><\/p>\n

The bill appears to have ended the session in committee in the Assembly, but it was (again) popular with the North Country’s state legislators and with the Senate in general, which voted overwhelmingly for the measure (more from North Country Now.<\/a>) One can see both why this bill is appealing (it’s hard to find objections to the idea that money intended to be spent on fresh healthy food should be stuffed in someone’s thong instead) and potentially problematic (what if the liquor store ATM is the only one in the neighborhood, and the grocery store doesn’t take credit cards? Many poor neighborhoods don’t have a lot of grocery options.)<\/p>\n

Returning to now, and here, I’m very interested to see where the question of welfare fraud in the North Country goes. We’re having a real moment in America right now of thinking hard (and sometimes feeling even harder) about what the state is actually\u00a0for,<\/em> what services it should provide, and what restrictions it’s appropriate to put on those services. For us locally, what does that mean in terms of state cash aid and how we think about it and people, many of whom are our neighbors, who receive it? Some of the issues we cover most at NCPR are related to the government and its spending: public education, public sector employment, transportation, and so on. How do welfare (and welfare fraud) fit in?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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