[Faith & Hunger] Times Union Calls for Hike in Welfare Grant

[Dunleamark at aol.com]

Speaking of raises ...  
First published: Sunday, January 13, 2008 
Albany  Times Union  
It'll be easy enough to be confused, if  not overwhelmed, with the state 
Legislature back in session and the  special interests descending upon lawmakers 
peddling causes both noble and  ignoble.  
There ought to be perhaps more pressure than ever to raise the pay of  the 
state's judges for the first time in a decade. The judges themselves  are making 
the very persuasive case one would expect of them. Then, again,  it's a safe 
bet that the very legislators whose votes are needed to give  those judges a 
raise will demand one for themselves as well -- lame as  that argument is, at 
least until they can reform the Legislature first.  
But what about the poor, the people living on government subsides?  
State welfare benefits haven't been increased since 1990. What's known  as 
the basic welfare grant for a family of three has been stuck all those  years at 
$291 a month. A family of three on welfare also can get up to  $426 a month 
in food stamps and a shelter allowance of a little more than  $300 a month. The 
specific amount of the housing subsidy varies from  county to county.  
It's unconscionable that the Legislature has gone this long without  
adjusting basic welfare benefits.  
Everyone is affected by inflation, of course, from judges and  legislators to 
the poorest of the poor. That latter group, in fact, may  well be hit all the 
harder since so much of the little money it has goes  to the most basic of 
necessities.  
The price of milk, for instance, has gone up by 94 percent since 1990.  The 
price of fuel oil and natural gas are about twice as high now than  they were 
when the subsidy for home heating costs last was adjusted in  1987. In each 
case, that's much higher than the overall 55 percent  increase in the rate of 
inflation since 1990.  
New York's courts, including the Court of Appeals, have ruled five  times 
since 1987 that the welfare shelter allowance is illegally low. That  requires 
welfare families to use part of their basic grant, scant as it  is, to subsidize 
housing costs.  
Even now, more than a decade after rewritten welfare laws reduced the  number 
of New Yorkers on public assistance by 61 percent, more than  535,000 people 
-- including more than 300,000 children -- live this way.  They need the 
Legislature's attention as much as anyone. A cost of living  adjustment in the 
basic welfare grant, to $475 a month for a family of  three, is urgent.  
The Assembly, but not the Senate, voted for a 10 percent increase in  the 
basic welfare grant last year. This year the Democrats in the Senate  are pushing 
for a 25 percent increase.  
That money is readily available, too, despite the state's $4.3 billion  
budget deficit. Federal block grants pay for the state's welfare costs.  Other 
states have used the block grant since 1996 to raise welfare  benefits. New York, 
though, has invested it in so-called rainy day funds.  
And now it's raining, and raining hard, on the people who most need  state 
government's help.  
THE ISSUE: The state's welfare grant hasn't be raised in years.  
THE STAKES: Without an increase, inflation will erode subsistence funds  even 
more. 



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