Missouri's Poor Handling Of Their Welfare System

Lawmaker's in Missouri have voted to remove thousands of people from its welfare program. The act will force 6,400 children to lose benefits in the first year alone. The new law will reduce the state's lifetime limit for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) from five years to three years and nine months. This act starts a countdown before many will go further into hunger, homelessness and despair.

Individuals will have six weeks after a meeting with a social worker before losing half of the family's benefits. All benefits will be cut off after an additional 10 weeks. In 2013 researchers from an anti-poverty group, Maine Equal Justice Partners, found that cuts to TANF push families deeper into poverty and forces them to rely on charity. Neighboring state Kansas did a similar, yet somewhat milder, act to Missouri's when Republican Governor Sam Brownback prohibited families on welfare from using cash assistance on recreational activities such as swimming pools and movies.

A study which focused on families transitioning from welfare reported that 70 percent of the recipients had to go to the food bank, and more than 1 in 3 families quickly lost their utility services. Such acts as these are part of the reason why the outpouring in Baltimore felt to be a reasonable and necessary resolve. The local and state government had been consistently letting their citizen's down. 

It's almost amazing to think that groups of people in the United States have been deprived of certain freedoms for hundreds of years. In addition, these deprived people (our citizens) are expected to believe that the "bootstrap theory" (which maintains that you alone should be able to pull yourself out of your own muck) is an American manual for successful living. To this day, it is a concept rejected by most university professors and sociologists.  

Only six years ago, many Americans were homeless due to a recession which took years to overcome. It was not government regulations that supported Americans in these dire times but government assistance. It seems logical that people who have experienced tougher times should be able to empathize for others going through similar situations. However, one can only conclude that in order to have empathy for another, one must first obtain the necessary characteristics which defines a human being.