Legislators, whose welfare do you consider? Part II

I once read a very explicit novel on laws against the Second Amendment called Unintended Consequences. It wasn't the best written book I'd ever read, or the shortest, but it made its point that enacting laws to overprotect can often lead to consequences the various bills' authors never imagined.

I believe there are a lot of welfare laws out there that were supposed to assist people in times of need, but developed unintended consequences. Just because the money is raised by taxes doesn't make it less theft from somebody's hard-earned paycheck and thrust it into the pocket of somebody who may or may not deserve it. 

When husbands and fathers started leaving families and not paying support, welfare once again stepped into the breach with a deal. If the custodial parents would only file papers against the nonpaying parents, welfare would give them money and collect it from the offending parent. This is still money being taken from the pockets of those who earned it and placed in the pockets of others, no matter how they might need it, no matter how much of a loan to the custodial parents it allegedly is.

Now grandparents are trying to collect support from their offspring who are legal adults. The chances of their local child support enforcement office chasing down the parents who owe it are slim to none. These offices don't understand the situation. They figure the old folks will go away, or the parents will come back. They also try to retrofit law and don't realize grandparents aren't merely custodial parents.

By law in most states, unless a grandchild is born to a minor child, or the grandparents adopt the grandchild, grandparents are not legally responsible for the financial costs of raising grandchildren. Just because a grandparent becomes the custodian or the guardian of a grandchild doesn't suddenly make them liable.

I know. I experienced extreme frustration at the hands of Illinois FHS and DHS when my children were my grandchildren. My case for support came up after 26 months of custody. At that time, the states attorney's office sent me a letter telling me I had no business trying to collect support, that I had adopted the children (something the person who wrote the letter should NOT have known, as it was a closed related adoption), and I should get a private attorney to do so. 

For the 26 months my children were our wards, we spent about $40,000.00 on their needs, not including the money we spent on adoption. Out of that, Illinois paid our wards $5,486. What if we had not been able to afford what was necessary?

To the best of my knowledge, DHS and FHS never once tried to collect from the biological parents. 

One of the biological parents is employed in the military. In addition to the base pay he receives, he gets untaxed income for a place to live, food to eat, uniforms, certain other pay and allowances. He knew he had this set of children to support, yet he made four more. By law, the children here were supposed to come first.

As for our adult daughter, she has already made one child that we know. She has a bachelor degree, yet works in retail. 

My husband and I have thought about going to court through a private attorney and collecting what is due us. Even if we can't bleed a turnip, it would be a hoot to watch the bio parents' wages being garnisheed one dollar at time. We're still exploring the details, looking for an attorney with a pair, so to speak, who would actually take on these bozos and the courts.


But the welfare system gives little help, if any, to grandparents who do not insist that it do so, and even then, it isn't much. It's time for legislators to stop our present system of welfare, and with it, the urine tests, the vouchers, the robbing Peter to pay Paulette.  

Legislators, whose welfare do you consider? Part I

Recently, the legislature of Florida passed, and Gov. Scott signed into law, a a bill that requires prospective welfare recipients to submit urine, tissue or hair samples in order to receive benefits. Parents who fail drug tests can name some other individual to collect on behalf of their children, but that other individual must also pass a drug test. 

I don't care if people who want certain jobs gain them by taking a private drug test for the company. I think the government is wrong when it makes military members take drug tests, but when one signs one's life away to join the military, one has no current choice.

But I think it's wrong to drug test welfare recipients.

You of course ask why. I think it makes several assumptions that are not true.


It assumes that all people who are recipients of welfare are drug addicts, thus reinforcing stereotypes. It assumes they are all stupid, wasteful individuals who have no self-defenses when it comes to drugs.  It doesn't take into account parents who find themselves suddenly single. It doesn't take into account alcohol.  It expands the black market for clean, fresh urine creators, and ways to trick the System. What it does for foster parents who act as representative payees (RPY) for foster children I have no idea.

It makes grandparents pee in a bottle, usually grandmothers. As a class, grandmothers should be up at arms at pulling their undies down.

If, indeed, drugs are involved in this scenario, somewhere along the line there is going to be a grandparent who must use the system to get some kind of care for a child. It might be a senior on a fixed income who now has more mouths to feed. It could be getting the kids health insurance. It could be an attempt to get the local child support office to make an attempt to collect support from unwilling adult children.

I opined on a friend's Facebook page that, instead of trying to create more jobs for lab techs and clean piddlers, perhaps Florida and other states should consider in-kind goods, if they were so stinkin' worried about the money being misused. I know quite a few grandparents in the situation of raising grandkids, and they would not be adverse to receiving help along the lines of the Women, Infants and Children program, or WIC. 

WIC gives pregnant and nursing moms, and kids under a certain age or with certain nutritional needs, vouchers. These vouchers are not very popular among the drug-addled crowd. They are extremely specific, for certain items of food. It states very plainly how many dozen eggs, how many boxes of which whole-grain cereals, how many jars and type of peanut butter, and how many gallons of milk a recipient gets. No sugar water in pretty colors. No mistaking the intent of the money. 

I see no difference between a jar of Skippy and a pair of 4T  jeans. I see no difference between a dozen eggs and basic school shirts. 

I mentioned that I don't believe in welfare, but as long as the government was offering, if I needed it, I would use it. Ultimately, I would like to see welfare gone, and people who need help going to those willing to give it, instead of redistribution of wealth via child support collection and TANF payments.


Would you believe that a young woman informed me that grandparents who collect welfare on behalf of their grandchildren actually "take" the grandchildren in order to collect the TANF money to buy drugs and alcohol, and were responsible for their adult children's misbehavior? She of course believed that children in such instances were better off with the State in foster care. She actually stated that grandparents' income should be counted toward the support of grandchildren, even when they were conceived by adults and not as a part of the grandparents' household.


It is a good thing I live nowhere near this young, ignorant, naive woman. As it was, I gave her an earful then and there on my friend's wall. When I apologized, he told me I was right, especially for my main thought: Welfare shouldn't exist. Period.