MediaWatch: January 1992
Table of Contents:
Welfare Wailing, Factual Failing
Supposed federal welfare cuts have been newsworthy for ten years, while state welfare budgets have been exploding. But when a few governors tried to pare down the rate of increase in welfare spending, the march of the welfare cut victims began again.
On the Christmas Eve CBS Evening News, anchor Harry Smith warned that "fear is spreading that California might once again be a trendsetter" by controlling its burgeoning welfare expenditures. Reporter Jerry Bowen detailed how poor mothers would suffer under Governor Pete Wilson's "deep cuts in welfare" (from $663 to $597 a month). While Bowen let a few workers complain about their high taxes, he said nothing about the state's welfare budget, even after cuts.
USA Today reported California's budget for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) grew roughly twice as fast as inflation in the '80s, and the benefit level ($663 a month for a family of three) was the highest of the ten most populous states. Compare that to Virginia, where the same family would receive $291. As a result, the AFDC caseload grew four times as fast as California's population.
Reporter Bob Faw followed Bowen with a story heavy on moral intimidation but short on facts: "If the California plan takes hold in Connecticut, welfare recipients like 26-year-old Nieta Diaz, unmarried mother of four, will feel the pinch. That's just $800 a month to cover everything for five people. Cut that to levels of three years ago as some Connecticut lawmakers propose?" Said Diaz: "If I don't pay my rent next month, my landlord is going to kick me out, and then where am I going to go? Where am I going to go with my four kids?"
Faw continued: "Welfare recipient Kevin Mosley, permanently disabled, says he is also barely scraping by." Mosley warned: "If there was less money coming in, I'd be in trouble. I'd be in the street, to be quite honest with you. I'd be in the street." he added: "That prospect, though, has not stopped state legislators from slashing welfare spending more this year than any other since 1981." He concluded with an emotional appeal: "Spend less tomorrow, as the California plan envisages? `How we gonna live,' Diaz and others ask, `how we gonna live?'"
Faw's story came at a mysterious time: the state legislature had adjourned days before without passing any cuts. In fact, the only proposed cut was a $50 million reduction in general assistance, not the AFDC program. That means that Faw's unmarried mother of four faced no cuts, and Faw's comparison to California's AFDC proposals fell completely flat.
