RIVERHEAD, NY

By Neil deMause

On March 22, 1995, Congressman Bill Archer (R-Texas) introduced the Personal Responsibility Act, one of the planks of the Republican Contract With America, into the House of Representatives. "This bill will reverse the decades-long federal policy of rewarding unacceptable and self-destructive behavior," said Rep. Archer. "We will no longer reward for doing the wrong thing."

I still remember vividly one of the first times I met Terri Scofield. It was a chilly November weekend in 1995, before "welfare reform" became a household word, and I was driving east on the Long Island Expressway, keeping an eye out for the bright-orange uniforms of "Suffolk Works!" that Terri had told me about. A workfare program started in March of 1994, the program required people getting welfare benefits in this county to receive "job training" by working in unpaid county jobs 20 to 35 hours a week.

There being no real jobs to train for, the county instead set them to work at such tasks as cleaning highway roadsides. Their uniforms, marked "Suffolk Works!" on the back, reportedly made them look like members of a chain gang.

I had set out on this trip to Suffolk County, on Long Island's east end, for a visit with Terri, the organizer for Suffolk Welfare Warriors, one of several groups nationwide to spring up in emulation of the original Welfare Warriors in Madison, Wisconsin. Members, most of them single mothers either receiving welfare or who recently did, share knowledge to help people navigate the welfare bureaucracy; they've also been known to crash meetings of the county legislature to air their grievances.

As I pulled up, Terri was waiting for me outside her low-rise motel-style apartment complex in the town of Coram. ("Just keep driving until you see something that screams 'suburban slum'," she had directed me over the phone.) "You're here just in time!" she shouted. "There's trouble in Riverhead!"

We drove out, heading through a section of Suffolk that Terri described as "Ozark-y" -- broad stretches of potato fields tended by decaying shacks. "We'll be passing Calverton Grumman, which closed down," Terri told me. "That put shitloads of people out of work. Grumman in Bethpage has been cut back by about 8,000 people in the last five years. Fairchild Republic, on the Nassau/Suffolk border, in Melville, has been severely cut back in the last five to eight years."

The popular image of Long Island is as an upscale suburban playground, where Levittown sprawl has spread right up to the pristine beaches of Fire Island. Terri quickly disabused me of this notion. "The economy on Long Island sucks," she said. "Over the last ten years, hordes of companies moved down south and out west to unionless states where there are no strict environmental laws, and where it's much easier to exploit the workforce."

Terri went on to tell me about Beth Alaimo, the woman whose call set us off on this 20-mile sojourn to Riverhead, where Long Island's north and south forks meet. Beth first went on welfare four years earlier, after her relationship broke up and left her with two toddlers, no job, and no child support. Since then, she had held several jobs -- at times up to three at once -- but had recently been forced to turn again to welfare to support herself and her children.

It was a scenario all too familiar to Terri. Several years earlier, Terri had been a sales rep for a local business consultant until an abusive ex-partner began harassing her and her co-workers, getting her fired six times in an 18-month period. It was after he firebombed her landlord's van, leaving her not only jobless but evicted, that she went down to the welfare office to open her first welfare case. It's a story that -- sans explosives -- Terri had heard all too often. She speculated that most women on welfare have left some sort of abusive situation, though no one keeps the statistics to prove it.

We arrived at the new site of the Riverhead welfare office, in a location across town that, Terri pointed out, was well off the major bus routes, providing another obstacle to people seeking aid. This was an example of what is known, in welfare newspeak, as "churning" -- throwing enough obstacles in the path of poor people that they drop off the welfare rolls as fast as they sign up.

"What they do," Terri told me, "is make the process so onerous that people find another way. Or they become homeless and it's a different office's problem."

Workfare, while not shown to be of any use at moving people from welfare to work, was proving to be very, very good at churning.

March 24, 1995: "What a glorious day!" proclaimed Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, as the House of Representatives passed the Personal Responsibility Act, 234 to 199. During the course of debate, Florida Republican John Mica held up a "Don't Feed the Alligators" sign on the House floor. "We post these warnings because unnatural feeding and artificial care create dependency," said Mica. "When dependency sets in, these otherwise able alligators can no longer survive on their own."

The Riverhead welfare center had the atmosphere of a bus terminal cross-bred with a post office: rows of uncomfortable plastic seats and long, slow-moving lines at the few windows open for business. Screaming, cranky kids were everywhere, bored by the endless waiting; a few entertained themselves by playing with the ST-2000, an ATM-like machine that ran clients through a series of questions before revealing what benefits, if any, they could apply for once they finally made it to the head of the line.

Beth Alaimo, her seven-year-old son Luke, and her boarder John Lorenzo greeted us at the door. John, recovering from rheumatic fever and open-heart surgery, was there to apply for food stamps and rent assistance until he was again able to work.

For Beth, the goal was emergency food stamps for herself and her three kids. "I got a tow truck, junked cars, took my kids to work with me, because I was told while I was on welfare they wouldn't help me pay for daycare," she said. After about a year of this, she landed a job as a private investigator. "But I just lost that job, so once again I need food stamps," Beth said. "You're supposed to get a reply within ten days; it's now been 15. I called up to see why I haven't gotten a reply -- Thanksgiving's coming, no food. They told me when the worker gets a chance, he'll look at it, and there's 500 other cases. I was told to go to a church if I didn't have food."

Previously, explained Terri, each welfare worker's caseload had been between 300 and 400 individuals, but that was before a state-instituted hiring freeze and two early retirement packages. "There are a lot of people leaving because they're afraid if they don't leave now, when the federal and the state budget cuts come down, they could be out of a job and have no retirement."

"But what I don't understand," asked Beth, "is if there's 500 cases to each worker, why do you have so many workers to each case?"

This, Terri related, was the most maddening aspect to the welfare system: even as benefit levels were being scaled back and worker caseloads soared, every day seemed to bring more and more layers of workers to each case. "These people that you see at the window, they're screeners," she said, launching into a well-worn monologue. "They look at all your paperwork, and they try to discourage you on the front end -- it's called 'front end grant diversion.'" If you passed the screeners' scrunity, you'd be given an eligibility appointment, which by law was required to take place within five business days, but was typically not for another six weeks. "But in that six weeks, you have to do workfare while you're even waiting to see whether or not you're going to be helped.

"Then you have the eligibility worker, who looks at all your documentation, and determines, yes, you're eligible. After that, your case goes to a four-person 'income maintenance team,' who determine your level of benefits. Then, before it's stamped approved and goes into the computer, there are six auditors. Six. Our feeling is if you don't believe numbers one through five, fire them, and believe number six.

"Beyond the six auditors, there's also a food stamp worker, and a Medicaid worker. Behind each of those, there's two additional auditors, one for the states, one for the feds. And now that we have workfare, you have two additional people: a jobs liaison unit worker at the Department of Social Services, and a jobs liaison unit worker at the Department of Labor.

"Behind those people, you then have trainers: Job Readiness Training, which is a totally useless, 20-hour class that everybody" -- everybody deemed "employable" by the state, that is -- "is required to go through. Regardless of the fact that John just had open-heart surgery and was just let out of the hospital last night, they may deem him employable until such time as he can come back with the documentation that says he's recuperating."

John interrupted, saying that the hospital had told him he would need to wait at least two months before going back to work.

"So what they might make you do is just go to Job Readiness Training, job search -- "

"I have a job," said John.

"Doesn't matter," Beth told him. "They're going to find conditions."

"We're going to work with you," Terri reassured John, "and say, 'Well, excuse me, I'm a little unclear on that, could you please tell me the statute or regulation that authorizes this action?' Very respectful, very low-key, very polite. But yeah, they may give you a tremendous hassle."

"They give everybody a hassle," said Beth with good-natured bitterness. "It's on the application: 'Are you rude? Do you hate people?'"

These workers -- we figured we were up to at least 20 -- were supposedly there for one reason: to catch fraud. But, as Terri pointed out, "welfare fraud" has been measured at only 4% of total expenditures. "If we had 4% fraud in the savings and loan industry," she noted, "we'd be jumping for joy."

"I was found guilty of fraud," Beth interjected. "Because my mother bought my kid diapers, and I didn't tell them. They added up 12 dollars a week, times -- I'm not kidding you -- times 12 months of the year, and they figured out I had to pay them back $1,800 for my phone bill that she paid and the diapers that she bought my baby." A friend of hers, she added, had been denied benefits because investigators went to the wrong address, decided he didn't live there, and charged him with fraud.

September 19, 1995: The Senate passed its version of the welfare reform bill by a vote of 87 to 12. Voting for the bill were 35 Democrats, including four women: Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Mikulski, and Patty Murray.

Two days before the vote, President Clinton indicated his willingness to sign this version of the bill, saying it put the nation "within striking distance" of true welfare reform.

Finally, John's name was called, and we were admitted into the inner sanctum of the client interview area. Of the 19 desks, less than half showed any signs of being in use, and only two or three actual workers were on view.

John's eligibility worker arrived, and her eyebrows immediately shot skywards. "Who are all these people? We can't have all these people in here."

Terri introduced herself as from Suffolk Welfare Warriors, and indicated that I was there to write an article on welfare centers and would like to sit in on John's interview. "I'll have to go talk to a supervisor about this," the worker said, and dashed off.

Ten minutes later, she returned with a slip of paper. "You want to do interviews, you have to call this number," she said, hustling me out the door.

Back out in the waiting room, I struck up a conversation with a man named Tom DiGiantomasso, who was trying to get heating oil assistance. Disabled for five years with a permanent back injury and other medical problems, he was supporting four children on his $665 a month in social security income. "They won't give me financial aid because I have a van -- '87 Plymouth Voyager -- that they say is book valued at $3,500," he said. The engine, he explained, was shot. But to prove that to the welfare center, Tom would need to bring in not one, but three estimates showing that it wouldn't run -- and since the van wouldn't run, he had no way of getting estimates. "So I say, how about if I just give the van away? Well, you can't do that, because you show $3,500 income."

A security guard approached us. "Excuse me," he said. "Are you with the press? You can't be interviewing people in here."

Isn't this a public space? I asked. "Well, no, not exactly," muttered the guard, handing me another slip of paper inscribed with the same phone number.

Tom and I continued our conversation outside. After three or four trips to the welfare center, Tom said, he at last gave up. "I don't want to go through it. Due to my heart condition, due to my anxiety attacks, I don't need that. My health is more important." Instead, he was hoping to get a drop-in appointment for emergency fuel oil assistance.

We went back into the warmth of the center to wait, Tom for his name to be called, me for a likely interview candidate to volunteer themselves. My wait, at least, wasn't long -- within five minutes, a slight African-American man was screaming at the worker behind the window. "What do you mean, I have to wait till Monday? I could be dead by Monday!" He stormed out, followed in close pursuit by a security guard, who stopped at the door and yelled, "And don't come back!"

His name was Nathan Williams, and he was homeless. "I've been sleeping in the woods for four months. I come down here, I need emergency housing." He showed me his papers, including a Speedy Request form, which looked in order to my layman's eye. "They said the housing worker that'll help the homeless people, they don't come in till Monday," he said. "I could be dead sleeping in the woods Monday morning."

Nathan, whose last regular job was killing ducks at a duck farm, had been homeless for two years. The previous winter, he had survived by bundling himself in nine blankets from the Salvation Army. As he prepared to scrounge enough bedding to ready himself for the weekend outdoors, he gave one final angry look back at the welfare center. "If social services can't help the people who need help like I do, a homeless person," he said, "this damn place ain't got no business being here."

On December 7th, Quinnipiac College released a poll of New York state registered voters on the subject of welfare. Fifty-six percent of New Yorkers, it revealed, believed it would be good if welfare cuts encouraged poor people to move "somewhere else."

I went back inside. It was too cold, and the monotony of the stories, combined with the ever-vigilant rent-a-cops, was starting to numb me. I was ready to churn myself.

Beth dashed into the waiting room. John's case was taking longer than expected; would I mind filing her Speedy Request form for her? Be sure to ask that it go directly to her assigned worker, she instructed me, or it could again disappear into the system.

Once on line, I noticed that the woman in front of me was deep in conversation with a woman wielding a clipboard. I peered over her shoulder to catch the name: HealthFirst, a so-called "Medicaid managed care" company developed to enroll Medicaid clients in HMO medical plans. The summer before, New York City had banned Medicaid managed care companies, including HealthFirst, from recruiting in welfare centers after they had been caught misinforming people that they would be forced to enroll (enrollment is supposed to be voluntary) and that their plans would provide increased benefits (coverage is the same as under regular Medicaid); some companies even gave away stuffed animals to coerce people into signing up. All this was done without the slightest regard for whether the HMOs' doctors could handle the new influx of patients.

This, however, was Suffolk County, where in-center recruitment was still allowed. The woman signed the form on the clipboard.

I handed Beth's form to the screener at the window, asking that it go directly to her worker since Beth was now five days overdue for her food stamps. The screener assured me, none too convincingly, that she would "put it on his desk."

Back to the plastic chairs lined up alongside the front door, where two women were discussing the impossibility of navigating the system. "You just go around and around and around," said one.

The other nodded in agreement. "I told 'em they oughta take half this building and use it for child care. Have the workers do childcare, and people can go to work."

The conversation grew more heated as the women continued to discuss how things should be run. "Raise the minimum wage!" cried one. "If you made more money working than on welfare, there'd be some incentive."

She didn't mention -- didn't need to mention -- that the opposite was also true: Lower the welfare grant, and people would have to work at whatever wage was offered. When the Economic Policy Institute crunched the numbers, it discovered that forcing all welfare recipients into the workforce would cause low-wage workers' income to drop 11% nationwide; in states with high welfare caseloads (like New York), the drop in wages would be as high as 17%.

It was nearing mid-afternoon by the time Beth, John, Terri and Luke emerged from the inside offices. John had his temporary benefit card and $81 in food stamps (which would need to last him a month); he also had a long list of forms he would need to fill out before his next appointment: his discharge papers from the air force, records of his VA disability benefits, an application for disability SSI, his last six bank statements, his car title, and a statement from his doctor on state paperwork.

Beth still had no news on her Speedy Request, but it was getting late, and she was ready to give up for the day. "I have to go look for a job," she said, gathering John and Luke into her car for the drive home.

Heading back to Coram, Terri pondered the likely impact of the federal welfare bill. "They do a business bill, they talk to businessmen. They do an environmental bill, they talk to environmentalists. Why, when they write a poverty bill, don't they talk to poor people? We are the experts on poverty. We can tell you exactly what we need. And it ain't services. The only thing keeping us from a decent life is money, income. We don't need parenting classes, we don't need supervision, we don't need training in self-esteem. What we need is education, what we need is jobs -- we need access to the primary labor market."

We pulled up to our last stop, the Coram welfare center, built in the midst of a huge sand pile used by locals for dirt-bike racing. There we met a woman named Carmen, who was wandering the halls with her social worker in search of the welfare worker who, she hoped, could help her reopen her case.

Carmen had full-blown AIDS, and she had just had her Medicaid cut off for missing a child support hearing. She had failed to respond to the first notice of the hearing, she explained, because she was illiterate and had no one to read it to her. And in any case, she hadn't understood why she needed to attend the hearing, since she had already told the state that her child's father was in jail, and unable to pay any child support.

"They took all my money, my Medicaid, food stamps, AFDC," she said. Only her daughter's case remained open. "Without my daughter, I'd be in the street."

All through December 1995, New York state budget planners were busy plotting how to implement the expected federal changes in welfare. On December 15th, New York Governor George Pataki revealed his plan: a five-year lifetime time limit, 60-day cutoff for childless adults, 17% cut in benefit levels, and a "family cap" to deny additional aid for additional children.

"The current welfare system offers counterfeit compassion and strangles its recipients in a web of dependency," said the governor. "It is a tragedy when a hard-working New Yorker who earns $8 or $10 an hour is worse off than someone who refuses to work at all and is on welfare. This must stop, and it will stop."

The week before my visit, Terri Scofield had traveled to Washington for a protest across the street from the White House by welfare participants and their supporters, calling on President Clinton to veto the federal welfare bill. Two other Suffolk Welfare Warriors who had been scheduled to make the trip were forced to cancel when they were unable to get daycare for their children. But welfare mothers from 16 states did show up, forming a 200-person-strong crowd that picketed the White House for two hours, and staged a press conference at which women on welfare and elected representatives spoke out against the Congressional bill.

That night, the demonstrators eagerly watched for themselves on TV, but none of the networks used the footage of the welfare rally. Instead, every channel carried a different demonstration on Capitol Hill: a "Save Our Jobs" rally by waitresses for the Hooters restaurant chain, flown in at company expense to protest EEOC sex-discrimination charges for refusing to hire men.

"It might be politically correct to hire Hooters Guys," said one "Hooter Girl," who earns $2.13 an hour, plus tips, for serving hamburgers while dressed in a tank top and shorts. "But Hooters wouldn't be Hooters if they did."

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