Chapter 2: The compliance machine

The Uncertain Hour

Marketplace

Government, News

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 29 March 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A single mother of two in Chicago was working and taking classes to become an addiction counselor when her life fell apart. The father of her youngest child assaulted her so badly it put her in the hospital. Worried for her safety and the safety of her children, she fled to Milwaukee and signed up for welfare, hoping it would live up to the promise of providing employment and self-sufficiency.

Instead, she ended up in a Kafkaesque maze of “work activities” that didn’t lead to a real job or independence. When her life hits another crisis, things really start to fall apart.

Host Krissy Clark examines the roots of this cookie-cutter regime and discovers that a fundamental part of the problem lies in how the federal welfare reform bill measures success– in a way that has little to do with whether the program is helping participants gain family-sustaining employment.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Chrissy. We want to know a little bit more about our listeners.
0:04.5	So we're asking you to complete a short anonymous survey.
0:07.8	It takes less than five minutes.
0:09.9	Go to Marketplace.org slash survey to complete the survey.
0:14.2	You do all of us at the uncertain hour a huge favor by filling it out.
0:18.0	Thanks so much. Just a note before we start,
0:20.9	this episode contains some short descriptions of physical violence.
0:26.0	The work requirements that exist in cash welfare programs today
0:29.7	across the country. Thank you very much.
0:32.0	The requirements that are enforced daily by state and local governments
0:36.0	or the private contractors they hire. Thank you, Mr. Vice President.
0:39.6	It's a members of the cabinet.
0:41.3	Those requirements came into being in 1996.
0:44.8	On an August day in the White House Rose Garden,
0:47.7	when President Bill Clinton signed the so-called
0:50.5	welfare reform bill into law. Today we are ending welfare as we know it,
0:56.2	but I hope this day will be remembered not for what it ended,
0:59.6	but for what it began. A new day that offers hope,
1:03.7	honors responsibility, rewards work.
1:06.7	On that day, halfway across the country in Chicago,
1:10.2	a young woman named Darnetta Harris had no idea how tangled up she was eventually going to get
1:16.0	in the new welfare to work system that President Clinton and Congress had just created.
	...

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