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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Conservative Think-tank Says America’s Poor on Easy Street

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Friday, August 23, 2013   

HUNTINGTON, N.Y. – A report from a libertarian think-tank that says poor Americans are living comfortably on public assistance has New York social workers shocked.

The report, titled The Work versus Welfare Trade-Off: 2013, by the CATO Institute says that people on public assistance have little incentive to find work because – in 35 states – they make more than they would with a minimum-wage job.

But Karen Boorshtein, president and CEO of the Family Service League, says that is simply not true.

She says she and her staff have for years worked with poor people on Long Island.

"We have never seen anyone who is living high off the fat of the land by living on public assistance,” she adds. “I'm shocked by it. I have no idea what their methodology was."

Boorshtein says Long Island's housing shortage in itself is just one of the factors beyond the control of the poor who rely on the safety net attacked in the report.

Boorshtein and others say the CATO report really amounts to a criticism of America's low-wage economy, in that the minimum wage is not enough to get by on.

"One of the things we have to think about is what's going on with our job market,” Boorshtein says, “and how to get people better wages so they can earn a better living and not have to rely on any public entitlements.”

Angela Zimmerman is the coordinator of the Family Support Initiative at Molloy College in Rockville Center. She's most concerned about the safety net's role in the development of children of low-income families.

"We need to be able to appropriately support families, to support children, so that we're building healthier communities,” she says. “The absence of doing that, we know what the resulting issues are when that doesn't happen."

The authors of the report acknowledged that they found 42 percent of adult welfare recipients are working and that many are participating in community service or pursuing educational opportunities related to employment.









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