Position Paper-Melissa Gutierrez

Melissa Gutierrez October 31, 2010

Position Paper #2: Marriage Promotion in TANF

My claim for my overall thesis is that recipients are denied an opportunity to achieve self-sufficiency in the American welfare system. One way in which this is done is through the denial of an opportunity to receive higher education, which is discussed in my other position paper. In this position paper, I will focus on how women are denied an opportunity for self-sufficiency through the policies of TANF which does not support single motherhood by reallocating TANF funds from programs that assist single mothers and funding marriage promotion. Ultimately, the government is denying women independence (self-sufficiency) through promoting marriage (dependency).

I am going to borrow terms from Ronald Dworkin’s writings, Liberalism and A Moral Reading of the Constitution, such as “external preferences,” “neutrality” and “the good life” to illustrate how the government has, through federalism, history, and the enactment of TANF, denied recipients the equal rights of citizenship and hence has violated their Constitutional rights. Furthermore, I will use Drowkin’s theories to explore how rights can be used as protection from the government’s legislated external preferences such as TANF. These welfare rights could be discovered in the Constitution by the court and upheld and protected. Furthermore, the Court can easily protect recipients through the equal protection clause, as I will illustrate.

The majoritarian system has flaws that can be addressed by ensuring a system of rights and a strong judicial system. In Liberalism, Dworkin argues there are defects in a “pure majoritarian process” that can be addressed by adding a “scheme of rights.” This scheme of rights ensures that individuals are “treated as equals” by the government (Dworkin 1985, 190). The government treats people as equals by acting “neutral to varying conceptions of the good life,” (Dworkin 1985, 191). This in turn respects people’s “moral independence.” Additionally, the judicial branch plays an essential role in limiting majority rule through the use of judicial review and striking laws that violate the rights of individuals.

I will begin by discussing why rights limit the majoritarian process. In a pure majority rule, the rights of the minority are lost in favor of the majority, meaning the government was not treating its citizens as equals. America is a democracy that doesn’t have pure majority rule. Our system of checks and balances and the Bill of Rights limit pure majority rule. Dworkin believes “in practice the decisions of the democratic majority may often violate individual rights,” (Dworkin 1985, 196). In A Moral Reading, Dworkin argues that in favor of the “majoritarian process.” Dworkin is not anti-democracy; he is in favor of majoritarian democracy with rights which would limit and constrain ordinary law. Dworkin argues for the majoritarian process PLUS rights.

One reason why rights limit the majoritarian democracy is because some laws are based on “animus” and rights correct those laws. In A Moral Reading, Dworkin distinguishes between the two types of laws produced by majoritarian rule: laws based on external and laws based on personal preferences. He notes there is an important difference between these two types of laws: some are justified and others are not. Laws that are not justified are problematic because they impinge on individual rights in favor of the majoritarian process. The democratic majoriratian process sometimes mixes in external preferences, some of which can be harmful to a minority’s rights (or laws containing “animus”). According to Dworkin, the laws are based on “external and personal preferences.” Personal preferences refer to decisions that are made based on personal needs and interests. External preferences are “preferences people have about what others shall do or have,” (Dworkin 1985, 196).

Civil Rights are necessary (scheme of rights) to provide minorities with protection by ensuring that strong external preferences are removed from the majoritarian political institutions. This ensures that when the majority has strong external preferences, (as cited in the example below) that Congress, for example, would not pass a law that reflects the majority’s external preferences and violate the rights (or good life)of minorities. The good life is each “individual’s conception of what gives value to life,” (Dworkin 1985, 191) Liberalism believes that all citizens have a right to enjoy their vision of the good life as long as it is not harmful to others. The government is supposed to pass laws in a way that respects “varying conceptions of the good life.” The rights needed to accomplish the removal of strong external preferences will depend on the prejudice the majority is attempting to impose on a minority.

If the government passed laws based on external preferences they would not be treating people as equals or as morally independent. For example, most states have laws banning homosexual marriage because a majority of people believe it’s immoral (the majority’s strong external preference). These laws impinge on the rights of the tax-paying gay community (the minority) to get married. The prohibition of gay marriage illustrates the government infringing on homosexuals’ vision of the good life (being married). This denies homosexuals’ equal status as “morally independent.” Marriage is a right that heterosexuals’ enjoy. Based on external moral preferences (animus against homosexuals), homosexuals’ are denied this same right (or equal opportunity). The prohibition of homosexual marriage in most states is an example of the government passing laws based on strong moral external prefrences as opposed to being neutral. This means the government is not treating homosexuals’ as equal to heterosexuals’ or respecting them as morally independent.

Dworkin states that all though external preferences are problematic, we can’t remove ALL of them from the political process. When we vote for Congress we are voting on our external preferences. Dworkin argues that without rights, the majoritarian process and external and personal preferences would lead to “in-egalitarian results,” which is the opposite of the liberal’s egalitarian intentions (Dworkin 1985, 190). Rights, for the liberal, ensure that the government treats people as equals. Treating people as equals is the “idea that the government has to treat all individuals with equal concern and respect,” (Dworkin, 1985 190). This requires government to be neutral to differing conceptions of “the good life”. Neutrality would mean that the government would not value one version of the “good life” over another. That would ensure the government treated peoples’ values equally and treated individuals as morally independent. We need rights in a majoritarian system to ensure the “government is neutral toward varying conceptions of the good life.” This gives people equal status as moral individuals. This is why we have rights and why they limit the majoritarian process.

In Liberalism, Dworkin notes the United States is committed to guaranteeing the government treats citizens with “equal respect and concern.” For Liberals, this “scheme of rights” is the Bill of Rights plus the 13^th and 14^th Amendments. He goes into the example of the Equal Protection clause and how it was written when homosexuality and gender were not issues. Yet, because of the generality of the language used in the Equal Protection Clause (“equal protection of the laws”), it was left open for future interpretation to fit any issue where equality was being denied. Rights, Dworkin argues, function as “Trump Cards” that citizens can use if the majority’s external preferences are violating a minority’s rights. Rights are justified as a necessity because “they protect equal concern and respect,” (Dworkin 1985, 198). Liberals argue that rights are justified because they improve “political morality”. They believe treating people as equals is the RIGHT thing to do, and it is, I agree.

I will now turn to how rights limit the majoritarian process. In A Moral Reading, Dworkin argues for a “moral reading” of the Constitution. He asserts that “the Bill of Rights can only be understood as a set of moral principles,” (Dworkin 1996, 12). In his “Constitutional conception of democracy,” he argues for rejection of the majoritarian premise, or majoritarian rule. In its place would be a system in which citizens’ consent to the government making all collective decisions. This government must treat all consenting citizens with “equal concern or respect.” This would mean treating people as equals hence people are granted equal status in the eyes of the law. (Dworkin 1996, 17). All three branches have important functions in ensuring rights are upheld and granted. Dworkin notes that one particular branch plays a role of significant importance when ensuring our rights: the judiciary.

In A Moral Reading, Dworkin notes that judicial review is a check on the majoritarian system. Judicial review ensures that civil liberties are not violated or inexcusably compromised. Depending on the Justice’s interpretation or reading of the Constitution, rights are expanded, denied, or protected. In a Moral reading, Dworkin shows us that HOW justices interpret the Constitution can grant or deny rights. He advocates for a reading that involves examining “past legal and political practice as well as what the framers intended to say,” (Dworkin 1996, 9-10).

In A Moral Reading, Dworkin notes our rights (or protection from the government) come from the Bill of rights and the 13^th and 14^th Amendments. These rights were written using abstract moral language which restrains governments’ power. He uses the example of Equal Protection of the laws to illustrate that our rights are “general political principles.” Taking into account precedent, political and legal history and the framers intention, Justices are left a broad scope for judicial interpretation. He notes Brown v. Board of Edu as an example of justices performing a moral reading of the Constitution. It was a Moral reading because the Court recognized that segregation is inconsistent with the 14^th Amendment (implicitly overturning Plessey v. Ferguson).

The limits (rights) on majoritarian democracy are in place through the interpretation of the Bill of Rights by the Supreme Court (our system of checks and balances.) The limits are not meant in a negative manner, but rather to ensure individual rights are not “trumped by a majority,” (Dworkin 1985, 196). Rights are ensured through judicial review and the law making process. We need judicial review because it ensures government neutrality toward varying conceptions of the good life hence respecting people as moral individuals.

The first claim I would like to address using Dworkin’s analytical framework is the following:` The text of TANF illustrates the moral based external preferences of the federal government and allows the states wide discretion to impose these external prefrences as eligibility, bonus, and sanction criteria on recipients who do or do not comply or adhere to these standrards.

Authors Stephanie Coontz and Nancy Folbre discuss the failure of marriage promotion to impact the marriage rate of recipients, the harm that “marriage bonus” would actually impose, as well as the necessity of these programs versus other essential TANF programs. “There is little evidence that [marriage promotion] policies would in fact increase marriage rates or reduce poverty among children. Indeed, the main effect of marriage bonuses would probably be to impose a “non-marriage” penalty that would have a particularly negative impact on African-American children, who are significantly less likely to live with married parents than either whites or Hispanics…Public policies should not penalize marriage. Neither should they provide an economic bonus or financial incentive to individuals to marry, especially at the cost of lowering the resources available to children living with single mothers. Such a diversion of resources from public assistance programs penalizes the children of unmarried parents without guaranteeing good outcomes for the children of people who are married.” The authors of this publication are aware of the dangers of associating marriage with poverty. Granted, two incomes are better than one when dealing with poor families, but marriage isn’t going to make two poor people rich because they married, it will not solve the issue of poverty, because being unmarried is not a cause of poverty. “In 2000, about 38% of all poor young children lived in two-parent homes. These families have been largely overlooked in the debates over anti-poverty programs and marriage.”¹ This illustrates that getting married is not going to be the solution to poverty, I will further explore this claim with statistical evidence that I will collect that reflect marriage rates of Americans from 1900-2010 as well as the marriage rates of recipients during this time period. I will also use articles that address the failures of marriage promotion/abstinence programs as well as the waste of resources that arise from this. We cannot believe as a society that being unmarried is a large factor that effects poverty rates for recipients. They might be a little less poor with an extra income, but nevertheless, poor. Two individuals making minimum wage will still be poor whether they are married or not, and although two incomes are better than one, their combined incomes would still be below the poverty level. Reese discusses “PRWORA authorized funds for marriage counseling among poor couples and abstinence education among teens, despite little effectiveness of these programs…Congress also offers states and illegitimacy bonus: 20 million for each of the top five states in reducing out of wedlock birth rates without raising the abortion rate, ” (Page 18 Reese). Poverty among children is not confined to single-parent families. In 2000, about 38% of all poor young children lived in two-parent homes.43 These families have been largely overlooked in the debates over anti-poverty programs and marriage. Indeed, the campaign to increase marriage has overlooked one of the most important public policy issues facing the United States: the growing economic gap between parents, whether married or unmarried, and non-parents.

Another claim that I make is that TANF denies recipients the ability to choose single mother by denying them the ability to be self –sufficient supporters of their families through choosing to use TANF funds for promoting marriage as an alternative or solution to poverty as opposed to providing more services for single mothers. Denial of single motherhood is a denial of opportunity to be self-sufficient. Through the enactment of TANF, the government is denying single motherhood as equally valuable, de-values single motherhood, legally, morally, and economically.

TANF is a patriarchal policy which uses the welfare system to further the agenda of Conservatives by oppressing predominantly female recipients, merely examining the first words of Congress’ finding is section 101 illustrates this oppression: “The Congress makes the following findings: (1) Marriage is the foundation of a successful society. (2) Marriage is an essential institution of a successful society which promotes the interests of children, (3) Promotion of responsible fatherhood and motherhood is integral to successful child rearing and the well-being of children.” In 251 pages, this is the first things stated after the content, and as Dworkin would note, this is an example of a legislated external preference. The government was not acting neutrally, hence it violates the rights of recipients by not respecting their conception of the good life and their moral independence.

It is as if the government and society are morally punishing alternative families because they do not consist of the same nuclear-male dominated households which perpetuate patriarchy. The private nuclear family life is just, after all, as Frederick Engels notes a model of the lager social hierarchy, patriarchy is reinforced through systems in public and private life, in which the man dominates the women and children. Many stable homes for children are provided by single parents, extended family, as well as homosexual couples who cannot get legally married. As Dworkin would note, TANF sets a standard in the law of what is best for society, implying that single mother hood or alternative families are not sufficient. This is a manifestation of a legislated external preference, denying non-nuclear families the same respect and consideration as nuclear families, this violates the moral independence of the recipients by not respecting their version of the good life, and the government is not acting neutral between Conservative and Liberal conceptions of the good life. Marriage is not a solution to poverty.

The third claim I make is that marriage is a reinforcement of a position of dependency for recipients. Claim: TANF’s diversion of funds from programs that would aid single mothers to programs that would reinforce a dependent position in women represents a “quasi-coercion” of recipients into positions of dependency.

This unlawfully imposes a standard of dependence on women, TANF uphold marriage as the highest moral standard. Meaning, women who do not meet the standard of being married or staying married were economically punished by not being eligible for marriage bonuses and having their funds that would help them be independent, such as child care, redistributed to marriage promotion. Meaning the government is replacing programs that would make women economically self-sufficient and independent such as low cost child care with services which promote dependence, since marriage won’t alleviate many women’s poverty and in marriage, they are expected to rely upon their husbands for money. women who may have lost a husband, been abused in some way, had a husband who left them, or was just very poor even with her husband’s minimal income, or never was even able to get married because he didn’t want to. And then in society, comes to welfare with children, there is a stigma toward that woman and her children if they don’t live up to that standard, and not by choice perhaps. What if a woman is single not be choice? But what would be wrong with women making the individual private moral choice to be single mothers as opposed to being married? It would be breaking systems of patriarchy that have been in place since almost the beginning of time, allowing recipients more autonomy and affording women greater rights. But by not providing services such as child care, which is necessary for a single mother to go to work, then recipients are explicitly being denied equal access to resources. In this system, the woman is left in an intersection of economic dependence. A dependence for food, childcare, housing and other monetary needs such as a decent minimum wage. The cost of living has risen so that the single mother is placed in a position of dependence, either on “the man” or “a man” or many men. Yes women have the right to an “equal opportunity” in theory, but in practice, American society does not allow single mother autonomy.

Women are, as Francis Wright noted, still the ultimate subordinate beings in society, but I’d say now a days that poor single mothers are definitely the most ultimately oppressed group in America. As she noted, and evidence such as the 1996 TANF act suggests, it pleases men that women are dependent. Stigmatization of the welfare system and its recipients shaped public opinion in American and eventually created bi-partisan support for welfare reform. Conservatives began this movement with the creation of the term “welfare queen” and since recipients have been labeled as “illegitimate families, lazy, promiscuous, immoral.” Furthermore, while the majority of recipients are white, Conservatives frame the attack on welfare as if most of the recipients are black or non-white. Granted, blacks and non-whites are disproportionately poor compared to their population size and the percentage of recipients is high versus their population sizes. However, this is due to lack of opportunity for advancement, lack of access to higher education. This stigmatization of the recipient oppresses the recipients due to the public opinion of the moral choices she made by reallocating funds that could help her to attempt to force her into dependency.

Recipients have their children’s fathers forced into their children’s’ lives hence the recipients life, if not through marriage promotion, than through child-support enforcement, Congress is demanding the return of the father to the family, hence forcing the family into dependence on a man or father as opposed to aiding the mother in obtaining the means to be self-sufficient economically, hence NOT choose marriage if the recipient wanted and the option to choose single mother hood if recipients desired to. Congress made a bi-partisan decision to ensure that single motherhood was no longer an option. If you were poor, you would have to depend on a man, “As we shall see, since 1967 both democrats and republicans have insisted that fathers return, at least to financial, if not marital, family headship.”² Recipients are also denied the Constitutional right to privacy and equal protection in the eyes of the law by being economically coerced into marriage.

One of the stated objectives of welfare legislation passed in 1996 was “to end dependence by promoting marriage. Many policy-makers want to devote more public resources to this goal, even if it requires cutting spending on cash benefits, child care, or job training. Some states, such as West Virginia, already use their funds to provide a special bonus to couples on public assistance who get married.1 In December 2001, more than fifty state legislators asked Congress to divert funds from existing programs into marriage education and incentive policies, earmarking dollars to encourage welfare recipients to marry and giving bonus money to states that increase marriage rates. On February 26, 2002, President Bush called for spending up to $300 million a year to promote marriage among poor people.” ³

My fourth claim is that since welfares beginning, the government has used morality based eligibility and sanction criteria to create, uphold, and perpetuate a distinction of widows as worthy for public assistance and unmarried single mothers as unworthy, using legislated morality based external preferences to distribute aid to the needy with preference to married women.

Since the creation of the welfare state, the government has imposed morality based eligibility criteria to deny numerous poor single mothers and their children aid. An analysis of the American welfare state policy history illustrates the states and later the federal government’s use of eligibility criteria and sanctions to keep poor single mothers off of welfare. Initially, welfare was created at the local level and administered to “worthy” women or white widows. The states had wide discretion over who would ultimately receive assistance and who wouldn’t. Mink notes that Mother’s pension” was the first form of government-run welfare offered in America, and it was controlled and funded by the states. “Mother’s pension” allowed a woman to stay at home and raise her children; the government recognized motherhood as a job, if the recipient was a white widowed woman. Social Security was created to ensure that white widows would earn enough as homemakers to continue the job of raising good citizens.

Reese notes that when Mother’s Pensions were first enacted, they were targeted to poor white widows, with the maternalist idea that mothers should be compensated for the work of child-raising, because mothers would “raise good citizens.” (Page 22) Reese) Yet, the benefits were not enough for many women to stay home and work, but they still did receive the help, and were given preference due to the fact that they were once married. As Mink discusses, the idea that these women were single mothers through no fault of their own, their moral choices to marry, was what gave them moral preference over other single mothers. Furthermore, Reese discusses that recipients were required to endure several intrusions into their private sexual life and were given strict moral guidelines of how to behave. Eligibility criteria consisted of “suitable home” and “fit mother” standards to deny assistance, “and such policies reinforced the marriage ethic-the e expectation that women should get and stay married,” (page 23 Reese). President Roosevelt created the American welfare system through his aggressive passage of the New Deal; he created Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), which is a system that is federally funded, a product of federalism. However, the states retained many of their rights to implement welfare as they saw fit, and Congress ensured that any law attempting to federally regulate welfare was not enacted. Both Mink and Reese note the rise in caseloads once ADC allowed for more recipients who were non-white and/or unmarried to receive welfare. Yet, Mink discusses Social security still allows (barely, but it still does allow) a single widow to be a stay at home mother if she chooses or has to be. But poor women are “compelled” by the government, as Mink notes, to work outside the home by not having their work in the home economically recognized.

The fact that SSI is still very generous when compared to welfare benefits illustrates the government’s preference to provide subsistence assistance for “worthy” single mothers, or widows. TANF recommends that poor women who are divorced and unmarried either work first to support their families or find husbands if they want to be stay at home mothers. If TANF created a stay-at-home income for women, through welfare grants, during the young years of a child’s life before they start school, this would allow poor women to be stay at home mothers for at least a few years to raise their own children without having to get married to be stay at home mothers. Another alternative to marriage promotion would be more generous shelter benefits/low income housing for single mothers to allow them to be independent. This would respect single motherhood as a lifestyle and a choice and allow independence for them in practice through resources, as opposed to diverting funds from TANF to impose positions of dependency.

Mink illustrate how recipients have to work outside of home for EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) yet widows do not have to for IRA (Independent Retirement Account). Retirement is an acknowledgement of a life time of work, meaning middle class stay at home mothers are being economically compensated for their work in the home. Yet recipients have to work outside of the home to receive their tax credit. Mink notes that most single mothers will choose to work outside of their homes, but the issue she has with PRA is the “coercion” of poor single women: “why should poor single mothers,–and only poor single mothers—be forced by law to work outside of the home?”⁴ Mink discusses differences in Congressional policy for women of different classes, races, sexualities and marital statuses. Congress made it possible (as welfare did in the 30’s) for the white middle class married women to stay at home through the creation of the IRA, which “are an untaxed portion of earned income,” and through TANF, at the same time, denied poor women the right to be homemakers and compel poor single mothers to work outside of their homes. Congress used their own standards to determine the legal value of homemaking based on skin color and class, and strengthened divisions, in society and in the eyes of the law, between women. The IRA reinforces the Conservative ideology that dominated the government during the Mother’s Pension and the creation of SSI. Women receiving public assistance after 1996 are explicitly coerced into seeking marriage through the text of TANF’s explicit promotion of marriage. But since its conception at a state level, American welfare has given aid with priority to mothers who were married over non-married single mothers. States were allowed to determine eligibility for these benefits based on a mother’s private moral decisions or circumstances. In other words, the state could deny a single mother aid at this time if she was unmarried on that basis.

While it was at first the states who were imposing strict morality based eligibility criteria, the national government now imposes this criteria, For example, Reese discusses a Conservative group called the Heritage Foundation and how it influenced Bush’s policies on “reducing out of wedlock childbearing,” (page 160). Reese discusses Charles Murray, who argues that “welfare should be abolished because it promotes unwed motherhood,” (page 158). Also, Wade Horn and Andrew Bush are discussed, regarding their collaborated work, Father’s, Marriage, and Welfare Reform (2002), and how it urges that politicians stigmatize welfare and create policies which would give priority funding and bonuses to married couples. Religious ideology ultimately influenced and directed the concepts and values underlying the Conservative reformation of the American welfare system “Politicians emphasis on traditional ‘family values’ was linked to the rise of the Christian Right, which revitalized the Republican Party and shifted in rightward on social issues,” (page 145).

My fifth claim is that promoting marriage creates unequal citizenship between: married and unmarried recipients, recipients and non-recipients, and individuals in different states due to federalism.

TANF creates a distinction between the level of access to benefits, and the rules, for married and unmarried recipients. I will use Mink and Reese’s historical analysis of morality based eligibility criteria and morality based sanction criteria (man in the home) to illustrate the discrimination against unmarried single mothers. Widow were worthy of assistance and the opportunity to be stay at home mothers, yet unmarried women were thought of as immoral and punished with work outside the home to instill “moral values.” Furthermore, in a two parent household, one parent has to fulfill the 35 hour a week work requirement while the other one can stay home without benefits being penalized. However, in a single parent household, if the recipient is out of work, they are considered non-compliant, and their case is either sanctioned or closed. There is no economic equality. Also, there is no economic punishment for women who are not married and are non-recipients of TANF. This illustrates the differences in rules and penalties for recipient and non-recipients of TANF. An example of this is in the work place, it would be discrimination to explicitly pay one person more than another solely on the basis of marital status, give bonuses to married employees simply because of their marital status, or financially incentivize and promote marriage at work. The unmarried or never married employees would state that bonuses on the basis of marriage status were not based on merit or need, theses employees did nothing grand for the company by being married, but rather the private moral choices of some employees were being financially rewarded due to the external preferences of the bosses. Yet it is ok to redistribute funds for marriage promotion? There is distinction in what rules apply to married and unmarried recipients, unmarried recipients being denied access to certain benefits based on this status. There is also a distinction between recipients and non-recipients, because recipients Constitutional rights to privacy and reproductive freedom are being violated. Congress believes any marriage is a good marriage, and legislated this preference through the funding of marriage promotion, which denies recipients the equal protection of the law as citizens. The “quasi-coercion” of recipients to become married is an example of the unequal citizenship status between recipients and non-recipients. Not to say that marriage is not promoted to both recipients and non-recipients, but in the case of recipients, money is being taken away from recipients benefits such as individual cash benefits and child care, to funnel into marriage promotion. Recipient’s resources are reallocated to and wasted by being funneled into marriage promotion.

Recipients in different states, through TANF, a federal policy, are given different benefits at different levels, access, and, eligibility and sanction criteria. TANF explicitly promotes marriage as we have seen. But it also granted the states wide discretion in how they choose to implement their federal block grants, how they choose to allocate funds and meet the goals of the federal government. With financial bonuses to states who meet goals related to abstinence, out of wedlock births and abortions, some states have chosen to allocate more funds on marriage promotion and abstinence, hence more money on influencing recipients to exercise their right to privacy in a certain conservative manner, or regulating privacy, regulating the private moral choices of recipients, violating their Constitutional rights as equal citizens to enjoy and exercise the right to privacy. States receive cash bonuses from the federal government when they reduce or keep down out of wedlock births, abortion rates. Congress is regulating morality through the enactment of TANF, restoring the state/local moral regime that ruled recipients through the text and policy goals and design of TANF, which abolished

Being on welfare, recipients are not given the right to choose a partnership or to choose not to be in one, the right to reproductive freedom and a right to privacy. Both democrats and republicans held certain negative beliefs about welfare recipients, and through the enactment of TANF, Congress made a bi-partisan choice to restrict single mother headed families’ access to welfare. As TANF states explicitly in its first page, and as Mink discusses, TANF was created to promote marriage and work (outside the home), as opposed to providing assistance to needy single mothers. The enactment of TANF is a way to slowly end welfare, and in its place would be private charity and social security, marriage promotion, and low-wage work, options that will not help poor single families become self-sufficient. TANF inevitably makes all decisions for the recipient, and falsely bases their poverty on “poor moral choices,” hence legally punishes recipients by denying them an opportunity out of this poverty by denying recipients the entitlement or right to welfare. Poor women in need of welfare are legally susceptible to moral interrogation and denied full citizenship rights, this takes away this groups full equal status in the eyes of the law. This makes recipients legally sub citizens when compared to non-recipients, and rights are denied on the basis of TANF recipient status.

1 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/marriage/etc/poverty.html

2 Mink 5

3 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/marriage/etc/poverty.html#.

4 Mink 28