Reduce Aid for Dependent Corporations to Fund Working Poor

by Pat Gowens, Editor, Welfare Mother's Voice.
28 February, 1995

If we as a nation have given up the possibility of business paying living wages to non-professional workers, logically we need to create a government aid program for the working poor. However, it makes no sense to fund it by eliminating the nation's ONLY public child support program (AFDC) for very poor dependent minors and their caregivers.

Aid for Families with Dependent Children costs $15 billion a year and provides an average of $370 a month child support for four million families (%90 have only one parent). Only $5 billion gets to the families. Ten billion goes to bureaucrats to police, punish and FORCE poor moms to:

1. report every dollar they earn or receive and every person who helps them and
2. go through mandatory dead-end job search/training programs.

Why take funds from an insignificant, punitive child support program (in a country where 75% of all fathers fail to support children after leaving them) to fund welfare for the "working poor"? We would be taking from poor children to fund their poor, working moms! Neither dependent minors nor their caregivers can afford to subsidize the workplace. They desperately need their support, whether mom works at home or is employed.

The obvious source of funding for the working poor is the Aid for Dependent Corporations programs. Dependent corporations receive $104 Billion in federal welfare each year from us generous taxpayers - $51 billion in direct subsidies and $53.3 billion in tax breaks. And dependent corporations do not need the government handouts they receive. Many corporate welfare recipients are on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans!

Aid for Dependent Corporations provides:

• $100 million to Sunkist, Gallo, M&M's, Campbells Soup, McDonald's, etc to advertise their products abroad;
• $1 billion for Continental Grain, Cargill Inc, Louis Dreyfus Corp to recieve free shipments of wheat, corn and other commodities from US reserves (some commodity program!);
• $55 million to pay the grazing fees for livestock of wealthy ranchers. (We pay $7 out of every $9 per animal grazing fee, even for multi-millionaires like J. R. Simplot.);
• $135.6 million to private forestry companies who owe taxpayers for timber purchased, but are allowed to default with no consequences!
• $48 million for land titles to mining companies who pay less than $4,500 for each title instead of the millions that the land is worth.

We can easily shave $50 to $75 billion off of the Aid for Dependent Corporations program to subsidize the working poor. Then we need to clean up the Aid for Dependent Children program to rid it of its punitive, destructive nature. With the $10 billion spent to police moms, we can guarantee all dependent minors support to the age of 18 with no strings attached. This will give moms the RIGHT to work without losing any of their children's support. Like Social Security Survivor's benefits, we should also guarantee mom support, as the primary caregiver, until she earns $7000 a year.

After using the exorbitant Aid for Dependent Corporations dole to fund enslaved employees, and guaranteeing all dependent minors a secure income, we will recognize the value in guaranteeing ALL Americans a secure income: the unemployed, underemployed, injured workers, people with disabilities, elderly, and all unpaid caregivers. To do this, we will drastically reduce war expenditures, collapse all public benefits programs (including the remaining Aid for Dependent Corporations), eliminate the policing bureaucracies, and create one Guaranteed Annual Income. Then ALL Americans will share in the wealth of this nation and we will find peace and harmony in this country.

Corporate welfare figures from:

Essential Information, Inc.
James Donahue
P. O. Box 19405
Washington, DC 20036<

To Join the Welfare Warriors in the fight for Guaranteed Annual Income, contact:

Linda Ray 414-383-9459, or Pat Gowens 414-444-0220
Welfare Warriors
4504 N. 47
Milwaukee, WI 53218