California for years has lagged behind the rest of the country in terms of participation. Tied for 48th in 2013, only 66 percent of those eligible participated in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, called CalFresh in California.

The pool of Californians who are eligible for the program is shrinking. While the pool has increased from 6.36 million in 2010 to 6.98 million in 2014, it has decreased from a peak of 7.17 million in 2013, according to CalFresh estimates based on Census data.

“The good news in California is we’re going in the right direction on both lines,” said Kim McCoy Wade, chief of the CalFresh branch of the California Department of Social Services.

Outreach

For years, outreach methods, internal procedures and state policy kept the rate low, said Wade, adding the nature of California played a role too.

“We’re a very big, diverse, complicated state, so sometimes we move forward in one county and then have to take longer to move forward in another,” Wade said. “We’re not in Idaho, where you can change your call center process and all of the sudden the whole state is dramatically better.”

Wade said the state is studying whether a language/information barrier and a distrust of government among ethnic groups played a role in the low participation rates.

“We really think it’s time for a fresh look to see if immigrant communities are connecting to CalFresh, and if not, why not,” Wade said.

ACA impact

In recent years, the implementation of the Affordable Care Act hindered the process as well, in that the tsunami of new people entering the system took time to process, with so much of the state’s efforts aimed at sorting it all out. But as a result of the flood of people entering the system, CalFresh had better access to families to let them know their options.

“The Affordable Care Act was both the best thing that ever happened to low-income families in California and a real challenge,” Wade said.

Increased participation

In 2015, there was approximately 4.4 million people in the CalFresh program, receiving more than $7 billion in benefits annually. That’s compared to 2005, when there were about 2 million Californians receiving more than $2 billion in annual benefits.

Eligibility is for those less than 130 percent of the federal poverty line, which is an annual income of $24,300 for a family of four.

The average benefit is $142 per person per month, according to federal data.

Additional data can be found in a Public Policy Institute of California study published this month.

By Katy Grimes

It’s always good to see the California Legislature proposing more vindictive bills aimed at penalizing employers.

The new “Walmart loophole” bill, AB 880, would require large employers to “pay their fair share when they dump workers onto Medi-Cal by cutting hours or wages in order to circumvent their responsibilities under the Affordable Care Act,” according to the bill’s author Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez, D-Los Angeles.

Nice.

Under Gomez’s bill, the ACA threshold for fining businesses would be lowered so that large employers would be fined if their part- or full-time workers are enrolled in Medi-Cal.

The legislation — which is supported by the California Labor Federation and United Food and Commercial Workers — “aims to encourage large businesses to offer job-based coverage.”

I’d word that a little differently. The legislation, supported by two of the largest, most aggressive labor unions in the state, aims to force large non-union businesses to cover all employees, regardless of their part-time status.

And remember the other Obamacare penalty bill I wrote about earlier this week:

AB 880, by Assemblyman Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, is a bill which essentially would force large businesses to offer health insurance by fining them more than the average cost of providing coverage. Money raised by AB 880 is meant to increase Medi-Cal provider rates, and to subsidize state costs for it.

“AB 880′s monetary penalty is written purposely vague but sure to be painful to business,” health care expert and lawyer Craig Gottwals with BB&T-Liberty Benefit Insurance Services told me.

“The proposed penalty on employers is based on 110 percent of the average cost of health care coverage, including both the employer’s and employee’s share of the premium.”

But these aren’t the only two bills aimed at employers. There are 27 more Obamacare-related bills, targeting employers from cutting hours, and requiring employers to maintain benefits or receive huge fines. There are bills expanding the scope of Obamacare in California. And there are 12 more bills expanding the publicly-subsidized Medi-Cal health care coverage for low-income individuals in California, under Obamacare.

There is even a bill by Sen. Ted Lieu, which penalizes for “deceptive marketing” of the benefits of Obamacare. They are leaving no stone unturned.

Another bill stops the 2011 Medi-Cal provider rate cuts from going into effect and exempts certain providers and businesses from the cut.

By Katy Grimes

The Employment Development Department used to be called the “Unemployment Department.” And state welfare recipients are now “clients.”

The majority party in the California Legislature appears determined on expanding social services in the state despite evidence demonstrating that the programs don’t necessarily improve lives, as the very mixed record of the 50-year federal “War on Poverty” confirms. While discussing the need for “safety net” programs for the poorest in the state, legislators always cast a wider net than necessary.

The Assembly held a committee hearing Wednesday about expanding mandatory universal government preschool in California. By Thursday, the Senate Health and Human Services Committee was focused on the CalWORKS program, and how to attract more “clients.” Expansion of the state’s Health and Human Services agency is an obvious goal.

CA has nation’s worst poverty rate

This push to expand government aid programs has as a backdrop California’s poverty rate of 23.5 percent — the highest in the nation and much higher than the national average of 16.1 percent. The U.S. Census Bureau said the high poverty rate was driven in part by California’s high cost of living, which is never a focus of the Legislature.

The stated goal of Thursday’s Senate hearing was to get  several questions answered, including “What does evidence indicate can help families avoid the negative consequences of poverty?”

The challenges of stress are made worse by poverty, according to Sarah Bohn of the Public Policy Institute of California and Ann Stevens, the director of UC Davis Center on Poverty Research.

Stevens said the well-known correlation between poverty in childhood and long-term effects mean poverty later in life, poor health and low educational achievement.

Subsidies for poor advocated, and more of them

“Constant stress is worse in poor people,” said Stevens. “Unobserved things in families in poverty lead to other bad outcomes.”

“Persistent poverty creates chronic stress for children,” Stevens added.

Stevens and Bohn advocated for subsidies for the poor, and for longer periods of time.

“A strong case can be made for reducing material deprivation,” Stevens said. “There’s growing credible evidence to support this.”

But both Stevens and Bohn also advocated for universal mandatory preschool. “There’s growing evidence to support intervention in early childhood and preschool,” Stevens said. She added this is crucial to break the cycle of poverty. “It’s not a trade-off,” said Stevens.

On welfare, mixed messages from Washington

Meanwhile, the federal government is sending out mixed messages. Under President Obama, one form of welfare has exponentially increased since he first took office in 2009. His administration, however, is also pressuring California to limit another type of welfare.

“When Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, the number of Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP) recipients was 31,939,110. By October 2012, the latest month reported, they had jumped to 47,525,329,” CNS News reported. “That means the food stamp program grew by approximately 11,133 recipients per day from January 2009 to October 2012.” SNAP used to be known as the Food Stamp program.

CNS News also reported, “[F]ederal spending on SNAP has increased every fiscal year that Obama has been in office. In FY 2009 — when SNAP was still known as the ‘Food Stamp’ program — the government spent $55.6 billion. According to an April 2012 report from the Congressional Budget Office, SNAP enrollment increased by 70 percent between 2007 and 2011.”

In California, spending on such programs is going up. But the Brown administration is also trying to implement some of the welfare reforms seen in other states — because of federal pressure.

“The Governor’s budget proposes $20.3 billion from the General Fund for health programs—a 3.4 percent increase over 2012-13 estimated expenditures—and $8 billion from the General Fund for human services programs—a 7.9 percent increase over 2012-13 estimated expenditures,” the Legislative Analyst’s Office wrote in its 2013-14 “Analysis of the Health and Human Services Budget.”

Recent changes to the CalWORKs program include a phase-out of exemptions from welfare-to-work requirements, and the introduction of a new 24-month limit on adult eligibility in the program.

Existing law requires each California county to provide cash assistance and other social services to needy families through the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids program. CalWORKs uses funds from the federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families block grant program, as well as state and county funds.

Reforms prompted by federal pressure

As a condition of the federal grant, the federal government requires states to meet work requirements. But California has been in violation of this rule, and was notified the state will be assessed penalties of $160 million by the federal government. This is just for 2008 and 2009. There is no word yet if California will be penalized for 2010, 2011 and 2012.

The state claims to have a plan to remedy this, but not by requiring CalWORKS recipients to get to work.

“Planned state actions are projected to increase the state’s work participation rate by (1) increasing the number of countable cases that meet the federal work requirement through the work Incentive Nutritional Suppliment program, and (2) removing from the work participation requirement calculation certain CalWORKS cases that do not meet the federal work requirement,” the LAO reported.

The LAO estimates that California “may be compliant with the requirement by 2015.”

CalWORKS recipients are required to work 20, 30, or 35 hours per week, depending on family composition. California allows CalWORKS recipients to substitute mental health and substance abuse programs for work.

CalWORKS reductions may be reversed

California has made $700 million in reductions to the CalWORKS program since 2009. But now, the Legislature is actively pushing to expand the program.

SB 1041, passed in 2012, authorized the changes to the CalWORKS program, but only through 2012.

By Katy Grimes

The state of California is pushing welfare and food stamps very hard. They constantly advertise on the radio and television, and must have a huge public relations budget… paid for courtesy of taxpayers.

Here’s one ad for the “Women, infants and children” program:

Welcome to the WIC Show!
The show about WIC, for WIC and by WIC!

On our channel you’ll find five half-hour episodes made up of different segments that will interest everyone, especially parents of young children and pregnant women. 

The shows are designed to reinforce California’s Women, Infants and Children (WIC) education programs, highlight WIC service while at the same time entertain WIC clients.

Once you are in these programs, you get hooked into other programs: county health care, housing, school, daycare. Eventually, the government runs everything in the lives of those on government assistance. It’s no wonder President barack Obama got reelected.

CalFresh

The WIC ad says, “the food program is not a welfare program,” but you have a state case worker.

We can’t even call welfare what it is.

Food-stamp benefits usage is at an all time high. 46 million Americans are on welfare and use food stamps. One-third of all welfare recipients are in California.

The name of the California welfare food stamp program was changed to “CalFresh,” to take the stigma out of using welfare benefits. Recipients are given a debit card so they look like every other shopper when purchasing their items.

In Los Angeles County, more than one million people are signed up for the food stamp and welfare benefits, ranging from $200 to $1,500 a month.

In 2011, the federal Department of Food and Agriculture went all out on a national media awareness program. Here is a schedule of media buys in just L.A. County.

This was done because in some areas, welfare agencies believed that communities were “under served.” In Sacramento County, the Board of Supervisors even got involved, allowing the Sacramento Hunger Coalition to drive a campaign to expand the number of recipients.

“The Sacramento Hunger Coalition was founded in 1989 and now resides as a project of the Sacramento Housing Alliance’s Coalition on Regional Equity (CORE)’s food justice work,” the website says.

What a clever way to expand government. But welfare has become a giant ponzi scheme.

Even more interesting, is the list of publications below from the Sacramento Hunger Coalition… the links go nowhere. But this was what the entire hunger in Sacramento campaign was based on.

Hunger Hits Home 2012: Understanding & Combating Hunger in Sacramento County

A Primer on the Restaurant Meals Program in California: Preventing Hunger Among the Elderly, Disabled & Homeless in the Golden State

Homeless Nutrition Education Toolkit: A Resource for Nutrition Educators and Emergency Food Providers

Hunger and Homelessness in Sacramento: 2010 Hunger & Food Insecurity Report

I finally found one of the reports on hunger in Sacramento – I hope no one got paid to produce this.

Other government advertising

I hear government paid radio ads for bullying, FEMA, flood insurance,  Homeland security disaster preparedness,  the CA Earthquake Authority insurance, and ads about housing discrimination, paid for by the federal Housing and Urban Development department.

What a scam, all paid for by taxpayers.

By DAVE ROBERTS

“I’ve never forgotten Jack Kemp saying the way we define compassion is not by adding up how many people receive government benefits, but rather tallying the numbers of those who no longer need them. The Democrat Party is not interested in that definition of compassion. The Democrat Party wants more and more people dependent.”

— Rush Limbaugh

Despite a $14 trillion national debt that is increasing by $1.4 trillion annually, California Democrats are seeking to get more state residents sucking on the federal teat — even if it will result in additional fraud.

Currently,  3.2 million Californians receive food stamps under the state’s CalFresh program, totaling 8.7 percent of state residents. There has been significant growth in the number of food stamp recipients — 21 percent more since 2009 and 62 percent more since 2006. Yet California remains significantly below the national average of 14.3 percent. To get up to speed, the state would need to sign up more than 2 million more residents — a 64 percent increase.

Assembly Democrats have sponsored several bills to help do that by:

* Allowing convicted drug criminals who have done their time to receive food stamps (AB 828).

* Making it easier for those no longer eligible for welfare (known as CalWORKs) to reapply for food stamps (AB 808).

* Making it easier for families with children receiving free school lunches to apply for food stamps (AB 402).

* Implementing a pilot program to get Social Security recipients to sign up for food stamps (AB 69).

* Eliminating fingerprinting of food stamp applicants, changing the quarterly reporting by applicants to semi-annual reporting and reducing energy bills for those receiving food stamps (AB 6).

The bills’ sponsors and supporters pointed out at the April 5 Assembly Human Services Committee hearing that because food stamps are a federal program, increasing their use would not add to California’s budget deficit. They also argued that every dollar spent on food leads to a nearly $2 boost in the state economy. The restaurant and grocer associations and Farm Bureau were among the bills’ supporters, along with a plethora of social service advocacy groups.

Most of the bills met with opposition by the two Republicans on the committee, but they were regularly outvoted 4-2 by the Democrats.

Fraud OK

AB 6 generated the most controversy due to its likelihood of leading to more fraud — a possibility that the bill’s sponsor, Felipe Fuentes, D-Sylmar, and the committee Democrats were willing to accept.

Fuentes said that California is 49th in the nation in the percentage of food stamp recipients and that only two other states require fingerprinting and photographing of applicants.

“California, the state that feeds this nation and much of the world, and we can’t even feed our own,” said Fuentes. “We are in the depths of a painful recession. Children are hungry. We have no general fund (money) to invest, but we must do something. The least we can do is remove the barriers that we have placed in front of these families. Our bottom line is that this bill will put food in empty stomachs. It feeds children.”

Cory Salzillo, director of legislation for the California District Attorneys Association, opposed the bill, pointing out that eliminating fingerprinting and requiring only semi-annual rather than quarterly reports from applicants would increase the likelihood of fraud.

The two Republicans on the committee, Shannon Grove of Bakersfield and Brian Jones of Santee, didn’t have a problem with semi-annual reporting but did want to retain the fingerprinting requirement. Grove said that fingerprinting has been estimated to save the state $68 million annually in fraud costs — $2 million of that in Fuentes’ Los Angeles County alone.

“I think there’s an incalculable advantage to having that there,” said Jones of the fingerprinting requirement. “We don’t know how much abuse we are preventing through that process. I think it just discourages folks from giving it a try if you know you’re going to be photographed and fingerprinted.”

Jones asked Fuentes whether he would be willing to delete that part of his bill. But Fuentes responded that fraud is minimal — a state audit found only 845 cases of fraud in eight years. And he argued that the risk of increased fraud would be more than offset by the economic gains from providing more food stamps.

“I think you have to take into real consideration that you’ve got restaurants and the Farm Bureau and other folks who I think recognize the economic activity that would be gained by getting those tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars of additional activity into the state with federal money,” said Fuentes. “And understanding that California generally gets short shrift with federal dollars and knowing that we could remove barriers that, albeit could cause additional concern of deterrence for folks who want to perpetrate fraud, I think the numbers sort of weigh out here that I would rather risk getting additional dollars, additional economic activity for California than pull that part out of the bill.”

The committee Democrats showed a similar lack of concern about fraud when they voted down AB949. Sponsored by Jeff Gorell, R-Camarillo, the bill would have doubled the fine for those convicted of welfare fraud, with half of the extra revenue paying for additional fraud investigators.

Don Wagner, R-Irvine, speaking for Gorell, who is currently serving in the Navy deployed to Afghanistan, pointed out that there is supposed be at least one investigator for every 1,000 welfare cases. But in 2009 half of the counties in the state did not meet that ratio. “The result is fraud goes undetected and deserving CalWORKs recipients go unserved,” said Wagner.

Arguing against the bill was Mike Herald, legislative advocate with the Western Center on Law and Poverty. He said that California spends more money on fraud prevention than any other state and that multiple systems are already in place to deter fraud.

“Less than 2.4 percent of all cases ever get referred for fraud and just 1 percent of those referred for fraud ever ends up in a fraud conviction,” Herald said. “To us that’s not an example of a system that needs further funding and further staffing. That’s a sign of a system that’s already working quite effectively and really we should leave it alone.”

Also opposed was Kevin Aslanian, executive director of the Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organizations, who said, “These days in California a lot of people are doing jail time because they can’t pay the fine. This is just going to increase the jail time that people will be doing because they can’t pay the fine. That affects the family. And it’s also a job killer.”

Case Backlog

Wagner responded, “If you can’t do the time don’t do the crime. We are talking about crimes that defraud the state of California and take money out of the pockets of the least among us, the poorest among us. The prosecution numbers that you heard are quite a bit skewed. Prosecution is only for cases resulting in above $10,000 in fraud. There are a lot of fraud cases that come below that line.

“The state auditor said that as of 2008 there was a backlog of 6,381 referrals and 6,858 new referrals, resulting in a total caseload of 13,239 referred cases for prosecution. The counties were only able to act on 5,074 of those cases — well below half of them — because of a lack of resources.

“We are not asking for resources out of the general fund to handle those cases. We are asking for resources out of those who are defrauding the system to increase the number of cases that can be handled. With respect to the question of convictions, the percentage resulting in convictions in San Diego County was 96 percent, Sacramento County — 93 percent, LA county — 88 percent. Statewide the rate is 83 percent. We’re not talking about an epidemic of cases that are found to be not meritorious. Where there are referred cases, they are typically found to be meritorious. And what this bill will do is provide the resources necessary to continue to ferret out the fraud.

“Only substantial cases of welfare fraud are referred for prosecution. Not someone who fudged their income information, for example, on a welfare application. The welfare departments in each county have discretion on whether they want to take administrative action or refer the cases for prosecution. Administrative action simply results in a reduction or discontinuance of aid, not someone going to jail. If we have reason to believe that substantial fraud is involved, such as organized crime, counties can refer the case to an investigator for potential prosecution.

“Some organized crime groups are actively extorting thousands of dollars from taxpayers. A 2007 L.A. Daily News article reported that welfare investigation authorities and social service officials expressed a significant problem that organized crime groups inflict upon welfare programs. And that has increased significantly over the last decade. We shouldn’t tolerate this as a legislature. And it is the responsibility of our legislature to ensure that tax dollars are only used for those who truly deserve the help.”

The committee Democrats — Jim Beall of San Jose, Tom Ammiano of San Francisco, Betsy Butler of Marina del Rey and Sandré Swanson of Oakland — were not persuaded, killing the bill by voting against it 4-2.