The Daily Signal - Unraveling the Damage Done by Our Welfare System

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

Education, employment, and family formation are “the building blocks for a flourishing life,” says the leader of the Georgia Center for Opportunity.  But, unfortunately, America’s welfare system includes penalties for both work and family formation, Randy Hicks says.  Although the safety net may not intend to punish work or the family, Hicks says, it does that through policies that reward Americans with financial benefits for earning less or remaining single.  Among all the states, Utah has created a model for a strong welfare system, he says. Utah integrated its workforce services with welfare services in the 1990s, so when an individual seeks government assistance, the first step is to help him re-enter the workforce, if he is able, before providing monetary benefits. But around the year 2000, the federal government passed a law that made it almost impossible for states to integrate workforce and welfare services as Utah did.  To change this situation, Hicks says, the Georgia Center for Opportunity and the Alliance for Opportunity advocate congressional legislation to "give states the flexibility to do what Utah did: integrate workforce and welfare so that we're not compartmentalizing someone's life but viewing it holistically and viewing it all as simply a means to a flourishing life that includes work.” Hicks joins this episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the path to restoring the value of education, work, and family in America. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, April 30th. I'm Virginia Allen. The welfare system has unraveled many communities across America, making citizens dependent upon the government and even punishing them for hard work. The Georgia Center for Opportunity has witnessed the damages that the welfare system has had not only on Atlanta, but communities across Georgia and the United States. President and CEO of the Georgia Center for Opportunity. Randy Hicks joins us on the show today to explain not only how government programs have caused more harm than good, but also to explain the road back to flourishing communities. Stay tuned for our conversation after this. Conservative women are problematic women. Why? Because we don't adhere to the agenda of the radical left. Every Thursday morning on the Problematic Women podcast, Kristen I, Cammer, Lauren Evans, and me, Virginia Allen, are joined by other conservative women to break down the big issues and news you care about. Whether you're interested in hot takes and conversations on pop culture or what Congress is up to, problematic women

has you covered. We sort through the news to keep you up to date on the issues that are a particular interest to conservative leaning that is problematic women. Find problematic women wherever you like to listen to podcasts and follow the show on Instagram. Well, it is my pleasure. today to welcome to the Daily Signal podcast, Randy Hicks. He's the president and CEO of the Georgia Center for Opportunity. Mr. Hicks, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you, Virginia. It's great to be here. Well, the vision for the Georgia Center for Opportunity is to create vibrant communities where everyone can achieve their potential. But how do you do that? If you would, explain a little bit of your model to us. Yeah, well, I think probably the best place to start is this.

this will resonate with your listeners. Our whole organization is built on what might be called the defining American idea, which is that everyone should have an opportunity to achieve a better life, regardless of race or the circumstances of one's birth. That's why people have been coming here for now hundreds of years. It's why people still come to the United States. They believe that this is a place where we, can achieve a better life. What we decided to do about a decade ago was really focusing on low

income and poor Americans. And the reason we did was that we recognized, we were actually an organization working on strengthening families. We wanted to do that measurably. And we suddenly realized that poor families were disproportionately affected by family fragmentation. We wanted to understand why. So how do we work on those issues now? Essentially, we look at public policies from the perspective of whether or not they help or hinder someone from kind of developing the building blocks of a flourishing life. And those building blocks can be lumped into basically three categories, which is something many of your listeners and heritage supporters will recognize that's education, employment, and family. formation. Those are the other people call those, those items, those issues, the success sequence. But whatever you want to call them, they're the building blocks of a successful life. So we're looking at public policies from the perspective of whether or not they help or hinder

people achieving or developing those building blocks. That's really critical. And it's simple, right? Of, okay, how do we build a successful life, things like education, that wholeness of family, opportunities to move forward. I know that you have been with the Georgia Center for Opportunity for a long time since 1997. What are some of the biggest changes that you have seen in this fight to really help communities and families move out of that place of poverty and towards, at the end of the day, towards the American dream? Yeah, I think what is happening on school choice is very important.

We're not anti-public education at all. But the reason why we need skill of choices is because we need innovators and providers and, you know, solution creators to be contributing to the solution to kids being locked into educational environments that don't suit them well. And I think there's over the past 25 years, the amount of, support for school choice has just continued to grow. And it's really grown pretty significantly among among low-income communities and communities of color, which is, that's great news. They're at a point where they're demanding more and they're not as willing to accept the status quo. I would say the other big thing that's happened over time, and this has been a major focus for GCO, is that people have started to recognize that even if you're willing to concede that the safety net system,

our welfare programs are well-intended, in many ways they're counterproductive and dehumanizing. They keep people from becoming who they want to be, who they desire to be. And so there's growing recognition that deep changes are needed when it comes to the welfare system. And what should those changes look like? Because I think you're right. I think more people are waking up to the fact of it doesn't work to just send someone a paycheck every month, that that actually does more harm than good when there's no action or responsibility or really empowerment attached to that. But then what's the answer? What do you change? What do you fix? Right. Well, I think one of the things that's pretty clear is you've got, well, actually, you know what? I'll tell you a story because I think it illustrates the problem. So a few years ago, an Atlanta businessman told a story of a single mom who worked for him. He invited her into his office on a Friday afternoon and gave her a promotion and a pay raise.

She left his office in tears. She was so excited, so grateful, proud of herself for what she had to come. accomplished. That was Friday afternoon. She came back in on Monday morning in tears also and turned it all down. And the reason she turned it down is because she was going to lose thousands more in government assistance than she was going to gain in pay. And, you know, I say this often, that those tears tell you everything you need to know. There are no tears if it's simply about money, right? Because essentially, she was going to have her money, whether from the government or from a job. Why was she crying on Monday morning? It's because she was, something was being taken from her that was more

meaningful than money. It was this, it was a job. It was providing for her family. And we hear this often from people who have been on government assistance and are on government assistance. It was about setting an example for her kids. And yet suddenly we have this situation where this woman has to turn down work. So what we need from the system is a system that does not punish work. And currently it does, excuse me, currently it does punish work. We want to change that and there are ways to do that. The other thing that we need to do is stop punishing marriage.

So just as there are penalties for work, there are penalties for family formation. Well, I just mentioned a couple minutes ago what the building blocks of a flourishing life are, right? Education, employment, and family formation. Well, the safety net system punishes two of the three. It may not intend to, but that's. the effect. So what do you get? You get less employment and you get fewer marriages. That's not good for people. That's not good for the country. So we need to reorient the system to promote work and

promote healthy family formation. Yeah. Whether in Georgia or other states, as you all look at policies that are working, that aren't working, is there anyone that is doing this really well? Is there state that you're saying, oh, man, you guys have figured out that balance of what does maybe a little bit of government assistance look like when it's really necessary, but not government assistance that, like you say, punishes people, or are there any actions bills coming up in Georgia that would help to course correct how the situation is right now? Yeah, that's a wonderful question. There's one state that seems to do this really well. And that's Utah. So back in the, back in the late, mid to late 90s, Utah integrated its workforce services with its welfare services. So, so now in Utah,

when someone comes in for government assistance, they go into the, into an office that's called the Department of Workforce Services. And it's where everything is. It's where workforce services are, welfare programs are, but they go in there, and the first conversation they have is about work. It's about when the recipient last worked, are they capable of working? So that's their very first conversation. And then after they've started the ball rolling on helping that person reenter the workforce, if they're capable, then they start talking about welfare programs that in Utah, they call work supports, which is the right kind of mindset. So the interesting thing about this policy is that Utah is the only state that has integrated

those two programs or integrated those two departments, welfare and workforce. And the reason is, shortly thereafter in the right around 2000, the federal government passed a law that essentially eliminated that integration as an option. So what we have right now before Congress, as a matter of fact, we at Georgia Center for Opportunity and our wonderful partners at the Alliance for Opportunity is a bill in the House and a bill in the Senate that would give states the flexibility to do what Utah did. integrate workforce and welfare so that we're not, we're not compartmentalizing someone's life, but viewing it holistically and viewing it all as simply a means to a flourishing life that includes

work, and ultimately we believe includes family formation for those who want family stability. Yeah, so practical. What have the results been in Utah? Have they been able to measure? the effectiveness? Yeah, it's really interesting. There are a lot of, you know, causation is a bit more difficult to measure, but correlation is very strong. So back in 2021, we at GCO did a national study on the effects of COVID shutdowns on job recovery. And what we found is what you'd probably expect to find.

And that is that states whose shutdowns weren't as severe and weren't as long had quicker job recoveries. Their numbers went up pretty quickly. But there was one state that was completely different than all the others. They dipped, and it's Utah. They dipped just as far down in terms of job loss, immediate job loss when the economy was shut down. but they recovered far more quickly, dramatically more quickly than any other state. And in fact, not only did they catch up to where they were, they caught up to pre-COVID job creation projections.

And so it was just an amazing performance. But if you look at the history of job loss and job recovery and length of stay on welfare programs and those kinds of things, Utah has performed. much better. And so that's why we have this bill in Congress. I should say the House bill passed Congress a couple years a couple of years ago. A couple of weeks ago. We're excited about that. And there's a Senate bill as well, which is, it has good momentum also. I would think that this would be a bipartisan issue. Yeah. I think people just are starting to, This kind of goes back to what you asked me earlier when you said, you know, what have you seen that's improved over the years? And what encourages me?

One of the things that encourages me is that we've seen Republicans and Democrats just recognizing that doling out checks isn't enough and that there's got to be a better way. So, you know, it's easy sometimes to cast one party in one light and the other party and another. The reality is that I think most Democrats and Republicans are an agreement that we've got to do this better and more humanely. And that involves work. So that's encouraging. That is encouraging. So the bill, like you said, passed in the House. Now it goes on to the Senate.

And we'll see what the Senate does there. if the Senate passes it and states again have that opportunity to follow a model like what Utah has done, how quickly could we really see things shift not only in Georgia but across the country where we would begin to see this empowerment of people having the opportunity that they've longed for and being empowered to work and seeing numbers move the right way as far as pulling individuals out of poverty. Yeah, let me clarify something first, and that is there was a House bill and a Senate bill. The House bill has passed, and now the Senate bill is currently under consideration. And again, there's good momentum for it. So we're excited about that. So that's the clarification. What we have going, the bill that passes, so when both bills pass, it's going to end up in conference committee.

And then they'll ultimately have to settle on a policy that both. chambers agree on. But one thing that we can expect is that it's going to be a somewhat limited bill that allows for pilot projects, so to speak. In other words, not all 50 states will be eligible. They're going to pick some parameters that will allow certain states to take advantage of it. That's fine. That's a good first step. We know that there's already great demand for this. States are really interested. So what's currently happening, though, is that there are states like Louisiana, like Texas, like Georgia, who are already looking at what it would take to integrate those programs

in their states. There are other states like West Virginia and Arkansas, South Carolina, where there's some momentum as well. That's encouraging. So when this, yeah, so when this bill passes, states, that are eligible will start the process of some states that are eligible. We'll start the process of creating this integrated approach to addressing these very real human needs. Well, this, of course, it's an issue that I think so many Americans think about, and Georgia has

become a state that many Americans look to, especially right now in an election season, looking about what's happening in that state. And some folks do believe that Georgia will play a really critical role in the next election. So I do want to take a minute and just talk about that. How do you think Georgia became so politically diverse and a state that is potentially going to be one of the few states that determines the next election and maybe in, some ways the future of the nation. Yeah, well, I would say that, you know, until until 2000, this was a state that was dominated by Democrats. I mean, virtually every constitutional office, both chambers. And then for the past 20 plus years, it's mostly been governed by Republicans.

But what's always been true throughout that time is that we are one of the most diverse states in the country. And I say this as a native California. This is an incredibly diverse state where 30% of the population is African American. We've got large Asian and Hispanic populations. Georgia, a little more than half of the population is white. So this is a super diverse state. Again, far more diverse than most states. So it's not a surprise that because of the diversity, you might see the numbers tightening and you might have seen some of the political shifts of the past four years. Obviously, and I won't go into all of it, some of what's happened in Georgia is just tied to the political drama of the past eight years and especially the past four years.

But what I do believe is that there are some really solid common sense instincts among Georgians and whether, and a pretty broad spectrum of Georgians that that makes Georgia very winnable for the kinds on the kinds of issues that matter to us. What are the issues that are most on the minds of Georgians right now? education is a huge issue. It remains a huge issue simply because we've got over 500,000 kids in D and F schools, schools that are rated are graded D and F. Over a half million. That's a staggering number. So that's a big issue, and it's not just a big issue among suburban Georgians, but also urban Georgians. They want access to quality education. Jobs is always a big issue. People want access to good jobs. Generally speaking, Georgia has performed very well. I think Governor Kemp's popularity and his large margin of victory in 22 can be attributed largely to his performance on the economy and his performance on job creation. So those are two really big issues for Georgians and they respond well to them. Excellent. Mr. Hicks, tell us, for anyone,

listening who wants to get involved, would be just be curious to learn more about the Georgia Center for Opportunity. How can they do that? Our website is foropportunity.org. That's F-O-R-Oportunity.org. So you can go to our website and see what we're about. And certainly there are ways on that website to reach us. And we would welcome any inquiries from anywhere in the country.

We work with different think tanks across the country. and leaders across the country. So we would welcome any inquiries from anyone anywhere. And with that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for being with us here on the Daily Signal podcast. Make sure you hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on new shows. And be sure to check out our top news show this afternoon, where we bring you the top news of the day.

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