Reason Magazine: Tracy Oppenheimer- Star Parker: 'Get Government out of Welfare Now!'

Source:Reason Magazine- Tracy Oppenheimer interviewing Star Parker from CURE.

"I know firsthand about welfare and welfare dependency because of my own life, living seven years in and out," says Star Parker, founder and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE).

Parker, also a syndicated columnist, explains what she thinks are the actual steps out of poverty and why our government should have no role in welfare in America.

Started as part of the Lyndon Johnson's Great Society in the 1960s, the War on Poverty has been anything but effective, according to Parker. "This whole notion that we should even have a 'war on poverty' dismisses the fact that individuals have a role in their own lives," she says.

Parker sat down with Reason.tv's Tracy Oppenheimer to talk about her own experiences with the welfare system, and how she wants to reform it, even beyond the historic changes to welfare in the 1990s. "

From Reason Magazine

I do find it ironic that someone like Star Parker or anyone else would bash a system that they grew up on. Without Welfare Insurance, where were her family be, at least they had that and ended up not starving or homeless or growing up in foster homes that sort of thing. But Welfare Insurance is the very least that we can do as a country to help people who currently can't fend for themselves. 

Now, having said that about Welfare, I agree with Star Parker that we need to reform our Welfare system. I think we would just do it very differently. 

Instead of getting government out of Welfare, I would gets the FEDS out of Welfare and keep them out of Welfare. Uncle Sam can help with funding and research to see what's working and not working with Welfare in every state and locality. But Welfare really is a state and local issue because those are the folks who are closest to their communities and people and can see what their communities need the best. 

If we really want to get people out of poverty there are four things that we need to do: 

Temporary financial assistance that includes money, but also child care, health care, housing food assistance, for low-skilled adults who are currently not working. 

Education for everyone whose on Welfare whether they're working or not, so they can get themselves the skills that need to get themselves a good job. 

Then we need to make work pay. I'm for requiring everyone on Welfare to take the first available jobs that they're qualified for and are offered to them, even if they don't even have a high school diploma or GED yet. 

Jobs for people who are on Welfare are just going to be entry level jobs and probably entry level jobs like at a grocery store or convenient store, fast food restaurant, especially if they don't even have a high school diploma yet. So we need to make work pay and let them have the income that they get from work, while at the same time let them keep their cash assistance, as well as other public assistance, including child care, up to the point where they're not earning enough money on their own, that they no longer need any public assistance programs. 

And for the people who aren't working yet, they just get their public assistance, including education and child care, until they start working. This way people on Welfare well that they can get more money working even at entry-level, minimum wage jobs, then if they weren't working at all staying home with their kids all day. 

We need these new reforms to go along with the reforms from the mid 1990s like education, work requirements, and time limits, to actually move people out of poverty and into self-sufficiency. Which is what we should've been doing with the so-called War On Poverty from the very start.