Our opportunityand our greatest challengeis to find ways to chronicle it now, as it happens, with stories about affected families, neighborhoods and bureaucracies, as well as about the rigors of low-wage jobs, the gap between pay and housing costs, and links between trade, immigration policy and wages of unskilled American workers. The most important stories may not be where we expect to find them. In states that have set the shortest time limits, for example, welfare officials are giving out so many exemptions and extensions that relatively few people are being cut off because their time has run out, Governing reports. The more telling stories appear to be about people who leave welfare voluntarily, because they found jobs, or don't bother to come back to the welfare office once they are told about work mandates, or because they're sanctioned for noncompliance. Minnesota is tracking a few thousand families to see what happens to their earnings after they leave welfare.
Many states track no one once they leave welfare.
The job falls to us, in the media, to keep a watchful eye on what is happening to those whom our social policy decisions are affecting. In her back bedroom is a pile of unopened mail, much of it overdue bills. I just throw them in a pile. The ones I open are the ones I have to pay to keep my home. And it is important, too, to follow the federal welfare money as it enters state coffers and again as it's spent, supposedly to assist families as they make this transition.