21 January 2015 • 16:47 MST

Libbytarian welfare workers & the Wittich/Ehli dog & pony show

For Frances Perkins, Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary Labor, social work was more than just a job. It was a life long calling. Without her efforts, the Social Security Act of 1935 might never have passed Congress. Many social workers today share her determination to help the less fortunate; many, but not all. For a few, it’s simply a job; and for a few of the few, a job serving people they resent and don’t like.

I’m wondering whether Libby public assistance employees Kirsten Brown and John Desch, who under subpoena testified at a joint House/Senate hearing on Monday —see fine reports by Lee reporter Mike Dennison, Intelligent Discontent’s Don Pogreba, and Montana Cowgirl, for more detail — are among the few of the few. Officially, I believe, they appeared as whistle blowers to expose what they believe are flaws in the software the public assistance agencies use to verify claims for help. The subpoenas may have been issued more to protect them from retaliation by higher-ups in their agency, and less to compel their testimony. That’s not an uncommon practice, nor necessarily an unwise one.

In addition to expressing general concerns that the software was defective, they expressed concerns that applicants ineligible for benefits were being approved because of top down pressure to approve claims quickly. According to Pogreba, their testimony was long on allegations that the undeserving were getting away with welfare fraud, but short on supporting facts.

It’s highly likely that some welfare cheats are receiving benefits they don’t deserve, at least initially; that some honest applicants are initially approved for benefits for which they are later found ineligible; and that these consequences result from a policy of erring on the side of approval lest people be refused help in their hour of need. Any other policy would be inhumane — and would discourage people from applying for benefits that would improve their lives, and for which they’re eligible. Feed the hungry now, catch the crooks later.

Were Libbytarians Brown and Desch summoned to the Wittich-Ehli dog and pony show as both whistle blowers and welfare discouragers? I think that’s almost certainly the case, especially given Tom Burnett, who never met a hungry man he didn’t think was well fed, reported assisted Wittich and Ehli recruit Brown’s and Desch’s testimony.

Among humankind, there’s almost universal disdain for those who can work but instead choose to beg. This attitude is nothing new. Any student of social welfare knows it pops up in English history at least as early as the twelfth century. But in that history there’s also recognition of humankind’s obligation to help what were known as deserving beggars, those unable to work, the old, the ill, the crippled.

In the minds of many Republicans, however, there are no deserving poor; there are only able-bodied bums who suck on the public’s teat instead of getting one of the surplus of jobs for which they are qualified. In this worldview, public assistance, such as food stamps, is a nefarious, socialistic scheme to confiscate the wealth of those who have earned it and transfer it to those people who have not. They believe in catching the crooks now, and feeding the hungry later (but not feeding them too much, as that might reduce their incentive to get one of that glut of jobs).

Last week, Washington Monthly blogger Ed Kilgore, a former aide to Georgia governors and Sen. Sam Nunn, warned:

We just endured an example of that in Helena. A cruel and unnecessary example.