Bob Rusbasan
January 17, 1999
On January 13, 1999, the Supreme Court began hearing arguments on whether fifteen states had been violate welfare citizens' rights by paying newcomers lower payments for one year.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg hinted that she was leaning toward ruling against those states: "That is the genius of the United States. People can pick their states, and states can't pick their people." Justice Sandra Day O'Connor suggested states were infringing on one peoples' right to move freely between states, and that reduced welfare payments have "grave consequences" for welfare families.
Those are some serious allegations. What are these states doing to provoke such allegations of limiting freedom of movement and causing "grave" damage to people? They are simply trying to avoid becoming "welfare magnets".
California is one of the states involved in this case. Since they have high welfare benefits, they have found that people on welfare tend to move to that state to increase the amount of assistance they are receiving. Reasonably deciding that this is a practice that should be discouraged, California now pays new residents that enter their welfare program the same amount they would have received in their old state for one year. After that, they receive the same as permanent residents. Paying lower benefits for a year is allowed under the federal welfare laws passed within the last few years.
If we lived in a rational country, none of this would be seen as an infringement of people's rights to move between states. That right would have been taken literally, to mean that people should not be barred from crossing state lines. In the current era, however, we are required to assess every action to ensure that it doesn't have a "disparate impact" on one group or another. So two intelligent Supreme Court Justices can, without a trace of irony, suggest the amount of welfare payments new residents will receive is interfering with the poor's right to free travel without the United States.
This "enlightened" type of thinking has led to countless problems. For an interesting thought experiment, let's pretend that we are back in the old, dark ages, when everything was so much simpler. Words had plain meanings. If someone objected to something that you said, you could discuss the facts involved without engaging in the ceremonial validation of their feelings. And Constitutional issues were decided by what the Constitution actually said, and, if there was confusion, by what the Founding Fathers wrote at the time.
When the Constitution was authored, the intent was simple. A federal system of government was to be created from a group of independent colonies. Each of those colonies had considered itself a sovereign country to that point. They had teamed up to defeat England, and then it was generally assumed that they would mostly go their separate ways. The Articles of Confederation established a loose alliance between them, but certainly nobody thought of the group as one country.
After a few years, of course, the states decided that perhaps they should throw their lot in together after all. That Constitution was drawn up and ratified, and the rest is history. A loose confederation became a federation.
The various states still retained a lot of power, and the federal government was deliberately made weak. The basic idea was that only matters pertaining to the entire country would be controlled by the federal government, and the rest would be left to the states. Among the matters left to this new federation's government was the relationships between the states. The states were not to prohibit commerce with other states, not to restrict travel of U.S. citizens between states, and to recognize legal decisions made by other states (such as marriages, which is why any U.S. citizen can get married today in Nevada and have their decision recognized nationwide).
This is pretty simple to the unenlightened mind. The smart ones among us, however, have been able to justify some very interesting things under those rules. In particular, the interstate commerce clause has been used to justify all sorts of federal legislation. One example was a federal law banning firearms within a certain distance from public schools. I have no doubt that the authors of that bill had good intentions, but does it really affect interstate commerce? I suppose, theoretically, that a vacuum cleaner salesman from the next state could have his product pitch ruined when his wife calls him on the cell phone to tell him that their daughter has been shot while attending kindergarten. After that, his heart just will not be into the demonstration of how much more dirt the SuperVac picks up when compared to the leading brand. Still, it's a stretch, and the Supreme Court recently agreed with us poor, unenlightened folks at struck down the law. That, of course, prompted our betters to wipe the spittle from their mouths and start ranting about how the Supreme Court does not care about children, but I digress.
In the matter at hand, the allegation has been made that fifteen states are interfering with free travel. To most of us, that would mean that they are doing physically stopping people form entering, charging a toll for entrance, or something else along those lines. No, the people in question are free to come and go as they please. They simply are not given the full handout current residents of those states receive.
Let's apply a little (unenlightened) common sense to this situation. Nobody is being stopped from moving from one state to another. The only thing being halted is an unintended incentive for such a move.
Federal and state governments have many welfare programs to help the poor. Some states are more generous than others. The most generous areas of the country soon found out that their "reward" for being extra charitable was a massive increase in the number of poor people they were assisting. It seemed that word quickly spread that these states were giving freely, and people began flocking to them. Those states became "welfare magnets", crowded with newcomers looking to sign up for their government check. Those people passed the word on to their friends back home, and a new wave arrived. This, obviously, was not the intent of those states giving more than they had to give.
When Congress passed welfare reform a few years back, they addressed this situation by explicitly making it legal for states to restrict benefits to new residents. Regardless of which side you are on the welfare issue, this is a good thing. If you think welfare has been a disaster, you will certainly like additional limits. If you think the problem with welfare is that there was not enough of it, these limits could allow some states to spend more than others without the "welfare magnet" problem.
We have been trained to be "sensitive", to not "blame the victim". Still, is it that harsh to say that these limits are fair? I would even go farther and say that it would be fair for states to provide a period of no benefits for a short time after arrival. After all, if you are making a big move anyway, why not move to an area that has a job for you? Surely, no matter what kind of skills you have, there is some place in America that could use you. If there is no work for you in your current locale, why move to another state where the situation is the same? Move to where you are needed!
But that is not what these states are doing. They are simply limiting welfare benefits to the same amount that would have been given in the old state. That way, someone will not move to California to get a bigger chunk of public assistance. If they do move, however, they will not lose what they are getting now. Seems fair enough.
But then I am not as enlightened as Justices Ginsburg and O'Connor. You see, the way they see it, free travel is inhibited when a new resident of a state cannot sign up for bigger benefits than he had received in his old state. I do not understand that, but they are, after all, Supreme Court Justices, so who am I to argue?
And if the Supreme Court rules against this practice, and generous states begin reducing their benefits to avoid becoming "magnets", who am I to argue about that either?
Copyright © 1999 Bob Rusbasan. All rights reserved.