Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
MARRIAGE AFFIRMATIVE
MARRIAGE AFFIRMATIVE ................................................................................................................ 1
***INHERENCY*** ................................................................................................................................ 5
Marriage Incentives Now ............................................................................................................................ 6
Marriage Incentives Now ............................................................................................................................ 7
Marriage Incentives Now ............................................................................................................................ 8
Marriage Incentives Now ............................................................................................................................ 9
Marriage Incentives Now .......................................................................................................................... 10
***DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ADVANTAGE*** ................................................................................ 11
Marriage Incentives  Domestic Violence .............................................................................................. 12
Marriage Incentives  Domestic Violence .............................................................................................. 13
Marriage Incentives  Domestic Violence .............................................................................................. 14
Marriage Incentives  Domestic Violence .............................................................................................. 15
AT: Marriage Incentives  Safe Marriages ............................................................................................. 16
AT: Women Can Just Divorce Abusive Husbands ................................................................................... 17
Domestic Violence Impact – Poverty ....................................................................................................... 18
Domestic Abuse Impact – Torture Scenario ............................................................................................. 19
Domestic Abuse Impact - War .................................................................................................................. 20
***DISCRIMINATION ADVANTAGE*** ........................................................................................ 21
Marriage Incentives  Discrimination .................................................................................................... 22
Marriage Incentives  Discrimination .................................................................................................... 23
***HETERONORMATIVITY SCENARIO*** ................................................................................. 24
Discrimination - Homosexuals ................................................................................................................. 25
Discrimination – Single Mothers .............................................................................................................. 26
***PATRIARCHY SCENARIO*** ..................................................................................................... 27
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 28
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 29
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 30
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 31
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 32
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 33
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 34
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 35
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 36
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 37
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 38
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 39
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 40
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 41
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 42
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 43
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 44
1
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 45
Patriarchy  Extinction ........................................................................................................................... 46
Patriarchy  Extinction ........................................................................................................................... 47
Patriarchy Impact – Environment Scenario .............................................................................................. 48
Patriarchy Impact – Human Rights Scenario ............................................................................................ 49
Patriarchy Impact - War ............................................................................................................................ 50
Patriarchy Impact – Control/Biopower ..................................................................................................... 51
Patriarchy Impacts .................................................................................................................................... 52
Patriarchy Impacts .................................................................................................................................... 53
Patriarchy - AT: No Spillover ................................................................................................................... 54
***RACISM SCENARIO*** ................................................................................................................ 55
Marriage Incentives  Racism................................................................................................................. 56
Discrimination - Racism ........................................................................................................................... 57
***SOLVENCY*** ................................................................................................................................ 58
***MARRIAGE INCENTIVES BAD*** ............................................................................................ 59
Marriage Incentives  Poverty ................................................................................................................ 60
AT: Marriage Incentive Solves Poverty ................................................................................................... 61
AT: Marriage Incentive Solves Poverty ................................................................................................... 62
AT: Marriage Incentive Solves Poverty ................................................................................................... 63
AT: Marriage Incentive Solves Poverty ................................................................................................... 64
AT: Marriage Incentive Solves Poverty ................................................................................................... 65
AT: Marriage Incentive Solves Poverty ................................................................................................... 66
AT: Children Benefit from Marriage ........................................................................................................ 67
Marriage Incentives Tradeoff w/ Welfare................................................................................................. 68
Unwed Receive Limited Benefits ............................................................................................................. 69
AT: Sustainable Marriages ....................................................................................................................... 70
AT: Sustainable Marriages ....................................................................................................................... 71
AT: Sustainable Marriages ....................................................................................................................... 72
AT: Sustainable Marriages ....................................................................................................................... 73
AT: Sustainable Marriage ......................................................................................................................... 74
***TANF/WELFARE GOOD*** ......................................................................................................... 75
A2: TANF still bad/managing .................................................................................................................. 76
TANF Works – Laundry List .................................................................................................................... 77
TANF Good – States ................................................................................................................................. 78
TANF Good – Employment...................................................................................................................... 79
TANF Good – Reduce Welfare ................................................................................................................ 80
TANF Good - Organized .......................................................................................................................... 81
TANF Good - Poverty .............................................................................................................................. 82
TANF Good - Poverty .............................................................................................................................. 83
Welfare Good – Employment/Child Poverty............................................................................................ 84
Welfare Good – Employment ................................................................................................................... 85
Welfare Good – AT: Hunger/Poverty ....................................................................................................... 86
Welfare Good – AT: Poverty .................................................................................................................... 87
Welfare Good – Local Level..................................................................................................................... 88
2
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
TANF Solves Economy ............................................................................................................................ 89
2AC Poverty Add On ................................................................................................................................ 90
Poverty Impact - Economy ....................................................................................................................... 91
2AC Unemployment Add On ................................................................................................................... 92
2AC Unemployment Add On ................................................................................................................... 93
2AC Public Transportation Add On ........................................................................................................ 94
Add On – TANF Needs More $$$ ............................................................................................................ 95
Add On – TANF Needs More $$$ ............................................................................................................ 96
***ETC*** .............................................................................................................................................. 97
AT: Alt Cas – States Continue Funding ................................................................................................... 98
Definition - TANF targets those “living in poverty” ................................................................................ 99
Child Poverty Impact - Economy ........................................................................................................... 100
Social Programs Affect Econ .................................................................................................................. 101
***2AC BLOCKS*** ........................................................................................................................... 102
2AC T – Substantially Increase .............................................................................................................. 103
2AC T – Can’t Remove a Barrier ........................................................................................................... 104
2AC T – Decrease a Social Service ........................................................................................................ 105
AT: Targeting CP .................................................................................................................................... 106
2AC Spending Non Unique .................................................................................................................... 107
2AC Spending Link Turn - Welfare Solves Econ .................................................................................. 108
2AC Spending Link Turn - Poverty Kills Econ ...................................................................................... 109
2AC Spending Link Turn –Poverty Kills Econ ...................................................................................... 110
2AC Spending Link Turn – Poverty Kills Econ ..................................................................................... 112
AT: Cap K ............................................................................................................................................... 113
2AC AT: States CP (1/6) ........................................................................................................................ 114
2AC AT: States CP (2/6) ........................................................................................................................ 115
2AC AT: States CP (3/6) ........................................................................................................................ 116
2AC AT: States CP (4/6) ........................................................................................................................ 117
2AC AT: States CP (5/6) ........................................................................................................................ 118
2AC AT: States CP (6/6) ........................................................................................................................ 119
States 1AR Ext. #1 .................................................................................................................................. 120
States 1AR Ext. #2 .................................................................................................................................. 121
States 1AR Ext. #4 .................................................................................................................................. 122
AT: States CP – States Can’t Decrease Incentives ................................................................................. 123
AT: States CP – States Have To Incentivize Marriage ........................................................................... 124
AT: States - Resources ............................................................................................................................ 125
AT: States - Resources ............................................................................................................................ 126
AT: States – Federal Government Key to Marriage Incentives .............................................................. 127
2AC AT: Essentialism ............................................................................................................................ 128
2AC AT: Essentialism ............................................................................................................................ 129
2AC AT: Capitalism ............................................................................................................................... 130
2AC AT: Capitalism ............................................................................................................................... 131
2AC AT: Capitalism ............................................................................................................................... 132
2AC AT: Capitalism ............................................................................................................................... 133
Capitalism 1AR Exts............................................................................................................................... 134
3
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: HEALTHCARE Reform Politics .................................................................................................... 135
AT: Health Care Reform Politics ............................................................................................................ 136
AT: Health Care Reform Politics ............................................................................................................ 137
If they read a counterplan to just decrease marriage incentives, read the TANF/welfare add ons in the TANF good section
-
Maggie, Aidan, Ben, Jeff, Kevin, Lisa, Rebecca, Scott, Steven, Ula, Yon Jee
4
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
***INHERENCY***
5
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives Now
Federal marriage incentives exist now – TANF programs and the Healthy Marriage Initiative fund
the promotion of marriage.
Deborah A. Harris and Domenico “Mimmo” Parisi, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work within
the Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State University, November 29, 20 05, Gender Role Ideologies and
Marriage Promotion: State Policy Choices and Suggestions for Improvement, Review of Policy Research, Volume 22 Issue
6, Pages 841 – 858
After much debate and revision, the final welfare reform legislation included goals and provisions for addressing
these two shortcomings of the previous welfare system. PRWORA promised to “End the dependence of these
parents of government benefits by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage.” The Act also included
other “family formation” goals that included preventing and reducing nonmarital pregnancies and
encouraging the formation and maintenance of twoparent families. To meet these goals, PRWORA included a
60-month lifetime limit on receiving benefits from the newly created TANF Program (which replaced AFDC), as
well as mandatory work requirements for those receiving aid. States were encouraged to create programs to help
facilitate the movement of TANF clients into the workforce through education, training, job placement, and other
means. It was hoped that these measures would motivate clients to move into the workforce that would, in turn, raise
the family’s income so that they would no longer need TANF. The family formation goals of PRWORA were
meant to curb teenage and nonmarital births, as well as to convince low-income women with children to marry.
Part of the rationale behind the family formation goals in PRWORA was related to increases in teenage and
nonmarital childbearing, which often led to the formation of single-headed households, the family structure most
likely to be represented by the welfare rolls (McLanahan, 1985). By preventing these pregnancies and encouraging
these women to marry, it was hoped that the poverty and welfare dependency that often characterized such families
would be lessened. By encouraging marriage, policymakers believed that two earners would be brought into the
household or that the new husband would be able to support the family while the wife could take care of child
care. Of these family formation goals, marriage promotion was seen as one of the more problematic goals and
the responsibility for creating and implementing these programs was left to the states. The newly created
Healthy Marriage Initiative, a section of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), provided
suggestions to states and bonus funding for pilot programs to encourage marriage. While DHHS has
maintained that, “Helping couples form and sustain healthy marriages is not, in itself, an anti-poverty program.
Employment is the main anti-poverty program,” increases in family income are among the first benefits of
marriage listed by DHHS (Healthy Marriage Initiative, 2005) suggesting that the federal government expected
marriage to help alleviate poverty and welfare dependency.
6
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives Now
States promote marriage now - financial incentives and tax policies.
Deborah A. Harris and Domenico “Mimmo” Parisi, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and
Social Work within the Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State University, November 29,
2005, Gender Role Ideologies and Marriage Promotion: State Policy Choices and Suggestions for
Improvement, Review of Policy Research, Volume 22 Issue 6, Pages 841 – 858
One of the most important ways that states have attempted to promote marriage is through the changing of laws
or policies that were financial disincentives to marriage (Seefeldt & Smock, 2004). Figure 2 indicates the degree to
which states have provided incentives and support programs to couples. As the figure shows, almost all states have
provided funding to encourage marriage. However, according to the Center for Law and Social Policy (2003), there
is a great variety in the amount that states have contributed toward marriage promotion activities. Several states report
spending none of their state or federal funds on marriage promotion activities, while others spend as much as 17%
(Louisiana). One action taken by states includes rewarding clients who engage in marriage preparation
programs. Some states provide benefits to couples who attend relationship classes prior to marriage. For
couples who complete the program, all or part of the marriage license fees may be waived. Changes to tax codes
have been instituted, as well. Several states have eliminated the “marriage penalty” that can occur when a
family contains two earners. Another action involved states that have enacted state Earned Income Tax Credit
(EITC) plans, which is a wage supplement meant to decrease tax burdens on low-income working families. The
EITC already existed as part of the federal tax structure, but several states have also created EITCs to help with state
taxes. Other marriage incentives are aimed directly at TANF clients. Under AFDC, when a woman receiving
welfare married, her new two-parent family faced new eligibility rules including providing a work history and proof
that the primary earner did not work more than 100 hours per month. Critics charged that by immediately making
these two-parent families ineligible, they lacked the necessary time and assistance to become economically solvent
before losing all assistance. They predicted that this might discourage welfare clients from marrying. Since
PRWORA, 33 states have taken action to eliminate these rules and to treat one and two-parent households the same.
In addition, ten states have an “earnings disregard” in which the new spouse’s income is not counted toward
TANF eligibility for a specific period of time. For example, Gardiner et al. (2002) found that Alabama, Mississippi,
North Dakota, and Oklahoma disregarded the new spouse’s income from three to six months in determining TANF
eligibility regardless of level of income. Other states allowed income disregards if the income was below a certain
level or disregarded part of the income. These measures are meant to help families “get on their feet” before
losing benefits and to reassure TANF clients that they would not lose all their benefits if they chose to marry. Several
states have also made similar changes to their Medicaid programs, ensuring that these newly created families
are not immediately denied health care coverage. In addition to providing economic incentives, some states have
created programs to provide direct support to married couples. Some states have added a marriage component
to preexisting programs. Other states have created statewide fatherhood initiatives that include marriage
components.
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Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives Now
Marriage incentives exist now – TANF
Gene Falk and Jill Tauber, Domestic Social Policy Division at the Congressional Research Service,
October 30, 2001, “Welfare Reform: TANF Provisions Related to Marriage and Two-Parent Families,”
https://www.policyarchive.org/bitstream/handle/10207/1292/RL31170_20011030.pdf?sequence=1
The 1996 welfare law created the TANF block grant. It replaced categorical grant programs that helped states pay
cash welfare benefits to needy families with children under AFDC, provided education and job training for AFDC
adults (the Job Opportunity and Basic Skills Training (JOBS) program), and provided emergency assistance (EA) for
families with children. TANF permits states to use their block grant funds for activities for which they were allowed
to spend federal funds under pre-TANF programs, and also for other purposes that were not part of the earlier welfare
programs. TANF Goals Federal TANF law lists four goals, two of which are considered “family formation” goals
of having children within marriage or encouraging two-parent families: ! Preventing and reducing the occurrences
of out-of-wedlock pregnancies; and ! Encouraging the formation and maintenance of two-parent families.
Additionally, there is a third TANF goal: ! Ending dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting
job preparation, work, and marriage. This third goal considers promoting marriage as a means toward achieving the
goal of reducing welfare dependency. The list of statutory goals has consequences in terms of the uses of TANF
funds and consideration of a state’s performance in meeting federal goals. Figure 1 provides an overview of the
relationship between TANF’s statutory goals, use of TANF funds, and state accountability for performance. TANF
permits states to use block grant funds (and state spending, discussed later) in “any manner reasonably calculated” to
achieve any of the program’s goals. States are held accountable for meeting TANF goals through penalties for failure
to meet certain requirements (e.g., work participation standards). For certain measured outcomes, they may receive
bonuses.
Marriage incentives exist - TANF
Gene Falk and Jill Tauber, Domestic Social Policy Division at the Congressional Research Service,
October 30, 2001, “Welfare Reform: TANF Provisions Related to Marriage and Two-Parent Families,”
https://www.policyarchive.org/bitstream/handle/10207/1292/RL31170_20011030.pdf?sequence=1
Most state TANF cash welfare programs still (as under AFDC) pay benefits based on family size. The larger the
family, the greater will be its maximum benefit. Therefore, a two-parent family with two children will be a
family of four, and generally will receive a greater benefit than a single-parent family with two children (a family
of three).
Obama is continuing Bush’s marriage initiatives
Historiann.com, history and sexual politics website, 06-03-2009, “The Hidden Agenda of
‘Marriage Promotion’” http://www.historiann.com/2009/06/03/the-hidden-agenda-of-marriagepromotion/
Indie journalist Amy DePaul has published a story about those bad-old George W. Bush-era programs that push
marriage as a magic solution to poverty and family discord. In “Bush Era Moral Crusaders Still Pushing Marriage on
the Rest of Us,” she reports that now they’re Obama-era programs, too! The recently released Obama budget
would preserve the five-year marriage initiative, although Congress still could eliminate it in appropriations. The
initiative awards grants to demystify wedlock to teens, low-income populations, the public at large, married
couples, singles looking to marry, engaged couples and couples who recently had or are expecting a baby. One
program even targets incarcerated parents.
The programs do not provide individualized couples therapy but rather are seminar-type events conducted in
classroom settings, using curricula that emphasize relationship staples such as communication, compromise and
romance.
8
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives Now
Marriage incentives now – multiple states prove
Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller, The Alternatives to Marriage Project, 2002 “Let Them Eat Wedding
Rings: The Role of Marriage Promotion in Welfare Reform,” http://www.unmarried.org/rings.pdf
Marriage plays a starring role in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of
1996. Of the welfare reform law's four listed purposes, one includes promoting marriage, a second focuses on
reducing pregnancies among unmarried women, and a third encourages the formation and maintenance of twoparent families. Since the law passed, states, government leaders, and thinktanks have increasingly proposed
and implemented programs that use welfare funds to attempt to influence family form. For instance: • Wade
Horn, welfare chief at the Department of Health and Human Services, has written that unmarried families
should only be eligible to receive “limited-supply” benefits like public housing, job training, and Head Start if there
are any available after all married families receive them. He has also argued that cohabiting couples and their
children should not be eligible for family benefits.1 Although Horn has more recently modified these stances, he
continues to urge states to spend welfare dollars to promote marriage. • In West Virginia, unmarried families now
receive $100 less in monthly welfare benefits than many married families, effectively punishing the children in
households where parents choose not to or are unable to marry. Mr. Horn recommends that Congress require
states to provide this kind of marriage bonus/unmarried penalty.2 • The Heritage Foundation recommends spending
at least ten percent of federal welfare funds (about $1.5 billion per year) to promote marriage. Proposed reforms
include advertising campaigns, celebrity endorsements promoting marriage,3 and payments of $5,000 to women “at
high risk” of unwed birth if they are married when their first child is born. Mr. Horn supports this proposal, as
well, writing that government should "reward those who choose [marriage]."4 • Arizona, Oklahoma, Utah, and
Wisconsin are among states spending TANF dollars to promote marriage. Their campaigns include funding a
"marriage handbook," media campaigns to promote marriage, and "marriage scholars" on college campuses.
Other states are considering following their lead, with the support of the Bush administration. • In 2001 Michigan,
Alabama, and Washington, D.C. each received $25 million “illegitimacy bonuses” from federal welfare funds
for reducing their rates of births to unmarried parents. The change was miniscule: a 0.009% reduction in
Michigan between 1996 and 1999, 0.249% in Alabama, and 3.976% in the District of Columbia during the same time
period.5 (For more about this, see De- Legitimize the “Illegitimacy Bonus,” page 4).
Marriage incentives now – Healthy Marriage Initiative
Emily Amick, The Nation, March 6, 2007, “Marrying Absurd: The Bush Administration's attempts to
encourage marriage,” http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070319/marrying
One of President Bush's "compassionate conservative" goals has always been to lessen this "marriage gap." The
Healthy Marriage Initiative aims to address the growing fissure between marriage rates of the poor and the
rich through grants to community and faith-based groups for marriage promotion and fatherhood initiatives.
Alongside cuts to social safety net programs like Medicare and Medicaid, this new initiative was allocated $750
million ($150 million per year for five years) in 2006. The goal of marriage promotion is, essentially, to increase
the proportion of babies born to married couples and raised by two biological parents. Federal marriage
promotion is intended to turn the back the clock to a time when all children were born into traditional,
heterosexual families. David Popenoe, head of The National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, recently told
The Philadelphia Inquirer: "I think we should look at marriage as an endangered national institution and look at ways
to revive it." Forget the whales. Marriages are the new thing to save.
9
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives Now
Marriage incentivized now – welfare money being diverted to fund incentives
Elizabeth Bauchner, WeNews Commentator, journalist in Ithaca, New York, 09-10-03, Women’s WeNews
(WOMENSENEWS)--A major goal of the landmark 1996 welfare reauthorization was "to end dependence of
needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage." Seven years later,
it seems our government is more concerned about promoting marriage than helping needy parents prepare for
and find jobs. The Bush administration proposes to spend almost $2 billion of scarce welfare funds over the
next six years promoting marriage. Our total federal welfare budget is less than $17 billion per year, the same
amount it was in 1996. In February, the House passed H.R. 4, a welfare reauthorization bill that diverts funds from
basic economic supports such as job training and child care into experimental marriage-promotion programs.
Currently, the bill is under consideration by the Senate. Promoting healthy and stable marriages is not a bad idea as
long as the programs don't take money away from helping welfare recipients obtain college degrees, which are proven
to help boost women and children out of poverty. However, H.R. 4 is littered with ineffective public policies that
won't help the poorest among us. Marriage alone hardly ever gets women and children out of poverty. Education and
job training do. If passed, H.R. 4 will divert $100 million per year from the federal Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families budget as well as commit an additional $200 million per year in new funding to promote
marriage. Additionally, states will be required to match $100 million per year in funding, which they could take
out of their federal welfare budgets. This money would be better spent on providing basic economic supports to
enable recipients to pursue job training and education. Studies show that a college education is the single biggest
contributor to financial independence. "There is . . . no more well established link to economic well-being than
educational attainment," according to a report by Avis Jones-DeWeever of the Institute for Women's Policy Research
in Washington, D.C. Although a college education doesn't guarantee a life free from poverty, mothers who possess a
bachelor's degree make up less than 2 percent of the welfare rolls. Jones-DeWeever also cites research that shows that
just one year of post-secondary education reduces poverty rates by half in households headed by women of color.
Acknowledging that not all women have the interest or ability to attend post-secondary schools, Jones-DeWeever
recommends that such women be offered "other educational supports and training opportunities . . . that lead to the
types of jobs that provide stable employment, livable wages and access to benefits." In order to do this, we need to
forget diverting funds from federal welfare into marriage promotion programs and allow more welfare recipients
access to education and job training. Interestingly, education and job training would do more than just help families
out of poverty. The Minnesota Family Investment Program helped families work their way out of poverty through
three routes: job training, earned-income disregards and child care subsidies. They then discovered that leading
families out of poverty led to increased marriage rates. The Minnesota plan was successful in helping parents prepare
for and find work. The earned-income disregards meant they could keep more of their federal welfare benefits in
addition to their wages, eliminating an important work deterrent. The child care subsidies helped take the burden off
of the families transitioning from welfare to work. Although the Minnesota plan wasn't aiming to promote marriage,
the marriage rates rose among welfare recipients, indicating that reducing economic stressors and meeting the basic
needs of welfare recipients may lead to higher rates of marriage. However, instead of addressing the basic needs of
the poor, H.R. 4 would waste precious welfare dollars on experimental marriage-promotion programs,
including programs that discriminate against single-parent families, preach biblical doctrine and appear to be
for-profit businesses. For example, the Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and
Families recommends about 40 possible marriage-promotion programs for states to adopt. Their recommendations
include two state programs already in existence. West Virginia offers monthly cash bonuses to couples after they
marry, while Oklahoma penalizes cohabitating couples by reducing the children's welfare benefit if the couple doesn't
marry. These two programs hurt the children of single-parent households simply because their mothers may be
unable or unwilling to marry.
10
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
***DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ADVANTAGE***
11
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Domestic Violence
President’s Healthy Marriage Initiative is ineffective – it creates bad, abusive marriage.
Linda Ostreicher, freelance writer, former budget analyst for the New York City Council, Gotham Gazette, May 2004,
http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/socialservices/20040518/15/983
It is a truth universally acknowledged, at least among Republicans, that a single mother on public assistance must be
in want of a husband. To that end, the President’s Healthy Marriage Initiative is built into the welfare
reauthorization bill passed by the House of Representatives in the fall of 2003, and its Senate counterpart,
stalled by a Democratic filibuster in April 2004. Federal law already allows states to use public assistance funds
to promote marriage, an option few have chosen. The only step New York State has taken toward marriage
promotion is to allow two-parent families to receive public assistance even if one of them works full-time, as
long as their income is low enough. Who is available for these women to marry? They need husbands who have
jobs, or marriage will only dig them deeper into poverty. But in March 2004, the unemployment rate in New York
City was still considerably higher, at 7.9 percent, than the 5.7 percent rate nationwide. The city has a disproportionate
share of former inmates of prisons and mental institutions, and of men who are HIV-positive, most of whom have
difficulty finding and keeping jobs. It is also a center of gay culture, which means that gay men and women are less
inclined than they might be elsewhere to marry a member of the opposite sex to hide their sexual identity (and
needless to say, the Bush administration is not spending money to promote gay marriage; indeed it is promoting a ban
on gay marriage) Finally, at a time when women of color make up two-thirds of the city’s female population, only half
of African-American men have jobs. The first argument against marriage promotion is that it may not be
effective. Two-parent households are richer than single-parent households, but this does not mean that getting
married will increase a couple’s income. The statistics could also be attributed to the fact that the same qualities that
make a parent employable also make him or her an attractive marriage partner. Even if research showed that the
majority of children benefit from marriage promotion programs, they might still be inadvisable, if a small minority of
parents and/or children were severely harmed by them. Domestic violence is at least twice as common among
women on welfare as among the general public, with most estimates as high as 60 percent. Yet only one out of at
least ten women on public assistance tells her welfare caseworker that she is being abused. This indicates that
states might not be able to identify women in abusive situations, and might instead steer them into marriage
with their abusers.
12
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Domestic Violence
Marriage incentives force women to accept abusive relationships – desperation for money
Dan LeRoy, WEnews correspondent August 14, 2001, “West Virginia Gives $100 Welfare Marriage Bonus”
You're targeting women who have the least resources to escape a bad relationship. They're so vulnerable, so
desperate, and it may be very tempting, if you offer them $100, to say 'Boy, we really need the money,' even if
the guy is abusive."
Marriage promotion endangers women and children’s lives
LIFETIME, Low-Income Families’ Empowerment by Education, No Date Given, “The Hidden
Dangers of Marriage Promotion Domestic Violence, Budget Reconciliation, and Welfare
Reauthorization
Marriage promotion can be dangerous, even deadly for battered women with children in the welfare system.
Under H.R. 240, the House bill for TANF reauthorization, there is no language to prevent mothers on welfare
from being forced to attend marriage and relationship classes, or be sanctioned and lose their benefits if they
don’t. The risk is real that battered women in the welfare system will be coerced in to staying with or marrying
their abusers. Moreover, while marriage promotion programs are largely unproven, we do know that studies of
anger management, conflict resolution, communications skills and/or couples counseling with batterers show no
benefit; some studies show additional harm. In fact, the American Psychiatric Association advises against couples
counseling when there is abuse.
H.R. 240 perpetuates the conditions that lead to domestic violence. Economic control – and limiting women’s
ability to support themselves – are critical aspects of abusive relationships. H.R. 240 will exacerbate these conditions,
by funding programs that “improve fathers’ ability to effectively manage family business affairs (through) education,
counseling, and mentoring in . . . household management, budgeting, banking, handling of financial transactions, time
management, and home maintenance.” However, the bill does nothing to help mothers learn money management
skills. Moreover, H.R. 240 encourages states to create programs to “support fathers to take full advantage of
education (and) job training . . . and secure career advancement.” By contrast, under welfare reform mothers
are being forced to quit school to take low-wage jobs, or be sanctioned if they don’t. To promote safe and stable
families, Congress should invest in education and training opportunities for mothers and fathers
13
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Domestic Violence
Low-income women report high domestic violence
Legal Momentum, legal defense and education funder, 2003, “Domestic Violence: The Hidden Peril of
Marriage Promotion”, http://www.legalmomentum.org/assets/pdfs/hiddenperil.pdf
Both times that he testified, the Oklahoma Director told Congress about a survey of Oklahoma families
whose results, in his view, support the state’s effort to discourage spouses from divorcing. However, the
Director left out a crucial survey finding: almost half (44%) of the state’s divorced women cited
domestic violence as a reason for their divorce.2 More than half (57%) of Oklahoma’s divorced welfare
mothers, the prime target of government marriage promotion efforts, cited domestic violence as a reason
for their divorce.3
Oklahoma is by no means unique. Around the country, in survey after survey, low income women
report high double digit domestic violence rates.
Should the government encourage women to get married or stay married to men who abuse them?
Certainly, proponents of government marriage promotion do not intend this. But common sense
suggests that this will be the inevitable result of a government “get married and do not divorce”
message, especially when success is measured by superficial statistics such as the divorce rate.
Domestic violence afflicts the majority of low-income women
LIFETIME, Low-Income Families’ Empowerment by Education, 2005, “Clean Long-Term Extenstion
of TANF! Keep Welfare Reauthorization Out of Budget Reconciliation”, http://www.geds-tophds.org/Approved%20to%20post%20on%20website/September%20Briefing%20Factsheet.pdf
Domestic violence is the major reason low-income mothers end up in the welfare system. Studies show that the
majority of single mothers in the welfare system have experienced domestic violence. Nationally, up to two thirds of
mothers on welfare have suffered domestic violence at some time in their adult lives, and between 15% and 20%
are current victims of serious domestic violence.i In California the numbers are alarming: in a recent study of welfare
mothers in two counties, the California Institute for Mental Health found that 83% had experienced domestic
violence at some point in their lives. In a 1999 study of Wisconsin’s welfare mothers, the Institute for Wisconsin’s
Future found 63% were fired or forced to quit their jobs due to domestic violence.
Protecting battered women and their children is as important as promoting marriage.
Under TANF, the Family Violence Option gave states the option of providing protections to victims of domestic
violence, including waivers from welfare program requirements that could endanger them or their children. However,
Congress has never provided funding for domestic violence counseling and services for battered women in the
welfare system, while spending billions to promote marriage and fatherhood. Consequently, battered women and
their children are being further abused by the welfare system. For example, in California less than one-fifth of one
percent of mothers on welfare were given domestic violence waivers in 2003 - only 780 out of a caseload of more
than 400,000 mothers. To protect battered women and their children, Congress must make family violence programs
and services mandatory under TANF reauthorization, and provide funding for victim counseling and services for
battered women and their children in the welfare system.
14
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Domestic Violence
Women are forced to marry abusers for financial incentives
DeWayne Wickham 02 (http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnist/wickham/2002-09-17-wickham_x.htm DeWayne Wickham writes weekly for USA TODAY.)
There's a real danger in offering poor women a financial incentive to marry. Many of them have gone on
welfare to escape a violent relationship, according to a report being released today by the National Organization
for Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund. It concludes that abuse victims are less likely to find and keep a
job or pursue the education they need to get off welfare.
Faced with the choice of leaving an abusive, unloving partner or getting additional public assistance to care
for their children in return for marrying their tormentor, some women might opt to take the money. That's an
enticement the federal government shouldn't allow states to dangle before these women.
"Simply providing financial incentives for marriage is not what the Bush marriage-incentive program is about,"
Horn said. Instead, he said, Bush's emphasis is on counseling, educational and mentoring programs that will help
married couples stay together.
That's a departure from what Horn advocated in a 2001 Brookings Institution article written while he still was
president of the National Fatherhood Initiative. Then, he said that while reauthorizing the welfare-reform act,
Congress "could require states to follow West Virginia's lead and provide a cash bonus to single mothers on
welfare who marry the child's biological father."
A better idea would be for Congress to expressly prohibit states from doing that
Two-thirds of a million women are still suffering from domestic violence because of the $1.8 billion
marriage incentives program that encourages poor women to marry.
(Jyl Josephson, Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of Women’s Studies at Rutgers, 07, “The
Intersectionality of Domestic Violence and Welfare in the Lives of Poor Women,” in Domestic Violence at the Margins).
In 2003, the U.S. Congress agreed to invest a total of $1.8 billion over six years in programs that encourage poor
women to marry. More than 2 million low-income single mothers across the country are targeted for marriage
promotion programs, which will place many lives at risk. The majority of people receiving welfare- assistance
are women who have been victims of domestic violence. For one-third of these women, the abuse is ongoing.
Women need support to escape and recover from the abuse, not incentives to stay in unsafe services to stay in unsafe
relationships. Indeed, structural supports – education, training, child care, and services for domestic violence, mental
health, and substance abuse – are programs that need financing. These initiatives are known to help lift women out of
poverty and support their resilience. Josephson challenges reductionist casual relationships used to describe the lives
of “welfare moms.” She interrogates the complexities of being poor, battered and a woman of color.
15
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: Marriage Incentives  Safe Marriages
Their argument is flawed – their authors falsely claim that they promote safe and healthy marriages
in order to broaden the appeal of the program.
Deborah A. Harris and Domenico “Mimmo” Parisi, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and
Social Work within the Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State University, November 29,
2005, Gender Role Ideologies and Marriage Promotion: State Policy Choices and Suggestions for
Improvement, Review of Policy Research, Volume 22 Issue 6, Pages 841 – 858
Advocating One Family Form over Another—Marriage promotion as it has been “marketed” by the federal
government extols the virtues of two-parent families while presenting the dangers faced by children growing up
in single-parent families. As Davis (2002) and her fellow critics argue, by legislating patriarchy the government is
advocating one family form at the expense of others. In fact, there was so much uproar by women’s rights
organizations and similar groups over marriage promotion policies that appeared to disregard the high rates of
domestic violence among low-income women that in recent reauthorization of the family formation provisions in
PRWORA the need for “safe and healthy families” has replaced earlier language (Ooms, Bouchet, & Parke,
2004; Healthy Marriage Initiative; Seefeldt & Smock, 2004).
16
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: Women Can Just Divorce Abusive Husbands
Harsher divorce laws force women to stay with their abusers
Linda Ostreicher, a former budget analyst for the New York City Council, 5-2004, “Marriage
Promotion Programs For Welfare Recipients”,
http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/socialservices/20040518/15/983
Even if research showed that the majority of children benefit from marriage promotion programs, they might still be
inadvisable, if a small minority of parents and/or children were severely harmed by them. Domestic violence is at
least twice as common among women on welfare as among the general public, with most estimates as high as 60
percent. Yet only one out of at least ten women on public assistance tells her welfare caseworker that she is being
abused. This indicates that states might not be able to identify women in abusive situations, and might instead steer
them into marriage with their abusers.
Some states are considering making it harder for people to divorce, as a way of encouraging marriages to last.
This could be dangerous, in light of a study that compared changes in the rates of suicide, homicide, and domestic
violence between states that liberalized their divorce laws and states that did not. Over a thirty-year period,
researchers found women were less likely to kill themselves, and to be killed by their partners, in states that
liberalized their divorce laws. No similar pattern was seen for men. Reports of domestic violence by both men
and women were also lower in states allowing unilateral divorce. [Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law: Divorce
Laws and Family Distress (in PDF format)]
17
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Domestic Violence Impact – Poverty
Domestic violence is a cause of poverty among women
LIFETIME, Low-Income Families’ Empowerment by Education, No Date Given, “The Hidden
Dangers of Marriage Promotion Domestic Violence, Budget Reconciliation, and Welfare
Reauthorization
Domestic violence is the major reason low-income mothers end up in the welfare system. Studies show that the
majority of single mothers in the welfare system have experienced domestic violence. Nationally, up to two thirds
of mothers on welfare have suffered domestic violence at some time in their adult lives, and between 15% and 20%
are current victims of serious domestic violence.1 In California the numbers are alarming: a recent study of
welfare mothers in two counties, the California Institute for Mental Health found that 83% had experienced
domestic violence at some point in their lives. In the two years that the study took place, two-thirds of the
women were battered.
Domestic violence prevents low-income mothers from getting and keeping jobs. Domestic violence doesn’t stay at
home: numerous studies find that violence is frequently exacerbated when mothers seek education, training, or
work. Batterers often sabotage mothers’ efforts to work or go to school by making threats, stalking her at work
and at school, inflicting injuries before tests or interviews, preventing her from sleeping or studying, and/or refusing to
provide promised childcare. In a 1999 study of Wisconsin’s welfare mother, the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future
found 63% were fired or forced to quit their jobs due to domestic violence. A 1999 study of Colorado welfare mothers
by the Center for Policy Research found that 44% were prevented from working by abusive ex-partners.
18
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Domestic Abuse Impact – Torture Scenario
Domestic abuse is another form of torture.
Amnesty International 2006, “Domestic Violence,” http://www.amnestyusa.org/women/violence/
Violence against women is a global pandemic. Without exception, a woman's greatest risk of violence is from
someone she knows. Domestic violence is a violation of a woman's right to physical integrity, to liberty, and all
too often, to her right to life itself. When states fail to take the basic steps needed to protect women from
domestic violence or allow these crimes to be committed with impunity, states are failing in their obligation to
protect women from torture.
Torture is the ultimate form of dehumanization.
Elaine Scarry, Harvard English Professor, 1985, “The Body in Pain,” Oxford University Press
Pablo Ibbieta’s experience in “The Wall” is close to if not identical with that of a person subjected to great pain. He is
not tortured: he comments quickly at one point that if tortured he would certainly give the information asked. But he
is sentenced to be executed, and is then suddenly released, and so in fact undergoes what has been in the recent past a
form of torture common in places like Chile, Brazil, Greece, and the Philippines – the “mock execution” or, as it was
called in the Philippines, “the process of dying.” Of course, no particular form of torture is required to make
visible the kinship between pain and death, both of which are radical and absolute: found only at the
boundaries they themselves create. That pain is so frequently used as a symbolic substitute for death in
initiation rites of many tribes is surely attributable to an intuitive human recognition that pain is the equivalent in
felt-experience of what is unfeelable in death. Each only happen because of the body. In each, the content of
consciousness are destroyed. The two are the most intense forms of negation, the purest expression of the antihuman, of annihilation, of total aversiveness, though one is an absence and the other a felt presence, one
occurring in the cessation of sentience, the other expressing itself in grotesque overload. Regardless, then, of
the context in which it occurs, physical pain always mimes death and the infliction of physical pain is always a
mock execution.
19
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Domestic Abuse Impact - War
Systemic violence against women creates a regime of political domination tantamount to interstate
war.
Amy Ray, US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, 1997, American University Law Review
Because, as currently constructed, human rights laws can reach only individual perpetrators during times of war, one
alternative is to reconsider our understanding of what constitutes "war" and what constitutes "peace." n264
When it is universally true that no matter where in the world a woman lives or with what culture she identifies,
she is at grave risk of being beaten, imprisoned, enslaved, raped, prostituted, physically tortured, and murdered
simply because she is a woman, the term "peace" does not describe her existence. n265 In addition to being
persecuted for being a woman, many women also are persecuted on ethnic, racial, religious, sexual orientation, or
other grounds. Therefore, it is crucial that our re-conceptualization of [*837] human rights is not limited to
violations based on gender. n266 Rather, our definitions of "war" and "peace" in the context of all of the world's
persecuted groups should be questioned. Nevertheless, in every culture a common risk factor is being a woman, and to
describe the conditions of our lives as "peace" is to deny the effect of sexual terrorism on all women. n267 Because
we are socialized to think of times of "war" as limited to groups of men fighting over physical territory or land, we do
not immediately consider the possibility of "war" outside this narrow definition except in a metaphorical sense, such
as in the expression "the war against poverty." However, the physical violence and sex discrimination perpetrated
against women because we are women is hardly metaphorical. Despite the fact that its prevalence makes the
violence seem natural or inevitable, it is profoundly political in both its purpose and its effect. Further, its
exclusion from international human rights law is no accident, but rather part of a system politically
constructed to exclude and silence women. n268 The appropriation of women's sexuality and women's bodies
as representative of men's ownership over women has been central to this "politically constructed reality."
n269 Women's bodies have become the objects through which dominance and even ownership are
communicated, as well as the objects through which men's honor is attained or taken away in many cultures. n270
Thus, when a man wants to communicate that he is more powerful than a woman, he may beat her. When a
man wants to communicate that a woman is [*838] his to use as he pleases, he may rape her or prostitute her. The
objectification of women is so universal that when one country ruled by men (Serbia) wants to communicate to
another country ruled by men (Bosnia-Herzegovina or Croatia) that it is superior and more powerful, it rapes,
tortures, and prostitutes the "inferior" country's women. n271 The use of the possessive is intentional, for
communication among men through the abuse of women is effective only to the extent that the group of men to whom
the message is sent believes they have some right of possession over the bodies of the women used. Unless they have
some claim of right to what is taken, no injury is experienced. Of course, regardless of whether a group of men
sexually terrorizing a group of women is trying to communicate a message to another group of men, the universal
sexual victimization of women clearly communicates to all women a message of dominance and ownership over
women. As Charlotte Bunch explains, "The physical territory of [the] political struggle [over female subordination] is
women's bodies." n272 Given the emphasis on invasion of physical territory as the impetus of war between
nations or groups of people within one nation, we may be able to reconceive the notion of "war" in order to
make human rights laws applicable to women "in the by-ways of daily life." n273 We could eradicate the
traditional public/private dichotomy and define oppression of women in terms traditionally recognized by
human rights laws by arguing that women's bodies are the physical territory at issue in a war perpetrated by
men against women. Under this broader definition of "war," any time one group of people systematically uses
physical coercion and violence to subordinate another group, that group would be perpetrating a war and
could be prosecuted for human rights violations under war crimes statutes. n274 Such an understanding would
enable women to seek the prosecution of any male perpetrator of violence against women, regardless of [*839]
whether that violence occurred inside a bedroom, on the streets of the city, or in a concentration camp in a foreign
country.
20
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
***DISCRIMINATION ADVANTAGE***
21
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Discrimination
Marriage incentives discriminate – homosexuals and single mothers are threats to legislative
patriarchy
Sarah Stewart Taylor, WEnews contributor, March 05, 2001, “Heated Debate on Welfare May Focus on Marriage”
"This is the second tier of welfare reform," says Duffy, spokesperson of the House Ways and Means Committee. "It's
helping children lead better lives. It's new thinking and it scares some people because they think it is government
legislating morality." Some women say that's exactly what it is. "This is a coercive act by the government," says
Mink. She adds that laws that promote heterosexual marriage discriminate against poor lesbian and gay
parents. Encouraging women to get married in order to achieve economic security may put them in the
unstable position of counting on men who may not always be there, women's advocates say. "Women have
traditionally had three sources of support," quips Abramovitz. "Men, marriage or the market. None of them is too
reliable right now." And for some observers, the motivation behind efforts to promote marriage for poor women
is power rather than reform. "The ideological underpinning of this is that to allow women to raise children on
their own is a real threat to the patriarchy," says Abramovitz. "I always joke that now we know why welfare
benefits are so low--women raising children on their own are threatening to men."
22
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Discrimination
TANF interferes with family structures of African Americans.
Gwendolyn Mink, member of the board of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a member of the
coordinating committee of Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice, Professor of Politics at the
University of California, 2002, The Good Society - Volume 11, Number 3, From Welfare to Wedlock:
Marriage Promotion and Poor Mothers’ Inequality: pp. 69
Noting the color of welfare and the color of nonmarital mothers who are poor, 6TANF proponents attribute the need for
welfare to the moral or cultural deficits of racialized individuals rather than to racialized opportunities and economic
conditions. For example, the 2000 Green Book, published by the House Ways and Means Committee, proclaimed in
retrospect: TANF stakes itself to “the perspicacity of Moynihan’s vision” that “[B]lack
Americans [are] held back economically and socially in large part because their family structure [is]
deteriorating.”7According to this argument, single-mother poverty arises from single mothers’ failure to choose marriage; in
turn, the failure to marry is a measure of single mothers’ impoverished citizenship.
TANF program most intervene the rights of colored single mother because two third on TANF are
women of color and are mostly gave birth before marriage.
U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, 2000 Green Book: Overview of
Entitlement Programs, 106th Congress, 2nd Session (Washington, DC, 2000) pp. 1238, 1239 (table G4), 1521.
In 24 states in 1999, women of color composed more than two-thirds of TANF enrollments. Relatedly, the decline in welfare
caseloads has been more pronounced among whites than among women of color. Meanwhile, the percentage of single parent
families among Blacks (62.3 percent) is more than twice that among whites (26.6 percent) and the nonmarital birth rate is
substantially higher among non-Hispanic Blacks (73.4) and Latinas (91.4) than among whites (27).
23
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
***HETERONORMATIVITY SCENARIO***
24
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Discrimination - Homosexuals
Promoting heterosexual marriage with incentives discriminates against the poor who are
homosexual or have homosexual parents
(Sarah Steward Taylor, WeNews contributor, 03 05 01, “Some Fear Pro-Marriage Government Is Legislating
Morality”, http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/467/context/archive)
Some Fear Pro-Marriage Government Is Legislating Morality. The promoters of the pro-marriage programs say
that it's worth trying to reduce the number of children who are brought up without two involved parents.
"This is the second tier of welfare reform," says Duffy, spokesperson of the House Ways and Means
Committee. "It's helping children lead better lives. It's new thinking and it scares some people because they
think it is government legislating morality." Some women say that's exactly what it is. "This is a coercive act by
the government," says Mink. She adds that laws that promote heterosexual marriage discriminate against
poor lesbian and gay parents. Encouraging women to get married in order to achieve economic
security may put them in the unstable position of counting on men who may not always be there,
women's advocates say. "Women have traditionally had three sources of support," quips
Abramovitz. "Men, marriage or the market. None of them is too reliable right now." And for some
observers, the motivation behind efforts to promote marriage for poor women is power rather than
reform. "The ideological underpinning of this is that to allow women to raise children on their own
is a real threat to the patriarchy," says Abramovitz. "I always joke that now we know why welfare
benefits are so low--women raising children on their own are threatening to me.”
Marriage promotion only focuses on couples with different sex. Gay couples are ignored.
Alternative to Marriage 09, “Government Mandates for Marriage Promotion,”
http://www.unmarried.org/welfare.html
Marriage promotion is a major current in today's river of public policymaking. It includes laws, budget allocations,
administrative regulations, think-tank recommendations, and operating programs - within the public sector (federal,
state and local legislatures and agencies), and the private sector (nonprofit organizations and faith institutions).
Marriage promotion says that different-sex couples must enter and stay in government-certified marriages to ensure
the health of their children, to be economically successful, and to be responsible citizens. Marriage promotion does
not tolerate alternatives: it ignores same-sex couples and extended kinship networks; it strongly suggests that single
and cohabiting women will always be poor, that single or cohabiting men are irresponsible, and that single and
cohabiting parents hurt their children and society. Marriage promotion did recently accept one caveat: extremely
violent marriages are no good for anyone. The Alternatives to Marriage Project opposes marriage promotion in
general because it further stigmatizes unmarried people and further institutionalizes discrimination against singles and
diverse family forms. We believe that policies designed to help children should focus on supporting all the types of
families in which children really live. We believe that people who care for one another should be supported in their
efforts to build healthy, happy relationships.
25
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Discrimination – Single Mothers
Marriage promotion may lead to physical and emotional abuse as well as discriminate against
single mothers.
(Daniel T. Litchter, Robert F. Lazarus Professor in Population Studies, professor of sociology, and director of the Initiative
in Population Research at The Ohio State University, “Marriage as Public Policy,”
http://www.ppionline.org/documents/marriage_lichter.pdf, 09 01
Critics worry about government intrusion in the private lives of people. They are concerned that the
new emphasis on marriage will result in greater stigma and discrimination against single mothers and their
children. They worry that marriage promotion is disingenuous—that it is mostly a political ruse
that will lead to the reduction or elimination of other income and work supports for low-income
families. Indeed, how can marriage solve the economic and social problems of low-income
women and their children if the men available to them in economically-depressed neighborhoods
and communities lack good jobs and incomes sufficient to support a family? Women’s advocacy
groups also are rightly concerned that marriage promotion policies will expose many low-income women to
physical and emotional abuse—both for themselves and their children—if they are encouraged or compelled to
enter into or stay in bad marriages. For them, marriage is the problem rather than the solution. Moreover,
even if states wish to promote marriage and reduce divorce, they may lack the knowledge or technical expertise
to devise policies that actually work. For example, policies that make divorce harder to obtain could backfire
and cause fewer young people to enter into marriage. In addition, ill-advised marriages may be highly unstable
and do more harm than good, especially to children, who seem to do best in a stable and economically secure
environment.
26
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
***PATRIARCHY SCENARIO***
27
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy
The USFG markets marriage incentives, reinforcing patriarchal standards.
Deborah A. Harris and Domenico “Mimmo” Parisi, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work within
the Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State University, November 29, 20 05, Gender Role Ideologies and
Marriage Promotion: State Policy Choices and Suggestions for Improvement, Review of Policy Research, Volume 22 Issue
6, Pages 841 – 858
Advocating One Family Form over Another—Marriage promotion as it has been “marketed” by the federal
government extols the virtues of two-parent families while presenting the dangers faced by children growing up
in single-parent families. As Davis (2002) and her fellow critics argue, by legislating patriarchy the government is
advocating one family form at the expense of others. In fact, there was so much uproar by women’s rights
organizations and similar groups over marriage promotion policies that appeared to disregard the high rates of
domestic violence among low-income women that in recent reauthorization of the family formation provisions in
PRWORA the need for “safe and healthy families” has replaced earlier language (Ooms, Bouchet, & Parke, 2004;
Healthy Marriage Initiative; Seefeldt & Smock, 2004).
TANF program encourages Patriarchy - forces women to specialize in house work while men
specialize in labor
Paul Ormerod, an economist who studies complexity, boom and bust cycle, forecaster of National Institue of Economic
and Social Research, 2001, Butterfly effect, p.47-49
[Card Continues on next page…]
28
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy
29
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy
State marriage promotion reinforces patriarchy – it forces women to become dependent on the
husband’s income
Sarah Stewart Taylor, WEnews contributor, March 05, 2001, “Heated Debate on Welfare May Focus on Marriage”
"It's a patriarchal sexist mentality to say that the cure for a poor mother's poverty is a father's income," says
Gwendolyn Mink, a professor of political science at the University of California at Santa Cruz and author of a
1998 book on welfare reform, "Welfare's End." Mink cited continuing efforts to discourage non-marital births
among women on welfare and the institution of abstinence and fatherhood programs as evidence that the
government is promoting marriage for poor women. "It's making women dependent on men instead of doing
other things that help women support their families."
Marriage incentives perpetuate sexism
Feminist Daily News Wire 01 (http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=5474 Bush Appoints Anti-Women’s Rights Wade Horn to Welfare and Child Care Dept. in HHS April 30,
2001)
President Bush has nominated anti-women’s rights founder of the National Fatherhood Initiative Wade Horn to be
Assistant Secretary for Family Support at the Department of Health and Human Services. In this position, Horn
would have authority over welfare, welfare reform, child care, child welfare, foster care, and adoption. The NOW
Legal Defense and Education Fund (NOW LDEF) warns that Horn’s confirmation would threaten women’s rights,
especially the rights of low-income single mothers. Horn’s National Fatherhood Initiative’s (NFI) sexist agenda
would force women to marry men through economic policies as a solution to a myriad of social problems “caused”
by single mother families. Horn argues that promoting marriage should be the highest priority in welfare policy,
and bases his arguments on gender stereotypes, such as his assertion that wives should “submit” to their husbands
and his belief that mothers and fathers inherently parent differently. He opposes abortion and gay and lesbian
parents. NOW LDEF notes that he argues for the denial of access for single parent families to important public
benefits like Head Start. These limited benefits should go to heterosexual two-parent households first, leaving the
“leftovers,” if any, to single parent households. He would also deny welfare benefits to two parent families if the
parents are not married.
Marriage incentives restrict reproductive freedom
Sarah Olsen, journalist at Free Speech Radio, 3-31-05, “Marriage Promotion, Reproductive Injustice,
and the War Against Poor Women of Color”,
http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2005/0105olson.html
While marriage promotion as a federal policy began in 1996, many say it is only one part of a much larger system of
control over, and sanction of, the sexual and reproductive freedoms of poor women and women of color. Another
part of this system is child exclusion legislation, which has been adopted by 21 states. Child exclusion laws permit
states to pay benefits for only one child born to a woman on welfare. Social policy experts say it is a response to the
myth that African-American welfare recipients were having more children in order to get larger benefit checks. Such
laws push women either deeper into poverty, or into abortions. In some states, a woman who chooses to have
another child instead of an abortion may end up trying to raise two or more children on less than $300 a month.
30
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy
Current TANF brings back patriarchal traditions.
Gwendolyn Mink (Professor of women’s studies at Smith) 20 02.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/good_society/v011/11.3mink.html
Let me turn now to the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program (TANF), which the Personal Responsibility
Act created when it "reformed" welfare 1996. In its famous "findings," the TANF provision of the PRWORA blames
countless social ills on Black single mothers; in its statement of purpose, TANF policy pledges to promote
marriage, reduce out-of-wedlock births, and to "encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent
families." 5
Toward these ends, TANF subjects single mothers to work rules that deprive them of the right and the
flexibility to make parenting decisions about the care needs of their children. It subjects them to paternity
disclosure rules that vitiate their sexual and reproductive privacy. It subjects them to family formation rules,
which confer social and financial fatherhood on biological fathers (and instantiate their legal rights) regardless
of a mother's say. In these ways and more, TANF punishes single motherhood, endangering the physical,
emotional, and material security of poor mothers and their children, jeopardizing poor mothers' custody of
their own children, and negating their right to form intimate associations on their own terms.
As Public Vows convincingly demonstrates, governmental interference in intimate life—especially in the formation of
families through marriage—has almost always forwarded dominant societal and governmental goals for racial and
gender order. That's what anti-miscegenation laws were all about. That's what coverture was all about. That's what
countless immigration and naturalization laws were all about, laws that restricted the entry of wives and women, or
that stripped U.S. women of citizenship if they married non-citizen men.
TANF recapitulates the racialized, undemocratic, patriarchal tradition in its pronouncements and punishments
regarding childbearing and childrearing by single mothers. Marriage serves several functions in TANF: it
privatizes poverty; it reaffirms patriarchy; and it spotlights women of color as moral failures.
Noting the color of welfare and the color of nonmarital mothers who are poor, 6 TANF proponents attribute the need
for welfare to the moral or cultural deficits of racialized individuals rather than to racialized opportunities and
economic conditions. For example, the 2000 Green Book, published by the House Ways and Means Committee,
proclaimed in retrospect: TANF stakes itself to "the perspicacity of Moynihan's vision" that "[B]lack Americans [are]
held back economically and socially in large part because their family structure [is] deteriorating." 7 According to
this argument, single-mother poverty arises from single mothers' failure to choose marriage; in turn, the
failure to marry is a measure of single mothers' impoverished citizenship.
31
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy
Current TANF forces mothers into heterosexual, patriarchal families.
Gwendolyn Mink (Professor of women’s studies at Smith) 20 02.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/good_society/v011/11.3mink.html
TANF's most extensive efforts to push mothers into heterosexual families headed by fathers arise from its child
support and paternity establishment requirements affecting mothers. These provisions do not go so far as to
compel marriage or residential co-parenting, but they do require mothers to maintain association with
biological fathers (so that they can inform on them!) even if mothers do not want biological fathers involved with
their children. Under the paternity establishment provision, a mother must disclose the identity of her child's
biological father or must permit the government to examine her sex life so that it can discover the DNA paternal
match for her child. Under the child support enforcement provision, a mother must help government locate her
child's biological father so that the government can collect reimbursement from him for the mother's TANF
benefit. A mandatory minimum sanction against families in which mothers do not cooperate in establishing paternity
or collecting child support enforces government's determination that a biological reproductive nexus constitutes a
social family.
Numerous other TANF provisions and guidelines promote marriage either directly or by discouraging women
from bearing children if they are not married. For example, executive branch guidelines for TANF
implementation reward states for promoting marriage. The Department of Health and Human Services awards a
TANF "high performance bonus" to states that most increase the percentage of children living in married parent
families. Moreover, HHS guidelines specifically tell states that, given the purposes of TANF, they can develop promarriage policies with TANF funds. 8 As a result, several states have used TANF funds to disseminate the promarriage message, to provide marriage classes, or to reward actual marriage in the structure of TANF benefits (as
does West Virginia through $100 [End Page 69] monthly bonus for TANF families in which parents are married).
Another TANF provision gives incentives to states to reduce "illegitimacy." The "illegitimacy bonus" provides
extra money to states that achieve the greatest reductions in nonmarital births without increasing their
abortion rates. 9 The bonus gives states a green light to interfere in unmarried women's intimate family
decisions, including reproductive decisions—such as by offering bonuses to unmarried pregnant women who
agree to relinquish their babies at childbirth; by pressuring unmarried pregnant recipients to marry; or by
encouraging or rewarding long-term contraception by unmarried women who are poor.
32
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy
The forced marital role of the father entrenches a patriarchal society while ignoring the welfare of
poor families.
Jyl Josephson. 8/28/03. Associate Professor, Dept. of Politics and Government, Illinois State University.
“Coercive Visibility: Gender Deviance, TANF Reauthorization, and State Control of Low-Income Women
and Men.”
Section 119 of Title I of H.R. 4 specifically addresses the fathers of children receiving TANF, and is entitled the
“Promotion and Support of Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Marriage Act.” This section has four types of
projects or activities that are eligible for federal grant funds: first, activities to promote “responsible, caring and
effective parenting” and the “encouragement of positive father involvement.” The second type of program goal that
will be funded is projects to enhance the “abilities and commitment of unemployed or low-income fathers to
provide material support for their families and to avoid or leave welfare programs.” The third type of activities
eligible for funding includes programs to improve “fathers’ ability to effectively manage family business
affairs.” The fourth type of activity to be funded are activities that encourage and promote “healthy marriages
and married fatherhood.” Thus, these goals are primarily attitudinal or addressed to perceived fatherhood skill
deficits such as money management, support to promote payment of child support. But they also are based on
conceptions of the family that are at best patriarchal, and that do not speak to the actual needs of low-income fathers.
The normative discourse is very clear here: fathers who are not married to the mothers of their children are
deviant fathers and need state guidance and instruction to conform to the expectations of married fatherhood
and get their children off of welfare. The programs are not primarily focused on fathers’ ability to find and
keep jobs. Even the provisions regarding promotion of payment of child support focus more on perceived attitudinal
factors, not on the economic and logistical barriers that child support presents (Josephson 1997; Waller 2002).
The current TANF program views single mothers as “improper” because they do not work, while it
ignores the work that is involved with their children.
Jyl Josephson. 8/28/03. Associate Professor, Dept. of Politics and Government, Illinois State
University. “Coercive Visibility: Gender Deviance, TANF Reauthorization, and State Control of
Low-Income Women and Men.”
Women who receive TANF benefits are constructed in the statements of policy-makers
are well as in the actual policies adopted as improper mothers. Interestingly, the reasons for this
have changed historically. Feminist scholars have certainly shown that the mothers’ pension
programs that were the model for the ADC program adopted in 1935 were imbricated with a
variety of social control mechanisms, as well as with a discourse about proper motherhood
(Gordon 1994; Mink 1995; Mettler 1998; Skocpol 1992). The terms of the discourse supporting
the adoption of the ADC program constructed the mothers who would need the program as
widows who through no fault of their own became single parents. The program was thus
intended, it was argued, to support these mothers so that they did not work outside the home. By
contrast, contemporary women who receive TANF benefits are constructed as deviant both
because they are not married and because they do not work outside the home for wages (or are
perceived as not doing so). Therefore, by definition, they cannot be proper mothers. As many
feminist scholars have pointed out, nowhere in this discourse is there any discussion of women’s
work caring for their children (Mink 1998; Roberts 1999).
33
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy
The TANF marriage policy enforces patriarchal families.
Gwendolyn Mink Prof. of Womens Studies at Smith September 2001 American Academy of
Political and Social Science Annals 577. “Violating Women: Rights Abuses in the Welfare Police
State”
W HEN the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA)
repealed the old welfare system, it set up a harsh new system that subordinates recipients to a series of requirements,
sanctions, and stacked incentives aimed at rectifying their personal choices and family practices.
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, the welfare system established in 1996,
disciplines recipients by either stealing or impairing their basic civil rights. In exchange for welfare,
TANF recipients must surrender vocational freedom, sexual privacy, and reproductive choice, as well as the
right to make intimate decisions about how to be and raise a family. Ordinarily, these rights are strongly
guarded by constitutional doctrine, as they form the core of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence of
(heterosexual) personhood and family. Not so for a mother who needs welfare.
The most talked-about aspect of TANF is its dramaturgy of work (cf. Piven and Cloward 1993, 346, 381, 395), but
TANF’s foremost objective is to restore the patriarchal family. Accordingly, numerous TANF provisions
promote marriage and paternal headship while frustrating childbearing and child-raising rights outside
of marriage. TANF’s impositions on poor mothers’ rights to form and sustain their own families-as well
as to avoid or exit from untenable relationships with men-proceed from stiff paternity establishment
and child support enforcement rules. According to the 2000 Green Book, TANF’s “exceptionally strong
paternity establishment requirements” compose its most direct attack on nonmarital childbearing, while
mandatory maternal cooperation in establishing and enforcing child support orders impairs nonmarital child
raising (U.S. House 2000c, 1530). If mothers do not obey these rules, they lose part or all of their families’
benefits. TANF’s patriarchal solutions to welfare mothers’ poverty have enjoyed bipartisan support.
Democrats and Republicans did fight over some of the meaner provisions of the 1996 TANF legislation, but
both agreed that poor women with children should at least be financially tied to their children’s biological
fathers or, better yet, be married to them. Endangering poor single women’s independent childbearing
decisions by condemning their decision to raise children independently, both parties agreed that poverty policy
should make father-mother family formation its cardinal principle.
34
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy
The marriage policy forces women to become dependent on men and prevents them from raising
their children and becoming self-sufficient.
Gwendolyn Mink Author of numerous books and Editor of Whose Welfare? September 2001
American Academy of Political and Social Science Annals 577. “Violating Women: Rights Abuses
in the Welfare Police State”
The 1996 PRWORA, which created TANF, spelled out policy makers’ belief in the social importance of fathermother families in a preamble that recited correlations between single-mother families and such dangers
as crime, poor school performance, and intergenerational single motherhood. Declaring that “marriage is the
foundation of a successful society,” the act went on to establish that the purpose of welfare must be not only to
provide assistance to needy families but also to “end the dependence of needy parents on government
benefits by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage” “prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock
pregnancies” and “encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families” (U.S. Public Law 104-193,
Title I). Subsequent legislation and administrative regulations have strengthened TANF’s founding goals
through fatherhood programs that “strengthen [fathers’] ability to support a family” and that promote
marriage (U.S. House 2000a).1 The TANF welfare regime backs up these interventions into poor single
mothers’ intimate relationships by sanctioning mothers with mandatory work outside the home if they remain
single. Mothers who are married do not have to work outside the home, even though they receive welfare, for
labor market work by only one parent in a two-parent family satisfies TANF’s work requirement (U.S. Public Law
104-193, Title I, sec. 407(c)(1)(B); U.S. House 2000c, 357).~ 2 Notwithstanding a decade of rhetoric about
moving from welfare to work, the TANF regime treats wage work as the alternative to marriage, not to
welfare-as punishment for mothers’ independence. Far from “ending dependency” the TANF regime actually
fosters poor mothers’ dependence on individual men. Provisions that mandate father-mother family relations
assume that fathers are the best substitute for welfare. The TANF regime’s refusal to invest in mothers’
employment opportunities and earning power enforces this assumption, for the combination of skills
hierarchies and discrimination in the labor market keeps poor mothers too poor to sustain their families
unassisted (see, for example, Acs et al. 1998; Moffitt and Roff 2000; Wider Opportunities for Women 2000).
Moreover, the TANF regime’s inattention to social supports such as transportation and child care ensures that
single mothers’ fulltime employment will be an unaffordably expensive proposition indeed. More than a cruel
punishment for their persistent independence, the TANF work requirement is an injury to poor mothers’
liberty as both mothers and workers. Obliging recipients to work outside the home 30 hours each week, the
work requirement forecloses TANF mothers’ choice to work as caregivers for their own children. It also
interferes with their independent caregiving decisions, as absences due to lack of child care, for example, can
lead to loss of employment- a failure to satisfy the work requirement. Further, the work requirement
constrains TANF mothers’ choices as labor market workers, such as the choice to prepare for the labor market
through education or the choice to leave a hostile workplace (for key provisions see U.S. Public Law 104-193,
Title I, sec. 407 (a)(1), 407(c)(2)(B), 407(e)(1)).
35
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy
The marriage policy forces single mothers to cede familial roles to biological fathers even in the
face of danger.
Gwendolyn Mink Author of numerous books and Editor of Whose Welfare? September 2001 American
Academy of Political and Social Science Annals 577. “Violating Women: Rights Abuses in the Welfare
Police State”
Family freedom is another right impaired by TANF program requirements, incentives, and preferences. TANF
provisions tell recipients who gets to be part of their families. Paternity establishment and child support rules
require mothers to associate at least financially with biological fathers. States may excuse a mother from
complying for “good
Cause” if it is “in the best interest of the child” (U.S. House 2000c, 470). In general, however, a mother must reveal
the identity of her child’s father and must pursue a child support order against him, whether or not she wants him
financially involved in her family’s life. Seventeen states require mothers to cooperate with paternity establishment
and child support enforcement while their TANF applications are pending-before they receive even a dime in cash
assistance (State Policy Documentation Project 1999a). Once a mother receives TANF benefits, her failure to
cooperate results in an automatic 25 percent reduction in cash assistance to her family; states are permitted to
terminate welfare eligibility altogether (Public Law 104-193, Title I, sec. 408(a)(2)). In addition to requiring
mothers
to associate financially with fathers through child support, if not through marriage, TANF pressures mothers to yield
parental rights to biological fathers. Access and visitation provisions authorize states to require mothers to
open their families to biological fathers. Until 1996, the federal government historically had separated fathers’ rights
from their
obligations, treating visitation and child support as legally separate issues. Under TANF, however, these issues are
explicitly connected because policy makers believe that “it [is] more likely for noncustodial parents to make payments
of child support if they [have] either joint custody or visitation rights” (U.S. House 2000c, 469).
36
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy
Marriage incentives rely on a racist and patriarchal ideology.
Gwendolyn Mink Author of numerous books and Editor of Whose Welfare? September 2001 American
Academy of Political and Social Science Annals 577. “Violating Women: Rights Abuses in the Welfare
Police State”
Measures like the Johnson bill explicitly give fathers incentives to enter poor mothers’ families. For example, the
Johnson bill offered funds to projects that teach fathers about their visitation and access rights (U.S. House 2000b,
42); promoted forgiveness of child support arrearages owed by men who become residential fathers; enhanced fathers’
earning power through job training and “careeradvancing education”; and tracked nonmarital fathers into various
social services that encourage marriage (U.S. House 2000a, Title V, Subtitle A, sec. 501(a) and 501(b)). These
incentives to fathers impose substantial pressures on mothers, for it is mothers, not fathers, who must obey
TANF rules and suffer the consequences of time limits. Fathers get the “carrots” to borrow from Charles Murray,
while mothers get the “sticks” Jesse Jackson Jr.’s Responsible Fatherhood bill duplicated the Johnson bill in many
respects. Perhaps more astounding, much of the racecoded, anti-single-mother rhetoric that introduced the
Republicans’ 1996 PRWORA was repeated in the preamble to the Jackson bill. For example, Jackson’s bill asserted
that “violent criminals are overwhelmingly males who grew up without fathers and the best predictor of crime in a
community is the percentage of absent father households” The preamble concluded, “States should be encouraged,
not restricted, from implementing programs that provide support for responsible fatherhood, promote
marriage, and increase the
incidence of marriage” (U.S. House 2000d). Bipartisan marriage and fatherhood initiatives assume that poor
mothers’ intimate decisions about family forms and relationships cause their poverty. They also assume that it
is appropriate for government to interfere in the intimate associational life of poor mothers. Even as
government scales back its affirmative role in mitigating poverty, it is intensifying its coercive reach into the
lives of the poor. Now squarely at
the center of poverty policy, marriage promotion and fatherhood initiatives seek to compel mothers to follow the
government’s moral prescriptions and to accept economic dependence on men. It is true that a family with a male
income generally is better off than a family without one. While some moralistic welfare strategists believe that
married fatherhood per se is an important governmental objective, more pragmatic policy strategists reason
syllogistically that if men’s families are better off economically than women’s, then poverty can be cured by the
presence of a male income in families. This kind of thinking short circuits equality, foreclosing the question of
improving women’s own income. If we look at the various measures of women’s and mothers’ poverty-women’s
income as compared to men’s, for example it is clear that single mothers are poor because women’s work is not
valued. This is true of women’s labor market work, where a racialized gender gap in wages reflects the devaluation
of the work women do. And it is true of women’s nonmarket caregiving work, which garners no income at all.
37
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy
Current TANF brings back patriarchal traditions.
Gwendolyn Mink (Professor of women’s studies at Smith) 20 02.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/good_society/v011/11.3mink.html
Let me turn now to the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program (TANF), which the Personal Responsibility
Act created when it "reformed" welfare 1996. In its famous "findings," the TANF provision of the PRWORA blames
countless social ills on Black single mothers; in its statement of purpose, TANF policy pledges to promote
marriage, reduce out-of-wedlock births, and to "encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent
families." 5
Toward these ends, TANF subjects single mothers to work rules that deprive them of the right and the
flexibility to make parenting decisions about the care needs of their children. It subjects them to paternity
disclosure rules that vitiate their sexual and reproductive privacy. It subjects them to family formation rules,
which confer social and financial fatherhood on biological fathers (and instantiate their legal rights) regardless
of a mother's say. In these ways and more, TANF punishes single motherhood, endangering the physical,
emotional, and material security of poor mothers and their children, jeopardizing poor mothers' custody of
their own children, and negating their right to form intimate associations on their own terms.
As Public Vows convincingly demonstrates, governmental interference in intimate life—especially in the formation of
families through marriage—has almost always forwarded dominant societal and governmental goals for racial and
gender order. That's what anti-miscegenation laws were all about. That's what coverture was all about. That's what
countless immigration and naturalization laws were all about, laws that restricted the entry of wives and women, or
that stripped U.S. women of citizenship if they married non-citizen men.
TANF recapitulates the racialized, undemocratic, patriarchal tradition in its pronouncements and punishments
regarding childbearing and childrearing by single mothers. Marriage serves several functions in TANF: it
privatizes poverty; it reaffirms patriarchy; and it spotlights women of color as moral failures.
Noting the color of welfare and the color of nonmarital mothers who are poor, 6 TANF proponents attribute the need
for welfare to the moral or cultural deficits of racialized individuals rather than to racialized opportunities and
economic conditions. For example, the 2000 Green Book, published by the House Ways and Means Committee,
proclaimed in retrospect: TANF stakes itself to "the perspicacity of Moynihan's vision" that "[B]lack Americans [are]
held back economically and socially in large part because their family structure [is] deteriorating." 7 According to
this argument, single-mother poverty arises from single mothers' failure to choose marriage; in turn, the
failure to marry is a measure of single mothers' impoverished citizenship.
38
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy
Current TANF forces mothers into heterosexual, patriarchal families.
Gwendolyn Mink (Professor of women’s studies at Smith) 20 02.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/good_society/v011/11.3mink.html
TANF's most extensive efforts to push mothers into heterosexual families headed by fathers arise from its child
support and paternity establishment requirements affecting mothers. These provisions do not go so far as to
compel marriage or residential co-parenting, but they do require mothers to maintain association with
biological fathers (so that they can inform on them!) even if mothers do not want biological fathers involved with
their children. Under the paternity establishment provision, a mother must disclose the identity of her child's
biological father or must permit the government to examine her sex life so that it can discover the DNA paternal
match for her child. Under the child support enforcement provision, a mother must help government locate her
child's biological father so that the government can collect reimbursement from him for the mother's TANF
benefit. A mandatory minimum sanction against families in which mothers do not cooperate in establishing paternity
or collecting child support enforces government's determination that a biological reproductive nexus constitutes a
social family.
Numerous other TANF provisions and guidelines promote marriage either directly or by discouraging women
from bearing children if they are not married. For example, executive branch guidelines for TANF
implementation reward states for promoting marriage. The Department of Health and Human Services awards a
TANF "high performance bonus" to states that most increase the percentage of children living in married parent
families. Moreover, HHS guidelines specifically tell states that, given the purposes of TANF, they can develop promarriage policies with TANF funds. 8 As a result, several states have used TANF funds to disseminate the promarriage message, to provide marriage classes, or to reward actual marriage in the structure of TANF benefits (as
does West Virginia through $100 [End Page 69] monthly bonus for TANF families in which parents are married).
Another TANF provision gives incentives to states to reduce "illegitimacy." The "illegitimacy bonus" provides
extra money to states that achieve the greatest reductions in nonmarital births without increasing their
abortion rates. 9 The bonus gives states a green light to interfere in unmarried women's intimate family
decisions, including reproductive decisions—such as by offering bonuses to unmarried pregnant women who
agree to relinquish their babies at childbirth; by pressuring unmarried pregnant recipients to marry; or by
encouraging or rewarding long-term contraception by unmarried women who are poor.
Marriage is used in an attempt to solve perceived gender role deviancy in low-income people.
Jyl Josephson. 8/28/03. Associate Professor, Dept. of Politics and Government, Illinois State
University. “Coercive Visibility: Gender Deviance, TANF Reauthorization, and State Control of
Low-Income Women and Men.”
But the focus on gender role deviancy, and the contradictions of the construction of the
gender role failures of low-income men and women does not capture all of the elements of
deviancy attributed to low-income men and women. It is crucial to also see the way in which
welfare recipients are constructed as failed heterosexuals to understand the multiple social
controls in H.R. 4. To be a proper heterosexual man and heterosexual woman is to be a
heterosexual adult who controls his/her sexuality in ways that keep his/her reproductive life
“private” and not subject to state control. In this instance, this includes not have children for
whom you will require redistributive assistance from the state.
In her discussion of abstinence-only sex education materials, Jodie Levin-Epstein notes that these materials
indicate that sex is only for those who are heterosexual, married, and
economically self-sufficient (Levin-Epstein 2001). Clearly, women who receive TANF, and the
men who are the fathers of their children, do not meet this third criterion. While these materials
were developed to encourage teenagers to be abstinent and are thus not specifically targeted at
welfare recipients (Irvine 2002), the presence of this criterion in abstinence-only materials is not
immaterial. Abstinence-only education was an expansion of the Maternal and Child Health block grant and was
passed as part of PRWORA in 1996; it is also included in H.R. 4 as Title
39
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy
The TANF marriage policy is an attempt to normalize mother and father relations by defining the
fathers role as that of solely providing economic considerations and not care.
Jyl Josephson. 8/28/03. Associate Professor, Dept. of Politics and Government, Illinois State
University. “Coercive Visibility: Gender Deviance, TANF Reauthorization, and State Control of
Low-Income Women and Men.”
H.R. 4 also contains another change in the goals of the program, from promotion of “twoparent families” to the promotion of “healthy, two-parent married families,” and to “encourage
responsible fatherhood.” Significantly, it is not sufficient that the family is headed by a twoparent couple, but that it be a (heterosexual) married couple. Further, the specifics of what is
meant in this policy by “responsible fatherhood” are revealing.
Men who receive TANF, or whose children do, are constructed as improper fathers
because they do not support their children and are not married to their children’s mother. Thus,
marriage is still a crucial element in proper parenthood. But the gender role expectations are
geared toward economic support, not the provision of care. As Maureen Waller’s study of lowincome women and men shows, some low-income men may be providing care in circumstances
where they cannot provide income. Further, this exchange was seen as legitimate and acceptable
by many low-income mothers (Waller 2002; see also Edin and Lein 1997). So even if lowincome mothers and fathers see father’s care work as beneficial, and as part of good fathering, it
does not constitute a significant element in the “responsible fatherhood” programs. These
elements are focused on marriage, and on economic support.
The TANF policy creates gender roles that disproportionately damage poor and minority
communities.
Jyl Josephson. 8/28/03. Associate Professor, Dept. of Politics and Government, Illinois State
University. “Coercive Visibility: Gender Deviance, TANF Reauthorization, and State Control of
Low-Income Women and Men.”
The statistics on welfare leavers do not bear out this statement. But note the marker of success:
not just having a higher income, but “middle-class lives”. The proof here is in the converse:
those parents who fail to provide middle-class lives for their children have failed as parents.
Feminists have pointed out the deep irony of this formulation: low-income women are
gender role deviants because they do not work outside the home; their labor in caring for their
children is not seen as labor (Roberts 1999; Mink 1998, 2003). As Roberts argues, however,
middle-class white women are still criticized for working outside the home. So the racial
markers of this policy, while not addressed directly, are clear. And the gender role expectations for low-income
women are malleable depending upon the political moment. Further, wage
labor, at least for low-income women, is depicted in this discourse as profoundly liberating
regardless of the nature of the job.
Therefore, the increased work requirements in this legislation are seen as liberating by
policy-makers who argue for the increases. H.R. 4 increases both the proportion of the caseload
required to be in work or work activities, and increases the number of hours per week that the
adult recipient or adult couple must work. As Rep. Pryce (R-Ohio) put it:
40
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy
TANF limits single mother’s rights.
Gwendolyn Mink, member of the board of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a member of the
coordinating committee of Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice, Professor of Politics at the
University of California, 2002, The Good Society - Volume 11, Number 3, From Welfare to Wedlock:
Marriage Promotion and Poor Mothers’ Inequality: pp. 68
It was Loving v. Virginia—the famous anti-miscegenation case decided in 1967—that definitively established the
significance of intimate associational liberty to our equality as citizens. Asserting the national citizenship rights of individuals against race-based
state laws restricting marital freedom, the Supreme Court in Loving shifted the axis of marital decision-making from government to adult individuals—at least for heterosexuals.
According to Nancy Cott’s story of the public functions of marriage before Loving, laws governing access to legally valid marriage, relationships within marriage, as well as the
status of marital bonds accomplished government’s cultural, moral, eugenic, racial, and patriarchal regulation of the citizenry. With Loving, however, government’s power to
police and to stratify the adult citizenry by conferring marital status on some intimate partnerships while withholding it from others declined, though only for heterosexuals.
Although Loving most importantly established the right to marry a partner of one’s (heterosexual) choosing regardless
of race, the decision also incorporated the right not to marry as a core element of the fundamental right at stake in the
case.2Soon after Loving, the Court applied heightened constitutional protection to the right to be not-married when it held that
the right to dissolve a marriage could not be conditioned on the ability to pay court costs and related fees3and when it ruled
that the right to receive welfare benefits could not be limited to families in which parents were “ceremonially married.”4Both
cases involved welfare recipients, so both decisions explicitly extended fundamental intimate associational rights across the
divides of class and poverty. Loving was first and foremost a decision against racial regulation of intimacy, demography, and
citizenship. But especially in noticing that the right to marry includes the right not to, Loving and its progeny carried special
significance for women. Intimate associational liberty implies a collateral right to maintain an independent household even if
outside patriarchal, marital norms. It establishes a right to exit from perhaps unhappy, perhaps violent, marital relationships.
And it disentangles reproductive choices from the marital circumstances in which they are made. We may mostly think of
reproductive liberty in terms of the right not to bear children; and we may mostly think of marital freedom in terms of the
right to get married. But Loving and related decisions that democratized personhood established also that we can bear
children and not be married and—because each right is fundamental—we can do both at the same time.
Yet, despite judicial signals that the choice to not marry or to unmarry were among the intimate associational liberties at
the core of democratic personhood, government continues to treat marriage as a necessary condition of worthy adult
citizenship. Indeed, in 1996 Congress enacted two new laws deploying marriage to stratify citizenship. One of the new laws, the Defense of Marriage Act, stringently limits
the rights and benefits of intimate association by defining marriage as a union between “one man and one woman.” The other law, the Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), injures or disables poor single mothers’ basic civil rights because they are not married. One law withholds from lesbians and gay men
the right to become marital citizens; the other punishes poor single mothers for not choosing marital citizenship. I want to explore, here, how the federal government wields its
power over certain women who are not married and what that means for equality. Feminist and other advances in the late twentieth century have enabled many women to defer,
avoid, or exit from marriages, sometimes without suffering opprobrium. For women with children, however, such choices exact heavy costs: single mothers pay for their intimate
decisions with their material security and with their rights. Government argues “child well-being” to justify its interventions into the associational autonomy of single mothers—
especially if they are poor. Wielding the choice to bear children against the choice to not marry, government delivers some of the most severe blows to women’s equality. One
need only examine welfare policy, which aims to end unmarried mothers’ marital status rather than their poverty, to see how.
Let me turn now to the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program (TANF), which the Personal Responsibility
Act created when it “reformed” welfare 1996. In its famous “findings,” the TANF provision of the PRWORA blames
countless social ills on Black single mothers; in its statement of purpose, TANF policy pledges to promote marriage, reduce
out-of-wedlock births, and to “encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families.”5 Toward these ends, TANF
subjects single mothers to work rules that deprive them of the right and the flexibility to make parenting decisions about the
care needs of their children. It subjects them to paternity disclosure rules that vitiate their sexual and reproductive privacy. It
subjects them to family formation rules, which confer social and financial fatherhood on biological fathers (and instantiate
their legal rights) regardless of a mother’s say. In these ways and more, TANF punishes single motherhood, endangering the
physical, emotional, and material security of poor mothers and their children, jeopardizing poor mothers’ custody of their
own children, and negating their right to form intimate associations on their own terms.
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Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy
TANF blame the poverty on single motherhood.
Gwendolyn Mink, member of the board of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a member of the
coordinating committee of Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice, Professor of Politics at the
University of California, 2002, The Good Society - Volume 11, Number 3, From Welfare to Wedlock:
Marriage Promotion and Poor Mothers’ Inequality: pp. 69
TANF recapitulates the racialized, undemocratic, patriarchal tradition in its pronouncements and punishments regarding child
bearing and childrearing by single mothers. Marriage serves several functions in TANF: it privatizes poverty; it reaffirms
patriarchy; and it spotlights women of color as moral failures.
Noting the color of welfare and the color of nonmarital mothers who are poor, 6TANF proponents attribute the need for
welfare to the moral or cultural deficits of racialized individuals rather than to racialized opportunities and economic
conditions. For example, the 2000 Green Book, published by the House Ways and Means Committee, proclaimed in
retrospect: TANF stakes itself to “the perspicacity of Moynihan’s vision” that “[B]lack Americans [are] held back
economically and socially in large part because their family structure [is] deteriorating.”7According to this argument, singlemother poverty arises from single mothers’ failure to choose marriage; in turn, the failure to marry is a measure of single
mothers’ impoverished citizenship.
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Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy
TANF enforces patriarchy.
Gwendolyn Mink, member of the board of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a member of the
coordinating committee of Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice, Professor of Politics at the
University of California, 2002, The Good Society - Volume 11, Number 3, From Welfare to Wedlock:
Marriage Promotion and Poor Mothers’ Inequality: pp. 69
TANF’s most extensive efforts to push mothers into heterosexual families headed by fathers arise from its child support and
paternity establishment requirements affecting mothers. These provisions do not go so far as to compel marriage or
residential co-parenting, but they do require mothers to maintain association with biological fathers (so that they can inform
on them!) even if mothers do not want biological fathers involved with their children. Under the paternity establishment
provision, a mother must disclose the identity of her child’s biological father or must permit the government to examine her
sex life so that it can discover the DNA paternal match for her child. Under the child support enforcement provision, a
mother must help government locate her child’s biological father so that the government can collect reimbursement from him
for the mother’s TANF benefit. A mandatory minimum sanction against families in which mothers do not cooperate in
establishing paternity or collecting child support enforces government’s determination that a biological reproductive nexus
constitutes a social family.
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Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy
TANF brides states to buy children from single mothers.
Gwendolyn Mink, member of the board of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a member of the
coordinating committee of Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice, Professor of Politics at the
University of California, 2002, The Good Society - Volume 11, Number 3, From Welfare to Wedlock:
Marriage Promotion and Poor Mothers’ Inequality: pp. 69-70
Numerous other TANF provisions and guidelines promote marriage either directly or by discouraging women from bearing
children if they are not married. For example, executive branch guidelines for TANF implementation reward states for
promoting marriage. The Department of Health and Human Services awards a TANF “high performance bonus” to states that
most increase the percentage of children living in married parent families. Moreover, HHS guidelines specifically tell states
that, given the purposes of TANF, they can develop pro-marriage policies with TANF funds.8As a result, several states have
used TANF funds to disseminate the pro-marriage message, to provide marriage classes, or to reward actual marriage in the
structure of TANF benefits (as does West Virginia through $100 monthly bonus for TANF families in which parents are
married).
Another TANF provision gives incentives to states to reduce “illegitimacy.” The “illegitimacy bonus” provides extra
money to states that achieve the greatest reductions in nonmarital births without increasing their abortion rates.9The bonus
gives states a green light to interfere in unmarried women’s intimate family decisions, including reproductive decisions—
such as by offering bonuses to unmarried pregnant women who agree to relinquish their babies at childbirth; by pressuring
unmarried pregnant recipients to marry; or by encouraging or rewarding long-term contraception by unmarried women who
are poor.
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Marriage Incentives  Patriarchy
TANF teaches women that single motherhood is bad
Gwendolyn Mink, member of the board of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a member of the
coordinating committee of Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice, Professor of Politics at the
University of California, 2002, The Good Society - Volume 11, Number 3, From Welfare to Wedlock:
Marriage Promotion and Poor Mothers’ Inequality: pp. 70
These and other TANF provisions compromise poor mothers’ rights, more so if they never have been married. The
rights compromised include intimate association, reproductive and sexual privacy rights, not to mention the right to
parent one’s own children. These rights abuses are not the haphazard detritus of welfare policy. Rather, they are the
arsenal of marriage promotion among poor women with children. To all mothers who might want to choose nonmarriage, TANF’s rights abuses send an unmistakable warning to find a man and stand by him. To mothers who are
unmarried and poor—disproportionately mothers of color—TANF’s rights abuses teach that the only path out of
poverty is through marriage or marriage-like financial association with biological fathers. In these ways, welfare
policy makes unmarried mothers’ economic insecurity an opportunity for public intervention in private choice and an
excuse for impoverishing unmarried mothers’ citizenship.
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Patriarchy  Extinction
Patriarchy makes war and extinction inevitable because of masculine aggression.
Dr. Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory @ the University of Birmingham,
1998, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, p. 102-103
In this view, not only is war part of women's daily existence, but war, violence and women's oppression all grow from
the same root Military institutions and states are inseparable from patriarchy. War is not then, as realists and neorealists would hold, rooted in the nature of 'man' or the anarchy of the international realm. However, the hegemony of
a dominance-orientated masculinity sets the dynamics of the social relations in which all are forced to participate.
Some feminists argue that patriarchal societies have an inherent proclivity towards war because of the supreme value
placed on control and the natural male tendency towards displays of physical force.'01 Though primarily concerned
with the discount of war, politics and citizenship. Hartsock argues that the association of power with masculinity and
virility has very real consequences. She argues that 'it gives rise to a view of community both in theory and in fact
obsessed with the revenge and structured by conquest and domination')° Furthermore, according to Hartsock, the
opposition of man to woman and perhaps even man to man is not simply a transitory opposition of arbitrary interests, but an
opposition resting on a deep-going threat to existence. She argues that we re-encounter in the context of gender, as in class,
the fact that the experience of the ruling group, or gender, cannot be simply dismissed as false.""" This raises the question
of how we conceptualize and understand not only the 'patriarchal state', but also the relationship between the
patriarchal nation-state requiring in the context o competitive struggle with other states militarism and internal
hierarchy.'"If liberal feminists are correct in their view of the state as a 'neutral arbiter', rather than a patriarchal power, and
if women's inequality is largely a consequence of bias, it is possible that attitudes towards women in the military would
change over time as women proved themselves, just as they have in other spheres from which they were once excluded.
However, for many feminists the proper question to ask is not how women's status can be furthered by participation in the
military, but how women and other 'outsiders' might focus their opposition to military institutions and strengthen institutions
to build peace-orientated communities. As Sriehm acknowledges, even if women were to participate in combat roles, and
were accepted, it would not solve the problem of their relation to other states' bprotectors$ and 'protected', a relationship
which feminists should be concerned to problematize. It seems that, while recognition of the close linkages between
citizenship and participation in combat is an obvious starting point for feminists in their quest for gender equality, it may be
that 'NOW's brand of equal opportunity or integrationist feminism' could merely function to 'reinforce the military as an
institution and militarism as an ideology by perpetuating the notion that the military is central to the entire social order' arid
thereby perpetuate a gendered order which damages both women and men. 105 Human survival may depend upon
breaking the linkage between masculinity, military capacity and death. It is for feminists and others committed to
peace to provide new thinking about the nature of politics, to redefine 'political community' and our ideas of
'citizenship' and, in so doing, confront the 'barracks community' directly with its 'fear of the feminine'.'" Feminist
challenges to dominant conceptions of citizenship, political community and security and feminist 'revisions' are the subject of
chapter 5.
Absent addressing patriarchy all forms of violence become inevitable.
INCITE, Women of Color Against Violence. July 2005. www.incite-national.org/ media/docs/2406_cmty-acc-poc.pdf
The system of patriarchy is the root of gender oppression. We all exist within a system of oppression
which assumes rigid gender binaries of women and men, female and male; which values males and the
male-identified and devalues female and the female-identified; which assumes heterosexual normativity;
which delegates men/boys/male-identified to roles and positions which have higher status and levels of
decision-making than women/girls/female-identified; which assume male values as universal and given.
This system of patriarchy intersects with racism, classism, homophobia/heterosexism, transphobia,
ableism, ageism, nativism (anti-immigrants) to oppress women of color/queer people of color. Ultimately,
it oppresses us all. Despite our commitment to social justice and liberation, we as activists, organizations
and movement are not immune.
Gender oppression is not just an act, itís a state of mind and a way of doing. The patterns of power and
control, acts of abuse and violence, and cultures and conditions tolerating, condoning, encouraging and
perpetrating abuse and violence appear to follow certain patterns.
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Patriarchy  Extinction
Unchecked patriarchy causes extinction via nuclear war – critique is necessary to avoid unending
conflict
Betty A. Reardon, Director of the Peace Education Program at Teacher’s College Columbia University,
1993, “Women and Peace: Feminist Visions of Global Security,” p30-2
In an article entitled “Naming the Cultural Forces That Push Us toward War” (1983), Charlene Spretnak focused on
some of the fundamental cultural factors that deeply influence ways of thinking about security. She argues that
patriarchy encourages militarist tendencies. Since a major war now could easily bring on massive annihilation
of almost unthinkable proportions, why are discussions in our national forums addressing the madness of the
nuclear arms race limited to matters of hardware and statistics? A more comprehensive analysis is badly
needed . . . A clearly visible element in the escalating tensions among militarized nations is the macho posturing
and the patriarchal ideal of dominance, not parity, which motivates defense ministers and government leaders
to “strut their stuff” as we watch with increasing horror. Most men in our patriarchal culture are still acting out
old patterns that are radically inappropriate for the nuclear age. To prove dominance and control, to distance
one’s character from that of women, to survive the toughest violent initiation, to shed the sacred blood of the hero,
to collaborate with death in order to hold it at bay—all of these patriarchal pressures on men have traditionally
reached resolution in ritual fashion on the battlefield. But there is no longer any battlefield. Does anyone
seriously believe that if a nuclear power were losing a crucial, large-scale conventional war it would refrain
from using its multiple-warhead nuclear missiles because of some diplomatic agreement? The military theater
of a nuclear exchange today would extend, instantly or eventually, to all living things, all the air, all the soil, all
the water. If we believe that war is a “necessary evil,” that patriarchal assumptions are simply “human nature,”
then we are locked into a lie, paralyzed. The ultimate result of unchecked terminal patriarchy will be nuclear
holocaust. The causes of recurrent warfare are not biological. Neither are they solely economic. They are also a
result of patriarchal ways of thinking, which historically have generated considerable pressure for standing
armies to be used. (Spretnak 1983) These cultural tendencies have produced our current crisis of a highly
militarized, violent world that in spite of the decline of the cold war and the slowing of the military race
between the superpowers is still staring into the abyss of nuclear disaster, as described by a leading feminist in an
address to the Community Aid Abroad State Convention, Melbourne, Australia: These then are the outward signs of
militarism across the world today: weapons-building and trading in them; spheres of influence derived from their
supply; intervention—both overt and covert; torture; training of military personnel, and supply of hardware to, and
training of police; the positioning of military bases on foreign soil; the despoilation of the planet; ‘intelligence’
networks; the rise in the number of national security states; more and more countries coming under direct military
rule; 13 the militarization of diplomacy, and the interlocking and the international nature of the military order which
even defines the major rifts in world politics. (Shelly 1983)
Gender inequality guarantees extinction.
Sandra L. Bem, professor of psychology at Cornell University, 1993, “The Lenses of Gender:
Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality,” p195
In addition to the humanist and feminist arguments against gender polarization, there is an overarching moral
argument that fuses the antihumanist and antifeminist aspects of gender polarization. The essence of this moral
argument is that by polarizing human values and human experiences into the masculine and the feminine,
gender polarization not only helps to keep the culture in the grip of males themselves; it also keeps the culture
in the grip of highly polarized masculine values. The moral problem here is that these highly polarized masculine
values so emphasize making war over keeping the peace, taking risks over giving care, and even mastering
nature over harmonizing with nature that when allowed to dominate societal and even global decision making,
they create the danger that humans will destroy not just each other in massive numbers but the planet.
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Patriarchy Impact – Environment Scenario
A. The devaluation of women is intricately linked to environmental exploitation.
J. Ann Tickner Associate Professor of Political Science at the College of the Holy Cross, former Vice
President of the International Studies Association, 1992, “Gender in International Relations Feminist
Perspectives on Achieving Global Security,” Chapter 5
Previous chapters have also called attention to the extent to which these various forms of military, economic, and
ecological insecurity are connected with unequal gender relations. The relationship between protectors and
protected depends on gender inequalities; a militarized version of security privileges masculine characteristics and
elevates men to the status of first-class citizens by virtue of their role as providers of security. An analysis of
economic insecurities suggests similar patterns of gender inequality in the world economy, patterns that result in a
larger share of the world's wealth and the benefits of economic development accruing to men. The traditional
association of women with nature, which places both in a subordinate position to men, reflects and provides
support for the instrumental and exploitative attitude toward nature characteristic of the modern era, an
attitude that contributes to current ecological insecurities.
B. Extinction.
Major David N Diner, Judge Advocate General's Corps, United States Army, 1994, “The Army and the
Endangered Species Act: Who’s Endangering Whom?” Military Law Review. 143 Mil. L. Rev. 161.
Winter
By causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity
increases, so does the risk of ecosystem failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and the dustbowl conditions
of the 1930s in the United States are relatively mild examples of what might be expected if this trend continues.
Theoretically, each new animal or plant extinction, with all its dimly perceived and intertwined affects, could
cause total ecosystem collapse and human extinction. Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a
mechanic removing, one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's wings, 80 mankind may be edging closer to the abyss.
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Patriarchy Impact – Human Rights Scenario
Women’s rights are key to human rights.
Yifat Susskind, Communications Director at MADRE, 2007, “It’s Not Just An Abortion Ban: The
Christian Right’s Global Agenda,” http://www.madre.org/articles/usfp/christianright.5.07.html
Second, we need to expand our understanding of "women's issues." The attack on abortion rights is just one aspect
of a religious fundamentalist agenda that is threatening not only women's freedom, but international peace and
security, Indigenous cultural survival, and secular, democratic political traditions around the world. All of
these are women's issues. Third, we need a new progressive dialogue that makes more room for religious people who
are working to counter fundamentalist agendas, fueled by their own faith-based politics. In short, we need a strategy
that recognizes the connections between women's reproductive rights and the full range of human rights, and
between women in the US and women around the world. It's not that we each need to be addressing every possible
political issue simultaneously. But wherever our convictions move us to action, let's act with an awareness of how our
piece of the puzzle fits into a bigger picture of the world we're working to create. Because while it may seem like last
week's Supreme Court ruling is only about restricting access to abortion, those who worked for years to bring it
about see the decision as one battle in a war to remake the whole world in Jerry Falwell's image.
Human rights violations and other forms of dehumanization make war, genocide, and extinction
inevitable.
Michelle Maiese, research member at the Conflict Research Consortium, July 2003, “Dehumanization,”
http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/dehumanization/
Once certain groups are stigmatized as evil, morally inferior, and not fully human, the persecution of those
groups becomes more psychologically acceptable. Restraints against aggression and violence begin to
disappear. Not surprisingly, dehumanization increases the likelihood of violence and may cause a conflict to
escalate out of control. Once a violence break over has occurred, it may seem even more acceptable for people to
do things that they would have regarded as morally unthinkable before. Parties may come to believe that
destruction of the other side is necessary, and pursue an overwhelming victory that will cause one's opponent to
simply disappear. This sort of into-the-sea framing can cause lasting damage to relationships between the
conflicting parties, making it more difficult to solve their underlying problems and leading to the loss of more
innocent lives. Indeed, dehumanization often paves the way for human rights violations, war crimes, and
genocide. For example, in WWII, the dehumanization of the Jews ultimately led to the destruction of millions of
people.[9] Similar atrocities have occurred in Rwanda, Cambodia, and the former Yugoslavia.
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Patriarchy Impact - War
Challenging forms of male domination allows us to open new avenues of thought that overcome
traditional security concerns and prevent the root causes of war.
J. Ann Tickner Associate Professor of Political Science at the College of the Holy Cross, former Vice
President of the International Studies Association, 1992, “Gender in International Relations Feminist
Perspectives on Achieving Global Security,” Chapter 5
Including previously hidden gender inequalities in the analysis of global insecurity allows us to see how so
many of the insecurities affecting us all, women and men alike, are gendered in their historical origins, their
conventional definitions, and their contemporary manifestations. Using gender as a category of analysis reveals
the masculinist assumptions of both traditional and revisionist theories of international politics and economics. It also
allows us to see the extent to which unequal gender relationships are a form of domination that contributes to
many of the dimensions of the contemporary insecurities analyzed by various new thinkers. Feminists deny the
separability of gendered insecurities from those describable in military, economic, and ecological terms; such
problems cannot be fully resolved without also overcoming the domination and exploitation of women that
takes place in each of these domains. Such a conception of security is based on the assumption that social
justice, including gender justice, is necessary for an enduring peace. While acknowledging that unequal social
relations are not the only sources of insecurity, feminists believe that contemporary insecurities are doubly
engendered. Beyond the view that all social institutions, including those of world politics, are made by human
beings and are therefore changeable, they recognize that comprehensive security requires the removal of genderlinked insecurities. Revealing these gender inequalities allows us to see how their elimination would open up
new possibilities for the alleviation of the various domains of global insecurity that I have described. Overcoming
gender inequalities is necessary, not only for the security of women but also for the realization of a type of
security that does not rely on characteristics associated with the hegemonic masculinity that has produced a
kind of security that can be a threat to men's security also. Men are themselves insecure partly because of the
exclusionary, gendered way their own security has been defined.
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Patriarchy Impact – Control/Biopower
This form of control of people’s lives necessitates extinction – wars are waged in the name of the
population.
Michel Foucault, Professor of the History of Systems of Thought at the College de France, 1978, Since the classical age the West has undergone a very profound transformation of these mechanisms of power.
"Deduction " has tended to be no longer the major form of power but merely one element among others, working to
incite, reinforce, control, monitor, optimize, and organize the forces under it: a power bent on generating forces,
making them grow, and ordering them, rather than one dedicated to impeding them, making them submit, or
destroying them. There has been a parallel shift in the right of death, or at least a tendency to align itself with the
exigencies of a life-administering power and to define itself accordingly. This death that was based on the right of
the sovereign is now manifested as simply the reversal of the right of the social body to ensure, maintain, or develop
its life. Yet wars were never as bloody as they have been since the nineteenth century, and all things being equal,
never before did regimes visit such holocausts on their own populations. But this formidable power of death--and
this is perhaps what accounts for part of its force and the cynicism with which it has so greatly expanded its limits-now presents itself as the counterpart of a power that exerts a positive influence on life, that endeavors to administer,
optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations. Wars are no longer waged
in the name of a sovereign who must be defended; they are waged on behalf of the existence of everyone; entire
populations are mobilized for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity: massacres have
become vital. It is as managers of life and survival, of bodies and the race, that so many regimes have been able to
wage so many wars, causing so many [people] to be killed. And through a turn that closes the circle, as the
technology of wars has caused them to tend increasingly toward all-out destruction, the decision that initiated them
and the one that terminates them are in fact increasingly informed by the naked question of survival. The atomic
situation is now at the end point of this process: the power to expose a whole population to death is the underside of
the power to guarantee an individual's continued existence. The principle underlying the tactics of battle--that one
has to be capable of killing in order to go on living--has become the principle that defines the strategy of states. But
the existence in question is no longer the judicial existence of sovereignty; at stake is the biological existence of a
population. If genocide is indeed the dream of modern powers, this is not because of a recent return of the ancient
right to kill; it is because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale
phenomena of population.
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Patriarchy Impacts
Patriarchy demotes women to jobs like prostitution.
Brian Martin, author who specializes on warfare. 1990. http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/90uw/uw10.html
The masculine ethos of military life has much in common with the oppressive treatment of women in both
military and civilian life, including rape, batterings, prostitution and poor working conditions. In direct personto-person violence, it is primarily men who are the perpetrators.
Another connection between modern patriarchy and war is the service provided by women to men in both military and
civilian life. Cynthia Enloe in her book Does Khaki Become You? has analysed a range of areas in which women serve
the military: as prostitutes, as military wives, as nurses, as soldiers, and as workers in arms industries. In each of these
cases women are placed in a subordinate position where they are easily exploited. The service of women to men is
carried out in civilian life in a similar fashion, and in very similar categories: as prostitutes, as wives, as workers in
the 'helping professions,' and as workers in occupations which are poorly paid, low-skilled and lacking security
and career prospects.
Also quite revealing is the gender division of labour in the military. This is clearest in the category of 'combat
soldiers,' from which women are often excluded in theory. In fact, the actual role of women in combat has varied
considerably in different countries and at different times, as Enloe has ably documented. When the need is urgent,
women are used at the front lines in positions that at other times would be called combat positions. But when this
happens, the definition is 'combat' is changed so that women are not seen to be involved. So while what women do in
the military varies considerably, one thing remains constant: the gender-based distinction between 'combat'
and 'non-combat.' This suggests that military interests have a strong ideological concern to maintain 'combat,'
the place where direct violence is seen to take place, as an exclusively male preserve.
In some guerrilla warfare struggles, women have played a role as combat soldiers. But as soon as the urgency of the
fighting is reduced, women are pushed back to other, less vital positions. This applies equally to the Israeli army and
the Vietnamese army. A similar process applies to women who work in armaments factories during wars. After the
war they are pushed out by men and forced into the private sphere. It would seem that maintaining a central role for
men in the preparation for and implementation of organised violence is a key feature of the war system.
Status quo discourse sets poor women up as societies scapegoat, which is used to justify the
actions of the elite.
Jyl Josephson. 8/28/03. Associate Professor, Dept. of Politics and Government, Illinois State
University. “Coercive Visibility: Gender Deviance, TANF Reauthorization, and State Control of
Low-Income Women and Men.”
scapegoats for a wide range of social ills (Williams 1997). Hirschmann notes how the
construction of women who receive benefits as welfare subjects sets the privileged up in
opposition to low-income people. The well-off (e.g. “taxpayers”) have, according to the terms of
this construction, already fulfilled their social obligations; the personalized supervision of welfare recipients
(through regulatory and paternalistic policies) ensures that these welfare subjects fulfill their social obligations
(Hirschmann 2003, 165).
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Patriarchy Impacts
Bureaucracy and patriarchy have a clear connection.
Brian Martin, author who specializes on warfare. 1990. http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/90uw/uw10.html
The connection between patriarchy and bureaucracy can be seen as one of mutual mobilisation. In short, men
use bureaucracy to sustain their power over women, while elite bureaucrats use patriarchy to sustain the
bureaucratic hierarchy.
The first part of this dynamic is men using bureaucracy to sustain their power over women. In a typical
bureaucracy, whether a state agency, a corporation, or a trade union, most of the top positions are occupied by men.
Women are concentrated in lower positions such as typists, process workers or cleaners. In addition, top male
bureaucrats usually have wives who do most of the work of child-rearing and housework and who provide
emotional and career support. The power, prestige and privileges of the top bureaucrats thus depend on the
subordinate position of women both on the job and at home. To maintain this power, the top bureaucrats can use
their power in the bureaucracy to keep women in their subordinate place. This can take place in several ways:
formal exclusion of women from top positions;
discrimination against women in hiring and promotion;
promoting conformity to the bureaucratic values of emotional aloofness and technical rationality as a means of
deterring or restraining women who operate best in an environment providing emotional support and
opportunities for cooperative work;
creation and maintenance of gender-linked job categories, which tie women into lower-level positions;
maintenance of male career patterns which require mobility, full-time work and no interruptions (for child-bearing);
maintenance of on-the-job work organisation which excludes integration of child-rearing and work, and opposition to
alternatives such as independent work at home, or neighbourhood-based decentralised office arrangements;
supporting other elite groups with similar practices, such as when trade union elites do not protest against corporate
sexism;
lobbying and applying political pressure to maintain policies that keep women in subordinate positions.
In these and other ways, the power that men have as top bureaucrats is used to keep men collectively in a dominant
position over women. In this way, bureaucracy is mobilised by men to support patriarchy. The domination of men
over women does not occur in the abstract. In this case it operates via the unequal power distribution within
bureaucracies.
Equally important is the way patriarchy is mobilised to serve bureaucracy. Top bureaucrats can maintain and
strengthen their power by using, within the bureaucracy, the wider cultural dominance of men over women.
The existence of a promotion path which favours men ensures the loyalty of many men in lower positions. The
discrimination against women in lower levels (for example, the low salary, lack of autonomy and low prestige of
typing positions) provides an opportunity for low-level men to feel superior to someone. In this way the psychology of
masculine domination is mobilised to support bureaucratic hierarchy. A patriarchally organised bureaucracy is
structured to maximise the linkages between male-female inequality and bureaucratic inequality. This ensures
that any fundamental challenge to bureaucratic hierarchy would also require a fundamental challenge to prevailing
male-female power relations.
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Patriarchy - AT: No Spillover
Local, grassroot movements provide the foundation for stable global system.
J. Ann Tickner, Associate Professor of Political Science at the College of the Holy Cross, former Vice President of the
International Studies Association, 1992, “Gender in International Relations Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global
Security,” Chapter 5
When women have been politically effective, it has generally been at the local level. Increasingly, women
around the world are taking leadership roles in small-scale development projects such as cooperative production
and projects designed to save the natural environment. Women are also playing important roles in social
movements associated with peace and the environment. While these decentralized democratic projects are vital
for women to achieve a sense of empowerment and are important building blocks for a more secure future, they
will remain marginal as long as they are seen as women's projects and occur far from centers of power. Hence it is
vitally important that women be equally represented, not just in social movements and in local politics but at all levels
of policy-making. If foreign policy-making within states has been a difficult area for women to enter, leadership
positions in international organizations have been equally inaccessible. While women must have access to what
have traditionally been seen as centers of power where men predominate, it is equally important for women
and men to work together at the local level. Victories in local struggles are important for -the achievement of
the kind of multidimensional, multilevel security I have proposed. The feminist perspectives presented in this book
suggest that issues of global security are interconnected with, and partly constituted by, local issues; therefore the
achievement of comprehensive security depends on action by women and men at all levels of society. -Such
action is only possible when rigid gender hierarchies are challenged.
54
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
***RACISM SCENARIO**
55
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Racism
Marriage incentives are used to uniquely disrupt African American households, because of a fear of
the matriarchal family.
Jyl Josephson. 8/28/03. Associate Professor, Dept. of Politics and Government, Illinois State
University. “Coercive Visibility: Gender Deviance, TANF Reauthorization, and State Control of
Low-Income Women and Men.”
Beginning in the 1960s, Congress began to add work requirements to the AFDC
program. The expansion of the rolls precipitated in part by the advocacy of welfare rights
activists also brought increased attention to the program, and in particular to the greater access
that women of color had to the program beginning in the 1960s (Bussierre 1997; Davis 1983;
Melnick 1994). This in turn led to the adoption of new and more intrusive policies including the
beginning of the child support enforcement program (Josephson 1997; Mink 1999; Monson
1997). As Bensonsmith argues, the Moynihan Report blames African-American women’s
purportedly matriarchal role in families for poverty and racial inequality, and justifies extensive
government intrusion into black family life on the basis of this perceived pathology
(Bensonsmith 2002, 57). These arguments connect directly with the arguments made to justify
the 1996 law: Bensonsmith compares the testimony of Lawrence Mead in 1995 with the
arguments made by Moynihan in 1965 and finds many similarities. Similarly, Jenrose Fitzgerald
sees the conservative ideology inherent in Moynihan’s views (Fitzgerald 2003). AfricanAmerican women are gender role deviants, and in turn, they make African-American men into
gender role deviants. This causes all of the social ills that Moynihan associates with the lowincome African-American community.
Therefore, women come to be gender role deviants both because they do not (by
definition) care for their children properly (Fraser 1989) but also because policymakers believe
that they do not work for wages. Of course, there is a good deal of evidence that many women
who receive welfare benefits have cash income from wages and/or from other sources that they
do not report to welfare agencies (Edin and Lein 1997). Often, in the discussions of poverty
policy-making, low-income women’s failure to work for wages and their failure to properly care
for their children are linked. In one particularly interesting bit of hyperbole, for example, Rep.
Castle (R-Del.) made the following statement during the floor debate on H.R. 4:
“If you go back into the jurisdictions where we all live and you see what they have done
with welfare reform, if you see the opportunities that we have given to people who in
many instances now are living middle-class lives because of a middle-class income, you
see the real circumstances of what we can do to help people. There has been no social
program that has uplifted people more in this country in a true sense of giving them an
opportunity as America allows you to have as has welfare reform.” (Cong. Rec. Feb. 13,
2003, H480).
56
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Discrimination - Racism
Marriage promotion plans discriminate against a wide range of groups and are mainly used a
source of influence among politicians.
Linda Myers 03 (http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/03/2.13.03/marriage_policy.html - CU scholars: Proposed
promotion-of-marriage welfare rules are bad policy)
The marriage-promotion plan particularly discriminates against poor single parents, same-sex couples and parents
who choose not to marry for diverse highly personal reasons, note Fineman, Smith and Mink. In addition, those
most likely to be affected are poor black women and Latinas, groups with long histories of being discriminated
against. The proposal threatens their First Amendment rights to privacy and to freedom of religion, say the scholars,
who predict that marriage-promotion programs will be subcontracted to faith-based groups that will use them as an
opportunity for religious proselytizing at taxpayer expense.
The scholars may have support from an important contingent: the people who administer the nation's current
welfare program, who, initial reports show, are opposed to making marriage-promotion part of the package, state
Fineman, Smith and Mink.
They also cite studies showing that the experimental marriage-promotion programs will neither lift poor women out
of poverty (potential partners are likely to be poor and unemployed) nor significantly increase the number of
marriages among welfare recipients.
What the marriage-promotion programs will do, warn Fineman, Smith and Mink, is give the federal government a
legal vehicle through which to funnel public monies to conservative nongovernmental organizations, enlarging their
influence in political circles and communities.
Government should get involved in families, state the scholars, not to lecture them on how to run their lives but "to
ensure that those adults who are caring for a dependent, such as a child, a severely disabled or ill person or an
elderly person have adequate resources."
Marriage promotion intensifies racism
Catherine Sameh, co-founder of feminist book store “In Other Words”, Nov/Dec 20 02, “The Rebel Girl: Punitive
‘Marriage Promotion’”, http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/715
Welfare reform has been deeply motivated by racism and a dependence on racist stereotypes. The myth of the
Black welfare queen helped generate support for welfare reform by hiding the fact that most people on welfare
were white.
Since 1996, most people remaining on welfare are people of color because, according to WEEL, they have been
“less likely to be placed in better paying jobs.” WEEL also reports, “Black women are 43% less likely to marry
or remarry than white women.”
They assert that the disproportionate incarceration of Black men contributes heavily to this statistic. Marriagepromotion therefore intensifies the racism of welfare reform by punishing Black women who don't or can't
marry.
57
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
***SOLVENCY***
58
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
***MARRIAGE INCENTIVES BAD***
59
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives  Poverty
Turn – marriage promotion causes poverty – forces unnecessary spending of money and ignores
real conditions.
Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller, The Alternatives to Marriage Project, 2002 “Let Them Eat Wedding Rings: The Role
of Marriage Promotion in Welfare Reform,” http://www.unmarried.org/rings.pdf
Those who favor promoting marriage in welfare policy typically base their arguments on "the good of the
children." Yet existing marriage promoting policies harm children in poor unmarried families. Denied
recognition, their families are eligible for fewer benefits than equivalent married families. In addition, their
parents are sometimes mandated to receive state-sponsored “counseling” that advocates marriage regardless of
whether that is in a given family's best interest. The diversion of funds from poverty-fighting programs (such
as job training or food stamps) into pro-marriage media campaigns and incentives eclipses the real needs of
Americans in poverty.
Marriage incentives cause poverty and instability – unproven and wastes money.
Amy DePaul, Professor of Journalism at the University of California, Irvine and California State University, Fullerton , 61-09, "You May Kiss the Bride: Government Is Still Pushing Marriage," http://www.alternet.org/sex/140371/bushera_moral_crusaders_still_pushing_marriage_on_the_rest_of_us/?page=1
Other activists, meanwhile, have been demanding modifications to the marriage policy, if not outright
termination. "We call upon the Obama administration to make ending poverty, using proven methods, a top
priority. … We call for an end to federal spending on unproven initiatives such as marriage promotion," wrote
a coalition of academics and activists representing the interests of gays and lesbians, welfare recipients and unmarried
couples. Other experts criticize the marriage programs for failing to address the needs of low-income parents
who either divorced or moved on to new relationships, and are thus not going to marry each other. A pivotal
study of low-income families found that 59 percent of unmarried parents have children by more than one
partner. This kind of relationship turnover is a serious problem, according to Andrew Cherlin, author of The
Marriage-Go-Round, who said that Americans divorce and remarry at higher rates than in other industrial
countries. Repartnering and remarrying are often a source of instability in American children’s lives.
Turn – doesn’t solve poverty and diverts funding from other programs.
Amy DePaul, Professor of Journalism at the University of California, Irvine and California State University, Fullerton, 61-09, "You May Kiss the Bride: Government Is Still Pushing Marriage," http://www.alternet.org/sex/140371/bushera_moral_crusaders_still_pushing_marriage_on_the_rest_of_us/?page=1
Alarmed by rising out-of-wedlock births and lack of a father presence among poor and minority families, social
conservatives argued that getting poor people hitched would offer children a more permanent commitment, if
not two combined incomes, and thus greater stability. But opponents have seen the marriage program,
alongside other Bush social policies such as abstinence-only education, as efforts to impose virtue rather than
sincere attempts to help people out of poverty. Critics contend that the marriage programs hijack federal
assistance monies that would be better spent on job training and other more direct anti-poverty measures.
"My argument is marriage doesn’t end poverty," said Jennifer Tucker, vice president at the Center for Women
Policy Studies. In addition to practical considerations, Tucker opposes the expenditure on principle: "This money is
supposed to be for people who are poor."
60
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: Marriage Incentive Solves Poverty
Marriage incentives don’t end poverty – empirical domestic studies.
Michele Hirsch, Dorian Solot, and Marshall Miller, The Alternatives to Marriage Project, June 2007
“Let Them Eat Wedding Rings: The Role of Marriage Promotion in Welfare Reform,” Second Edition,
http://www.unmarried.org/rings2.pdf
In 2001, Princeton University researchers asked: would poor mothers be lifted out of poverty if they married
the fathers of their children? The researchers used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study,
the first survey with the capability to follow unmarried parents from the birth of their child and compare them with a
control group of married parents. The study examined 4,900 births in 20 large U.S. cities, and is representative of
births in cities with populations exceeding 200,000. The study's authors analyzed the age, educational level,
employment status, hourly wages, and other factors for all the parents in the study. Then they experimented
with three different potential economic scenarios for the unmarried parents. In the first, the unmarried mothers live
alone and work full-time without any support from their babies' fathers. In the second, the unmarried mothers marry
and stay home with the babies while the fathers work full-time outside the home. In the third, the couples marry and
both work outside the home, the fathers full-time and the mothers part-time. The findings are striking: In the scenario
where the parents marry and the mother stays home with the baby, 22% of families would be below the federal
poverty line, and an additional 37% would be between 100% and 150% of the poverty line ($13,874 for a family
of three). Even in the scenario where the parents marry and both work outside the home, 28% of families would
still be at or below 150% of the poverty line. Clearly, getting married would not lift enough of these families out
of poverty. Why? The article finds major differences between the currently married and unmarried parents,
differences that in their words, "cannot be magically altered with a marriage license." Unmarried parents are
far younger, on average, than their married counterparts (the median age of unmarried mothers is 22, compared to 29
for married mothers). They have less education (26% of unmarried mothers were educated beyond high school,
compared with 63% of married mothers), resulting in lower hourly wages and earning capacities. Only threequarters of the unmarried fathers have steady jobs, compared with nine out of ten married fathers. In short, the
researchers conclude, most of the difference in poverty rates between married and unmarried families has
nothing to do with marital status. "Proponents of marriage are overstating its benefits when they compare the
median earnings or poverty rates of single mother families to those of married, two-parent families," they conclude.
Yes, on average married couples are less likely to be poor than unmarried couples. But it does not follow that
marriage would end poverty among unmarried couples. As historian Stephanie Coontz explained it in 1997,
“marriage will not resolve the crisis of child wellbeing in our country. According to Donald Hernandez, chief of
the U.S. Census Department Bureau of Marriage and Family Statistics, even if we could reunite every child in
America with both biological parents – and any look at abuse statistics tells you that’s certainly not in the best
interest of every child – two thirds of the children who are poor today would still be poor.”[24] More recent
figures support this point. In 2006, the National Center for Children in Poverty reviewed Census data on lowincome families, defined as those earning up to twice the federal poverty level (for example, earning up to
$40,000/year for a family of four). They found that 51% of low-income children live with an unmarried parent,
while 49% live with married parents.[25] Having married parents appears to have almost no impact on whether
a child grows up in a household that can make ends meet.
61
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: Marriage Incentive Solves Poverty
Marriage incentives don’t end poverty – international studies prove.
Michele Hirsch, Dorian Solot, and Marshall Miller, The Alternatives to Marriage Project, June 2007
“Let Them Eat Wedding Rings: The Role of Marriage Promotion in Welfare Reform,” Second Edition,
http://www.unmarried.org/rings2.pdf
The experiences of other industrialized countries yield new insights into the debate over the link between
marriage and poverty. The country-to-country comparisons in the graphs on page 9 show how little correlation
there is between marriage rates and child poverty, and between births to unmarried parents and child poverty.
For instance, the four countries with some of the lowest child poverty rates in Europe (Sweden, Norway,
Denmark, and France) all have unmarried birth rates far higher than the United States'. Yet Sweden's child
poverty rate is seven times lower than the rate in the U.S., despite the fact that the majority of babies there are born
to unmarried parents. Similarly, these data reveal the flaws in arguments promoting marriage as a form of
poverty reduction by showing that the marriage rate in the U.S. is already far higher than that of any
European country. Yet despite this high rate of marriage (and re-marriage), our percentage of children in poverty
is the second highest of the 21 countries considered. It is four to six times higher than the countries with the lowest
marriage rates. Obviously, dozens of factors affect each country's marriage, unmarried birth, and child poverty rates,
so one cannot conclude that any individual policy can be praised or blamed for a given country's situation. But the
trends that emerge across nations clearly disprove any notion that the only, easiest, or best way to reduce
poverty is to promote marriage or reduce the number of births to unmarried parents.
62
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: Marriage Incentive Solves Poverty
Doesn’t solve poverty – multiple studies.
Emily Amick, The Nation, March 6, 2007, “Marrying Absurd: The Bush Administration's attempts to
encourage marriage,” http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070319/marrying
The Alternatives to Marriage Project published a report in 2002 called Let Them Eat Wedding Rings
criticizing marriage promotion programs. It argues that welfare should be about reducing poverty, and that "if
marriage were the solution, poor women wouldn't need to be bribed or bullied into marriage. You can't feed
your children wedding rings or pay your electric bill with your marriage license. As it's been said, when one poor
person marries another poor person, they're both still poor. The much-touted ill effects of life in a single parent
family--children's higher mortality, ill health, poor school performance--correlate with poverty, not marital
status." The report cites a study by scholars at Columbia University and Princeton University that concluded
marriage does not end poverty among unmarried couples. Analyses by groups such as The Urban Institute
show that there is no evidence that marriage promotion programs alleviate poverty in any way. And since
Bush's marriage program was enacted in 2002, research on the nexus of marriage, women, children, and poverty has
grown.
Turn – incentives increase abuse and don’t solve poverty: only one-tenth of women’s conditions
improve.
Kristina Holub, Iowa Domestic Violence Intervention Program, 2002, “Marriage Promotion,”
http://www.uiowa.edu/~iwis/marriage.htm
The reality is that marriage is not the answer to poverty. Of women in poverty who marry, only 1 in 10 will
experience a family income increasing to above the poverty line. In addition, 40 percent of poor children already
live in two-parent homes; which illustrates that the marriage will not magically release the grip of poverty. The
proposed marriage funds should be redirected to education and job training, areas that do have a direct impact on
economic security. Alarmingly this marriage promotion policy is not only misguiding but is detrimental to the
safety and security of Iowans. 1 out of 4 women receiving TANF have been abused by their intimate partner in
the past 12 months. Sympathizers of marriage promotion agree that domestic violence is not encouraged and
exceptions should be made for battered women. However, 25% of women cannot be viewed as simply “the
exception”. Promoting marriage to those who are not in a safe nor healthy relationship is dangerous to women
and will cost the state more money through medical expenses and loss of economic productivity.
63
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: Marriage Incentive Solves Poverty
Doesn’t solve – lack of jobs makes marriage incentives unviable – their authors assume conditions
from the 60s and 70s.
Deborah A. Harris and Domenico “Mimmo” Parisi, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work within
the Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State University, November 29, 2005, Gender Role Ideologies and
Marriage Promotion: State Policy Choices and Suggestions for Improvement, Review of Policy Research, Volume 22 Issue
6, Pages 841 – 858
Marriage May Not Mean the End of Poverty—While marriage has been shown to raise family income, this can
only be the case in places where there are numerous economic opportunities. Hayashi (1999), in his study of
welfare leavers, found that marital status did not significantly raise the wages of the women when education and
job type was held constant and that many leavers had to depend on some combination of income from family
members, work, and public assistance just to make ends meet. Another issue is that even if the economic
standings of these women are increased by marriage, this newfound situation may be short-lived. Studies have
shown that low-income women who marry and then divorce may experience more economic hardship than
before they were married (Lichter, 1999). Research specifically on how marriage impacts welfare exits also
questions the ability for marriage to allow a family to leave welfare. During the late 1960s and throughout the
1970s, the most common strategy for exiting welfare was through marriage. However, with the increase of
labor force participation among women and the reduction in high-paying manufacturing jobs available to men,
during the 1980s and 1990s the numbers of exits through work outnumbered exits via marriage (Bane & Ellwood,
1994; Harris, 1993, 1996). More so, it has been shown that women who exit welfare through work are less likely to
experience another spell of welfare than those who exited via marriage (Harris, 1996).
Enforced marriage forces women into abusive relationships and does not always improve the
economic situation of a family
(Danielle White and Jan Kaplan, 06 03, “The State’s Role in Supporting Marriage and Family Formation”,
http://76.12.61.196/publications/supportingmarriageandfamilyformationIN.htm)
In addition, in some instances, marriage may not be optimal. Some are concerned that marriage-promoting policies
and programs could force women into unhealthy and abusive relationships. Research findings indicate that a marriage
marked by serious conflict is more damaging to child well-being than is being raised by a single parent. Furthermore,
although marriage may improve the financial situation for some single-parents, a stepparent situation may cause
emotional problems for children. Research shows children fare better psychologically in long-term stable family
relationships, regardless of their form, than in situations marked by multiple marriages (Coontz and Folbre 2002).
Finally, marriage does not always improve the single parent’s economic situation. Marriage to a partner who lacks
education or job prospects, or who has a criminal record or substance abuse problem, may not improve the
household’s financial status; it may even cause a loss of financial resources. Additional financial burdens also may
result from marrying someone with child support obligations from other relationships.
64
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: Marriage Incentive Solves Poverty
Single mothers are not the cause of poverty, and therefore enforced marriage is not key
(Sarah Steward Taylor, WeNews contributor, 03 05 01, “Some Fear Pro-Marriage Government Is Legislating Morality”,
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/467/context/archive)
Single Mothers May Not Be the Problem Tiffany Miller, a member of the Single Moms Summit, a New York Citybased coalition, says the marriage proposal is an attempt to avoid dealing with the deeply rooted causes of poverty.
"Rather than address the problem, the government is reverting to trying to enforce a stereotype on women," she said.
And they worry that policies tilted toward fatherhood send the message that there's something wrong with single
mothers. "No one's against fathers being in the home," said Mimi Abramovitz, a professor at the Hunter College
School of Social Work in New York and author of "Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy From
Colonial Times to the Present," and "Under Attack, Fighting Back: Women and Welfare in the United States." "But if
fathers are not there, the right wing thinks these homes are defective," she said. At a Feb. 20 forum on welfare reform
at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., a panel previewed the prominent role that marriage promotion is
likely to play during the reauthorization.
Promoting marriage plans are highly unstable and does not lead to long term relief.
(Daniel T. Litchter, Robert F. Lazarus Professor in Population Studies, professor of sociology, and
director of the Initiative in Population Research at The Ohio State University, “Marriage as Public
Policy,” http://www.ppionline.org/documents/marriage_lichter.pdf, 09 01
In light of this evidence, the view among conservatives that marriage is the solution to poverty and welfare
dependence among single mothers must accommodate the obvious—that unwed mothers face many obstacles to
marriage and that the marriages entered into are highly unstable. Marriage may offer only temporary relief for poor
women and children. In short, marriage promotion in the absence of strengthening fragile relationships and legal
unions (especially among low-income single mothers) is unlikely to provide the kind of long-term solution sought by
its proponents.
Marriage is not a method of escaping poverty.
Alternatives to Marriage, 06. Alternatives to Marriage Project. (the website of a national non-profit organization that
advocates for fairness of unmarried people) October 13, 2006. http://www.unmarried.org/federal-grants.html
First, marriage does not necessarily lead adults to escape poverty. While some studies correlate marriage with
lower poverty rates, no causation is understood. Realistically, it is much more likely that having a well-paid job
increases one’s chances of getting married than that marrying increases one’s chances of getting a well-paid
job. Second, there is no proven link between marrying and ensuring that children live without poverty.
Statistically speaking, if every poor child in America were living with both biological parents, two-thirds of them
would still be living below the poverty line. New Census figures show that 49% of low-income children live with
married parents. Marriage is not a proper indicator that parents can make ends meet. Third, marriage promotion
programs were designed for white, middle class, committed couples and there is no evidence that they can be made
relevant and effective for disadvantaged populations struggling to overcome poverty and related hardships. Fourth,
most Americans oppose government’s involvement in personal decisions regarding marriage and object to the
use of scarce public dollars to promote it.
65
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: Marriage Incentive Solves Poverty
Marriage promotions ignores the root causes of poverty
LIFETIME, Low-Income Families’ Empowerment by Education, No Date Given, “The Hidden
Dangers of Marriage Promotion Domestic Violence, Budget Reconciliation, and Welfare
Reauthorization
The most effective way to promote safe and stable families is to support family economic security. Even Wade
Horn, the head of the Administration on Children and Families, was right when he stated that “marriage is not an antipoverty strategy.” And he’s right: of the more than 130,000 TANF families in California who reached their fiveyear lifetime limit on welfare since 2003, more than 55% were in two-parent families. Clearly, marriage wasn’t
enough to get their families off welfare, let alone out of poverty. But low-wage work is not the answer either - up to
90% of these families were working and playing by the rules. The truth is that H.R. 240 ignores the underlying
causes of poverty for low-income families, particularly the poverty of women and children - lack of job training
and education, low-wage work, lack of childcare, and domestic violence.
H.R. 240 and marriage promotion mandates government intrusion into the most personal of decisions.
Marriage promotion is a threat not just to poor women, but to all citizens who believe that liberty entails
making fundamental personal decisions without governmental interference. A survey conducted for the Annie E.
Casey Foundation found that a solid 64 percent of those surveyed reject proposals to provide financial bonuses to
mothers on welfare who marry the father of their children, and over 70% believe pushing people to get married is the
wrong priority for Congress.2
Protecting battered women and their children is as important as promoting marriage.
Under TANF, the Family Violence Option gave states the option of providing protections to victims of domestic
violence, including waivers from welfare program requirements that could endanger them or their children. However,
Congress has never provided funding for domestic violence counseling and services for battered women in the
welfare system, while spending billions to promote marriage and fatherhood. Consequently, battered women and
their children are being further abused by the welfare system. For example, in California less than one-fifth of one
percent of mothers on welfare were given domestic violence waivers in 2003 - only 780 out of a caseload of more than
400,000 mothers. To protect battered women and their children, Congress must make family violence programs
and services mandatory under TANF reauthorization, and provide funding for victim counseling and services for
battered women and their children in the welfare system.
No studies prove marriage promotion effective in reducing poverty
Anna Maria Smith et al, professor of government at Cornell, 03-03-2009, “Reduce Poverty Using
Proven Methods: Eliminate Federal Funding of “Marriage Promotion” and Staff HHS with
Appointees Who Value All Families” “
Marriage Promotion and Fatherhood Initiatives Do Not Solve the Real Needs of American Families.
No Scientific Data Supports Marriage Promotion. In the lead‐up to the reauthorization of TANF in 2005,
Legal Momentum [formerly NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund] stated that “no advocate of
marriage promotion can point to a single, audited marriage program that has helped alleviate poverty,
let alone improved the rate of healthy marriages.”6 Two family demographers, Smock and Manning,
reviewed the scholarly studies on the anti‐poverty effectiveness of marriage for low‐income Americans in
2004. The data were drawn from a simulation model based on The Fragile Families and Child Well‐Being
Study, a large‐scale and long‐term survey of low‐income families, and from the outcomes reported by
the Minnesota Family Investment Program. Smock and Manning estimated that “healthy marriage
initiatives are unlikely to result in substantial numbers of marriages forming among unwed parents
that wouldnt otherwise form.”7 HHS itself admitted in a 2005 review that there were no studies on
marriage promotion that focused on low‐income populations and that the existing studies did not
examine the programs’ effectiveness with respect to child well‐being.8
66
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: Children Benefit from Marriage
Children don’t benefit from marriages – both husband and wife are equally poor
Dan LeRoy, Women E news correspondent, August 14, 2001,“West Virginia Gives $100 Welfare Marriage Bonus”
Coontz, the author of several books, including "The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia
Trap," also points out that children suffer in households where there is high conflict. "Anything we do that increases
conflict is bad for these kids," she said in an interview. "On average, we know that people who are married fare better,
but I don't think offering cash is the way to help." Dr. Waldo Johnson of the University of Chicago's School of
Social Service Administration agrees, saying government starts down the proverbial "slippery slope" when it rewards
"one type of commitment over another." Johnson was an investigator for the national Fragile Families and Child WellBeing Study, which looked at children raised by unmarried parents. He notes that the marriage incentive goal of
improving children's lives by adding a second income to their household doesn't always pan out. "Many poor
men are equally as poor as these unwed mothers, and they often have low skills and education that make it
difficult for them to find work or advance," Johnson said in an interview.
67
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Marriage Incentives Tradeoff w/ Welfare
States encouraged to divert funding from welfare
Legal Momentum, legal defense and education funder, 2004, “Why Now Legal Defense
Opposes Federal Marriage Promotion in TANF Reauthorization”
http://www.legalmomentum.org/assets/pdfs/marriagebackgrounder.pdf
Federal marriage promotion diverts welfare funds from basic economic supports, lacks public support,
coercively intrudes on fundamentally private decisions, places domestic violence victims at increased risk,
wastes public funds on ineffective policies, and inappropriately limits state flexibility. It sends the
message that the way out of poverty for women is dependence on someone else to act as a breadwinner
rather than economic self-sufficiency.
Under the current TANF law, states can spend federal and state TANF funds on marriage promotion, and
a few states do so. However, the vast majority of states use TANF funds exclusively for basic economic
support for low-income families
H.R. 4, at the Administration’s urging, would deny states this option by requiring every state to describe
how the state TANF program will promote marriage and to set numerical performance objectives for
promoting marriage.
H.R. 4 also allocates $300 million in federal funding annually for marriage promotion, $200 million in
new funding, and $100 million from the basic TANF grant, a total of $1.8 billion program over six years.
Additionally, H.R. 4 modifies state maintenance of effort requirements to encourage states to spend even
more money on marriage promotion.
68
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Unwed Receive Limited Benefits
Single women and unwed couples receive limited welfare benefits
Catherine Sameh, co-founder of feminist book store “In Other Words”, Nov/Dec 2002, “The
Rebel Girl: Punitive ‘Marriage Promotion’”, http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/715
Wade Horn, welfare chief for the Department of Health and Human Services, has been one of the most
outspoken proponents of marriage-promotion and family-formation initiatives. He said: “If an enemy there need
be, here is my candidate: family relativism -- the notion that all family structures are morally and socially equivalent,
all equally deserving of support and equally good for children.”
Under existing marriage-promotion policies, poor unmarried families are eligible for fewer benefits than poor
married families. According to the Alternatives to Marriage Project, Horn has “written that unmarried families
should only be eligible to receive `limited-supply' benefits like public housing, job training, and Head Start if there
are any available after all married families receive them. He has also argued that cohabiting couples and their
children should not be eligible for family benefits.”
Single women in poverty are punished by marriage promotion
Catherine Sameh, co-founder of feminist book store “In Other Words”, Nov/Dec 2002, “The
Rebel Girl: Punitive ‘Marriage Promotion’”, http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/715
Since 1992, when Bill Clinton began the move toward welfare reform, the blaming of single mothers for “the
Nation's domestic problems” has intensified. Bush's new plan takes that scapegoating even further by deepening
the focus of welfare reform on marriage-promotion and abstinence.
According to the Montana-based Working for Equality and Economic Liberation, the Bush plan “require[d] states
to include explicit descriptions of their family-formation and healthy-marriage efforts in their welfare plans
and offers $300 million per year for states to create programs that increase the number of low-income married
households.
“[The plan] calls for no new monies for TANF but allocates $435 million for marriage promotion and
abstinence-only programs, neither of which has been proven to alleviate poverty.”
While couched in family values rhetoric and concern for children, marriage-promotion in fact punishes poor
families and children who fall outside of its very strict definition of a family. Its supporters don't just want
single mothers to marry; they want them to marry the fathers of their children, regardless of their
circumstances.
The Incentives ignore all unwed people
Mary Leonard, Boston Globe staff writer, 5/22/01, “Marriage incentives for poor considered”,
http://lists101.his.com/pipermail/smartmarriages/2001-May/000639.html
Today, a House Ways and Means subcommittee with jurisdiction over the renewal of welfare funds will hold a
hearing on marriage incentives as the Bush Administration considers expanding such programs, which could
earmark millions of dollars for marriage education and even “reward” single mothers with cash bonuses for marrying
the child’s father. Such programs ignore alarming statistics on domestic violence, and could force women into legal
relationships with their abusers under a government mandate. Bush’s nominee for assistant b for family support at
Department of Health and Human Services Wade Horn supports these “incentives” to marriage. The NOW Legal
Defense and Education Fund notes that Horn argue for the denial of access for single parent families to important
public benefits like Head Start and TANF. Horn argues that these limited public benefits should go to married,
heterosexual, two-parent households first, leaving the “leftovers,” if any, to single parent and non-married twoparent households. 69
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: Sustainable Marriages
Err Aff– their studies are limited and incorrectly conducted
Deborah A. Harris and Domenico “Mimmo” Parisi, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work within
the Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State University, November 29, 2005, Gender Role Ideologies and
Marriage Promotion: State Policy Choices and Suggestions for Improvement, Review of Policy Research, Volume 22 Issue
6, Pages 841 – 858
Lack of evaluation of existing marriage promotion policies—It has now been almost ten years since the passage
of PRWORA and the subsequent attention given to promoting marriage among the low-income. Since that time
numerous attempts have been made by the states to encourage marriage. As new federal and state budgets are
created, the question arises of how successful these programs have been. Unfortunately, the very design of many
of these programs makes this question impossible to answer. First, many of these programs have been created
with vague goals that make evaluation difficult. Second, the few empirical tests done on the effectiveness of these
programs have contained serious flaws including small sample sizes and lack of control groups (Orth & Googin,
2003; Seefeldt & Smock, 2004). There is also the issue of selection effects among the sample taking part in these
programs. That is, when marriage promotion activities such as education and relationship skills programs are
offered voluntarily, those who choose to participate are already showing a predisposition toward marriage. The
argument can be made that these couples would have married with or without the state’s intervention.
Marriage incentives fail: short-term relationships result in remarriage and step-families that are
worse than single parent families.
Deborah A. Harris and Domenico “Mimmo” Parisi, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work within
the Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State University, November 29, 20 05, Gender Role Ideologies and
Marriage Promotion: State Policy Choices and Suggestions for Improvement, Review of Policy Research, Volume 22 Issue
6, Pages 841 – 858
Another assumption of marriage promotion policies regards whom these women will marry. It is not uncommon for
women in this population to have children by multiple men. This raises the question of which of these men
should the woman marry? Multiple-partner fertility has been shown to reduce the likelihood of marriage and is
a major influence behind programs to curb nonmarital fertility. Even if these women do marry, however, it is still
questionable if this marriage will prove beneficial to her children. If a TANF client has children by more than
one man and marries (either one of the fathers or a new man), this will essentially create a stepfamily
relationship. Research has shown that children in stepfamilies are no better off than children in single-parent
households in terms of negative behaviors such as dropping out of school and becoming a teenage mother
(Coleman, Ganong, & Fine, 2000). In fact, the fear of how a potential stepfather may treat her children is often a
major factor in discouraging marriage among TANF clients (Edin & Kefalas, 2005).
70
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: Sustainable Marriages
Marriage incentives fail – one size fits all approach.
Deborah A. Harris and Domenico “Mimmo” Parisi, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work within
the Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State University, November 29, 20 05, Gender Role Ideologies and
Marriage Promotion: State Policy Choices and Suggestions for Improvement, Review of Policy Research, Volume 22 Issue
6, Pages 841 – 858
States have often taken a “one size fits all” approach to creating marriage promotion programs that does not
take into account differences in subgroups within the larger welfare population (Gardiner et al., 2002; Orth &
Goggin, 2003). One major difference that has been overlooked includes racial differences. Research has shown
that the three major racial-ethnic groups in the United States (Whites, Hispanics, and Blacks) have different
cultural views regarding marriage and family (Wherry & Finegold, 2004). These differences must be taken into
account when developing programs to appeal to these women. Lately, there has been some effort to address these
issues as states and national organizations have joined together to create marriage promotion policies designed for
specific racial-ethnic groups (Franklin & Boddie, 2004; Orth & Goggin, 2003). Another difference that is often
overlooked relates to the spatial isolation of clients from the services they would need to enter into a healthy
marriage. Welfare dependency is often thought of as an urban problem. However, 12% of TANF clients live in
rural areas (General Accounting Office, 2004). These clients are often located far from sources of support for
marriage. For example, workshops and seminars to educate clients about marriage, as well as counseling and
mental health services, may be far from where rural clients live. A limited number of states have addressed this
barrier by including marriage promotion programs at local extension offices located in rural counties.
Marriage Promotions cannot succeed because of the shortage of marriageable men.
(Deborah A. Harris and Domenico Parisi, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology,
Anthropology, and Social Work, and a graduate research assistant in the Workforce and Economic
Development Research Unit within the Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State University,
11 29 05, “ Gender Role Ideologies and Marriage Promotion: State Policy Choices and Suggestions for
Improvement”)
One critique of marriage promotion policies is the underlying assumption that welfare-reliant women have the
opportunity to marry. Several factors operate in poor neighborhoods to reduce the number of eligible men. In Black
communities conditions such as high unemployment, high mortality and incarceration rates due to crime, and
reductions in real income have created a “shortage of marriageable men” (Lichter, LeClere, & McLaughlin, 1991;
Lichter, McLaughlin, Kephart, & Landry, 1992; Wilson, 1987). It has been estimated that conditions are so severe in
some places that there is only one single Black male for every three single Black females. These poor marriage
markets are considered to be one factor behind the low marriage rates of Black women. Based on current trends, it has
been predicted that only around two-thirds of Black women will ever marry, compared to over 90% for their White
counterparts.
71
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: Sustainable Marriages
The marriage promotion programs ignore the reality of the majority of American households, and
should be re-evaluated as a way to solve poverty.
Nicky Grist 07 (http://www.unmarried.org/growth-of-marriage-promotion-industry-is-based-on-political-ties-not-antipoverty-results.html)
In the five years since AtMP first published Let Them Eat Wedding Rings, government-funded marriage
programs have grown explosively. Compared to the late 1990s, government officials play down their desire to
convert the unmarried to marriage and the purported link between marrying and leaving poverty. However,
influential non-governmental commentators avidly tout marriage as better for children and as a solution to the
increasingly visible problem of economic inequality.
Therefore, as observers who care deeply about fairness for all families, AtMP today renews its call for the critical
evaluation of government-funded marriage programs based on these three principles:
1. The purpose of welfare is to reduce poverty.
2. Individuals and families should be treated fairly regardless of their marital status.
3. Policies designed to help children should support all the types of families in which children really live.
Nicky Grist, AtMP’s Executive Director, says “Our elected officials are sponsoring a marriage-only perspective
that ignores the reality of the majority of American households. They are callously ignoring the fact that
marital status discrimination causes real hardships for unmarried people. Unmarried people are an
important voting bloc and must hold politicians accountable.”
Ms. Grist adds “The federal government diverted three-quarters of a billion dollars from the nation’s antipoverty budget to fund marriage programs, so the American people should demand an evaluation of the
programs’ impact on poverty.”
Marriage support programs do not support healthy marriages, the force exploitative and abusive
marriages on women.
By Linda Myers 03 (http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/03/2.13.03/marriage_policy.html CU scholars: Proposed promotion-of-marriage welfare rules are bad policy)
While White House staff members say that participation in marriage-promotion programs will be voluntary for
welfare recipients, Fineman, Smith and Mink fear that those who choose not to take part will face discriminatory
treatment by caseworkers pressured to fill marriage-promotion classes. Many poor women may believe that if they do
not participate, they will risk losing their family's only source of financial support, welfare benefits.
The scholars recognize that marriage can be a satisfying union. But they also warn: "As a prescription rather than a
choice, marriage is a one-size-fits-all contract full of dangers for some. While marriage has provided some women the
cushion of emotional and economic security, it also has locked many women in unsatisfying, exploitative, abusive and
even violent relationships."
72
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: Sustainable Marriages
The Incentives ignore all unwed people
Mary Leonard, Boston Globe staff writer, 5/22/01, “Marriage incentives for poor considered”,
http://lists101.his.com/pipermail/smartmarriages/2001-May/000639.html
Today, a House Ways and Means subcommittee with jurisdiction over the renewal of welfare funds will hold a
hearing on marriage incentives as the Bush Administration considers expanding such programs, which could
earmark millions of dollars for marriage education and even “reward” single mothers with cash bonuses for marrying
the child’s father. Such programs ignore alarming statistics on domestic violence, and could force women into legal
relationships with their abusers under a government mandate. Bush’s nominee for assistant b for family support at
Department of Health and Human Services Wade Horn supports these “incentives” to marriage. The NOW Legal
Defense and Education Fund notes that Horn argue for the denial of access for single parent families to important
public benefits like Head Start and TANF. Horn argues that these limited public benefits should go to married,
heterosexual, two-parent households first, leaving the “leftovers,” if any, to single parent and non-married twoparent households. Marriage incentives forces others ideals
Mary Leonard, Boston Globe staff writer, 5/22/01, “Marriage incentives for poor considered”,
http://lists101.his.com/pipermail/smartmarriages/2001-May/000639.html
''Wade Horn wants the government to discriminate against families that don't
meet his ideal,'' said Tim Casey, a lawyer for the NOW fund. ''In benefit
programs where there is not enough for everybody, single-parent families
would go to the back of the line. ''Feminist groups generally are suspicious of marriage-promotion programs,
arguing that social conservatives want men to be head of the household and
have little regard for the women who leave marriage, or won't marry, because of domestic violence.
73
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: Sustainable Marriage
Incentives create unstable marriages – too hasty
Daniel T. Lichter, professor of sociology, director of the Initiative in Population Research at The Ohio State University,
Progressive Public Institute, 2001 Marriage as Public policy, p. 5-6
Marriage may be one solution to low income and poverty, but only if low-income unwed mothers, in fact, marry. In
the early 1970s, 30 percent of pregnant single women married the fathers of their babies before giving birth. Today,
only 11 percent do. “Legitimatization” of the child through marriage was most likely to occur among women whose
partners had a stable job that paid a decent wage. Unfortunately, these marriages also are highly unstable, with
divorce rates well above the national average. Hasty marriages precipitated by an unwanted pregnancy often involve
couples who are too young, emotionally unprepared for marriage, or are lacking in financial resources to form a
committed marriage. Adjustment to the newly acquired role as parent is an additional stressor that reduces marital
quality and increases the chances of divorce. A return to the days when pregnant women married their partners,
whether they were prepared for marriage or not, does not seem to be a viable or desirable long-term solution to
premarital pregnancy. The key is to reduce unmarried childbearing in the first place.
74
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
***TANF/WELFARE GOOD***
75
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
A2: TANF still bad/managing
1.) We remove the parts of TANF that are used to manage people, but still allow for the good parts
to stay in place.
a.) The marriage policy is the only part of TANF that is harmful in the status quo, welfare is
still necessary to help alleviate poverty. That’s Hirsch
b.) TANF has empirically worked to alleviate poverty – additional funding will help
continue this – that’s MaCurdy.
2.) Even if some aspects of TANF are bad our advantages are based of the marriage policy
specifically – meaning we still have solvency for our impacts.
3.) The marriage policy is used to manage low-income populations – removing this solves for the
bad parts of TANF.
Jyl Josephson. 8/28/03. Associate Professor, Dept. of Politics and Government, Illinois State
University. “Coercive Visibility: Gender Deviance, TANF Reauthorization, and State Control of
Low-Income Women and Men.”
Anna Marie Smith also notes this connection between the sexual regulation of nonheterosexuals and of deviant heterosexuals. Comparing the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act
(DOMA) with the 1996 welfare law, Smith argues that the welfare law has “a significant sexual
regulation dimension” (Smith 2001, 304).: “Unmarried mothers are particularly singled out for
moral regulation under the PRA,” and this moral regulation is in part about improper
heterosexuality (Smith 2001, 312). Even as the state is reducing the amount of assistance
available, it is increasing the degree of intervention in the personal lives of those who receive
TANF benefits. The 1996 welfare law thus “places most of the blame for poverty...on what it
regards as sexually irresponsible women” (2001, 315). The focus of the law then becomes
control of the sexual behavior of recipients, including marriage promotion policies and family
caps.
76
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
TANF Works – Laundry List
TANF is successful in states – welfare reduction, employment assistance, and child focus
Pete du Pont, 6-3-2002, National Center for Policy Analysis,
One thing has been proven for certain. Employers are far better at judging an individual's employability than are
bureaucrats. Of all the aspects of the '96 welfare reforms, TANF has proven to be the component that makes it
work, and it should be reauthorized this year. TANF will enable the states to achieve specific goals, including
reducing welfare caseloads, focusing on children, ensuring parents live up to their responsibilities, and cutting
administrative costs. In the past, defining what actually constitutes work has been a subjective call. Currently, TANF
uses participation in "work-related activities" to measure performance. Lenient states count time spent on
activities not particularly work related. But by making caseload reduction the primary performance goal,
measuring how well TANF works will be as easy as counting the number of families who no longer need it.
Getting down to specifics. The aim should be to lower TANF caseloads by 70 percent from 1994 levels. This goal
could be phased in over four years, starting with a 55 percent reduction by the end of 2003. States that fail to meet
caseload reduction goals should be required to implement or strengthen their work-first programs. Focusing on
children and ensuring both parents contribute to meeting their children's financial needs is another primary
TANF objective. Funds are currently available under the program for employment assistance to noncustodial
parents, most of whom are fathers not living with their children. Unfortunately, few states take advantage of this
option, which is a mistake. Under TANF, states should be required to provide work-related services to absent
fathers. Common sense dictates that helping absent fathers get jobs can only enhance the likelihood of their
providing child support for their offspring. It should be relatively simple to get both parents to meet
periodically with a caseworker to devise strategies for becoming self-sufficient, and goals for caring for the
children. Monitoring progress would also be easy. Finally, putting children at the center of the equation requires
both parents to acknowledge their parental responsibilities. Children would also be the focus of a pilot program that
forces unmarried fathers to support their children. If the TANF program is implemented, these fathers would be the
subject of a court order establishing paternity at birth, and they would be required to begin paying child support at that
point. Once again, this is a common sense approach. The judiciary in every state is charged with determining custodial
parents and child support when couples divorce. If it is a valid governmental interest to protect children in a divorce, it
is certainly a proper government function to protect all children. Determining paternity and support orders for children
born out of wedlock should be no different.
77
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
TANF Good – States
TANF is empirically successful – Alaskan bonus proves
Clay Butcher, 10-1-2003, DPAweb, “Alaska's TANF program awarded $6.36 million for success”
Alaska's Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program in the Dept. of Health & Social Services, Div.
of Public Assistance was notified recently that they were awarded performance achievement bonuses totaling
$6.36 million. Alaska received $3.18 million for FY 01, the maximum bonus allowed for ranking first in the
nation in the "job entry" category -- the percent of people placed in jobs. Alaska also received $3.18 million for
FY 02 for successful performance in job entry, success in the workforce, and Medicaid enrollment. Health &
Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced the award of $400 million in TANF bonuses
to 41 states and the District of Columbia for success in employment and other program achievements during
fiscal years 2001 and 2002. Our aggressive welfare-to-work emphasis secured these bonuses, Anthony Lombardo,
Div. of Public Assistance Director said. The statistics we reported to HHS show marked success in job entry for
Alaska Temporary Assistance Program (ATAP) families and good job retention. I congratulate DPA staff and our
grantees and contractors for their hard work that earned Alaska these awards. Lombardo said that the funding will be
used for additional services for families moving from welfare to work including child care assistance for ATAP
parents seeking employment. This is national recognition of the outstanding work of our Division of Public
Assistance, and I applaud everyone in the Division, H&SS Commissioner Joel Gilbertson said. This is the first time
Alaska has qualified for performance bonuses, he said. "We continue to see national improvement in employment
for families seeking to leave welfare, and these bonuses to states reflect the effective efforts of states to help
families achieve self-sufficiency," Secretary Thompson said. "TANF is an important part of how we are helping
America's families take advantage of the improving economy." The welfare reform legislation of 1996 authorized
funding for annual performance achievement bonuses within the TANF program, called the High Performance Bonus.
States can choose to compete in any or all of the performance bonus categories, but must supply data to HHS in order
to be considered for the award. The awards HHS just announced for performance in fiscal year 2002 represent the
fifth year for which bonuses have been made and today's release is the earliest these awards have been made after the
end of a performance year. These awards closely follow the fiscal year 2001 awards due to improvements in data
collection and processing methods during the past year. About 70 percent of the bonuses were awarded for
employment achievement among TANF recipient adults -- including job entry, job retention and increased earnings.
Bonuses also were awarded for program achievements in helping low-income working families take advantage of
available Food Stamps and Medicaid and State Children's Health Insurance Program coverage; in providing child
care; and in increasing the proportion of children living in married couple families. Most of these awards are made for
relative performance in the given year and for greatest improvement from the previous year. "These awards
emphasize TANF's important focus on helping recipients find work and improve their lives through work," said
Wade F. Horn, Ph.D., assistant secretary for children and families. "The success many states have experienced in 2002
is very heartening, and now we need to enact the President's TANF reauthorization plan so that states will be able to
do even better in the future." Award amounts for each state depend upon the size of each state's TANF block grant.
Under the law, states are limited to receiving bonuses in a given year of no more than five percent of their annual
TANF block grant. Alaska received their maximum possible bonus for performance in FY 01 and FY 02.
78
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
TANF Good – Employment
TANF increases employment rates – decade long experience proves
Jason A. Turner, visiting fellow for domestic policy at the Heritage foundation, 4-11-02, Heritage Foundation
The TANF program has been extraordinarily successful at reducing the caseload and moving individuals into
employment, as we have seen above. State programs have achieved this by instituting good up-front job search
programs in what is termed as a "Work First" approach. Experimental research over the past decade
and a half, influential among the drafters of the current law, had revealed that education and training alone is
less effective at helping individuals succeed in the private labor market than early entry into employment if
feasible, where on-the-job learning can help individuals move up the employment ladder faster than holding
them out of the labor market for classroom instruction. Most often actual work can be combined with education and
training in a more effective combination than either one alone. From this "Work First" orientation, our experience
has shown further that for those unable to find immediate private employment, either full or part time, the next
best alternative usually includes some work experience as a core part, although not the only part, of an overall
schedule and effort resulting in employment. This is especially true for those without extensive prior work history.
There are two key components which together influence the effectiveness of welfare-to-work programs under
TANF. One component is the number of hours of activity required of a participant, which is a measure of his
or her effort. The second is the overall proportion of individuals engaged in such activities, which is a measure
of the breadth and reach of the program. Both components, the intensity and the breadth of program
participation, are important to the overall effectiveness of the program. The authors of the current TANF
program clearly intended that both program intensity and program breadth be the focus, and they did so by setting
meaningful levels of weekly work requirements (measured in hours), and participation rates (measured by the
proportion of adults actually engaged in the activity).
79
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
TANF Good – Reduce Welfare
\
TANF empirically reduces welfare recipients – states prove
Thomas E. MaCurdy and Jeffrey M. Jones, Thomas MaCurd is an economics professor at Stanford University and
Jeffrey M. Jones is an assistant director and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, 20 03, Hoover Digest
No matter which strategy was employed, every state successfully met the federal work participation goal of
having 50 percent of recipients engaged in work activities 30 hours a week. By making employment the first
priority of assistance, TANF programs succeeded in moving recipients off welfare and into work. The vast
majority of states (35) saw their TANF rolls decline 40–70 percent between 1996 and 2001, and 8 states achieved
reductions of more than 70 percent. Wyoming led all states with a 91 percent decline in its caseload, whereas Rhode
Island brought up the bottom with a 34 percent decrease. Overall, the flexibility built into TANF (as well as
solutions it never anticipated) allowed welfare reform to thrive beyond all expectations.
80
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
TANF Good - Organized
TANF is coordinated and responsive – removal of federal mandate, innovation, and flexibility
Thomas E. MaCurdy and Jeffrey M. Jones, Thomas MaCurd is an economics professor at Stanford University and
Jeffrey M. Jones is an assistant director and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, 2003, Hoover Digest
Along with rescinding the entitlement to welfare, TANF decentralized the entire welfare delivery system—a
process instigated by the removal of cumbersome federal mandates. The mandates governing AFDC burdened
those states interested in providing families with a way out of welfare dependency. The result was a “one-sizefits-nobody” welfare system in which state programs were largely distinguished by the size of the welfare checks
they handed out. With TANF, a fundamental shift in attitude and mission saw caseworkers giving way to job
counselors and dependency giving way to self-sufficiency. Federal oversight switched from monitoring process to
monitoring performance as states were rewarded for reducing their caseloads and moving clients into work.
What developed were a variety of programs based, in part, on each state’s unique culture and historical approach to
social policy. As a result, TANF programs became more coordinated and responsive to local concerns. The
removal of mandates led to an increase in state flexibility and innovation. States began to move beyond the
original scope and vision of TANF, shifting the focus from national-level solutions to approaches that worked at
state and local levels. The states took full advantage of the opportunity to design their own approaches to
supporting poor families and developed a wide array of TANF programs. Many states implemented “work first”
strategies, wherein welfare applicants had to quickly secure a job. Others focused on “making work pay,” rewarding
clients who found work with a continuation of benefits and support services.
81
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
TANF Good - Poverty
Increased TANF funds solve poverty of small children.
White House, Executive Branch of Federal Government, Washington D.C., April 9th 2009,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Vice-President-Biden-Announces-23-Billion-in-Recovery-Act-Funds-to-HelpCare-for-C/
The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) is the primary Federal program specifically devoted to child
care services and quality. It enables low-income parents and parents receiving Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families (TANF) to work or to participate in the educational or training programs they need in order to
work. Funds may also be used to serve children in protective services. In addition, a portion of CCDF funds must be
used to enhance child care quality and availability. The $2 billion in Recovery Act funds for the Child Care and
Development Fund will allow states across the country to support child care services for more families whose
children require care while they are working, seeking employment or receiving job training or education. The
funds will be used by states to provide vouchers to families for child care or to provide access to care through
contracts with child care centers. Recovery Act dollars will support a wide range of child care providers, including
child care centers and home-based programs. A portion of the funds will be used to improve overall quality and
enhance infant and toddler care. For example, states may train child care providers, assist providers in meeting
health and safety requirements, hire specialists specifically trained to work with infant and toddler providers, provide
grants to providers to achieve higher quality and invest in other initiatives. The new funds supplement the existing
$5 billion child care subsidy program, the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF). The Recovery Act
funds will be awarded on a formula basis to states, the District of Columbia, five territories and 260 tribal
grantees representing approximately 500 Indian tribes.
TANF is effective in significantly reducing poverty
Steve Savner, Julie Strawn, and Mark Greenberg, Center for Law and Social Policy, 12-2002, “TANF
Reauthorization: Opportunities to Reduce Poverty by Improving Employment Outcomes”,
https://www.policyarchive.org/bitstream/handle/10207/14035/tanf_reauthorization_opportunities_to_red
uce.pdf
Since 1994, there has been a historically unprecedented decline in the number of families receiving assistance.
In early 1994, five million families were receiving AFDC. The number fell to 4.4 million by the time the 1996 law
was enacted, and then dropped to 2.1 million by March 2001.4 Thirty-three states report higher caseloads in
September 2001 than in March 2001, though the total number of TANF cases across the country declined by 1% over
this period.5 Part of the caseload decline is clearly due to reduced need. Child poverty fell from 21.8% in 1994 to
16.2% in 2000.6 However, participation in welfare fell much more rapidly than child poverty. In 1994, 62% of
poor children were receiving AFDC assistance; by 1999, only 40% of poor children were receiving TANF assistance. 7
82
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
TANF Good - Poverty
Increasing TANF funds benefits the poor by giving them jobs, allowing them to be self-dependent and allowing them
to rise above the poverty line.
(Department of Human Services, 09 28 06, “District to Increase TANF Cash Assistance Benefits for DC Residents,”
http://newsroom.dc.gov/show.aspx/agency/dhs/section/2/release/9742/year/2006/month/9)
(Washington, DC) Mayor Anthony A. Williams announced today that Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
(TANF) cash assistance for low-income families will increase by 7.5 percent effective July 1, 2006. Currently, the
monthly TANF cash assistance benefit payment for a family of three is $379. Effective July 1, 2006, the payment for a
family of three will rise to $407. “This increase is long overdue,” said Mayor Williams. “With the District in strong
financial shape we need to make sure that our residents who are most in need get increases in their cash assistance
payments so that they can begin to rise above the poverty level and become self-sufficient through participation in the
District’s welfare to work programs,” said Mayor Williams. “We are strongly committed to helping TANF recipients
find jobs. The staff at the DC Department of Human Services does a great job carrying out the welfare to work
mission.” Mayor Williams also pointed out that given the District’s successful TANF and Food Stamp employment
programs, the District’s current TANF caseload of 15,614 households and has reached its lowest level since the 1996
welfare reform law went into effect. DC Department of Human Services (DHS) Interim Director Kate Jesberg
emphasized the need for an increase in TANF cash assistance. “I am very pleased that the TANF cash assistance
benefit is being increased to help struggling poor and low-income families in the District,” said Kate Jesberg, Interim
Director of DHS. “The cost of living in the District is extraordinarily high and has been for quite some time.”The monthly
amount of TANF payments is based on family size. Slightly more than 15,000 households in the District representing 45,000
people receive TANF cash assistance benefits. With few exceptions, TANF recipients are expected to participate in
employment programs and make progress finding meaningful jobs. The TANF payment for a family of three is $379 and will
increase to $407 next month. The TANF payment for a family of three in Maryland is $490, while the TANF payment for a
family of three in Virginia is currently $389. “By raising the TANF grant 7.5 percent, the District is working to get
TANF cash assistance benefits to the level where they should be given the local economy,” added Jesberg.
Overall, TANF has been a huge success
Thomas MaCurdy and Jeffrey M. Jones, professor of economics at Stanford and associate director
at the Hoover Institution, 2003, “WELFARE REFORM: How Not to Mess Up a Good Thing”,
http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3058066.html
There is simply no denying the success of TANF in reducing the number of individuals and families dependent
on government cash assistance. Welfare caseloads have dropped a staggering 59 percent since TANF replaced
AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) in 1996, with more than 7 million fewer people and 2 million fewer
families receiving benefits (see figure 1).
Contrary to the predictions of child impoverishment, today there are nearly 3 million fewer children in poverty.
Poverty rates are at an all-time low for black children and for children in single-parent households. Employment
among young single mothers has nearly doubled, out-of-wedlock births have remained flat for the past five
years, and there are nearly 2 million fewer hungry children. Although stories continue to surface about individual
cases of single-parent families slipping through the cracks, overall, TANF has had a positive impact on this nation
and its poor. Formerly destitute and dependent welfare recipients are now working by the millions—earning a
living and setting a positive example for their children that will reap benefits for our nation well into the future.
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Welfare Good – Employment/Child Poverty
Welfare reform empirically empowers single mothers and black children – employment, income,
and child poverty
Ron Haskins, Senior Fellow of Economic Studies, 3-16-06, Brookings
But are the mothers who leave (oravoid) welfare able to find work? More than 40 studies conducted by states since
1996 show that about 60 percent of the adults leaving welfare are employed at any given moment and that, over a
period of several months, about 80 percent hold at least one job. Even more impressive, national data from the
Census Bureau show that between 1993 and 2000, the percentage of low-income, single mothers with
a job grew from 58 percent to nearly 75 percent, an increase of almost 30 percent. Moreover, employment
among never-married mothers, the most disadvantaged and least-educated subgroup of single mothers, grew
from 44 percent to 66 percent, an increase of 50 percent, over the same period. Again, these sweeping changes are
unprecedented. What about income? Census Bureau data show that in 1993, earnings accounted for about 30
percent of the income of low-income mother-headed families while welfare payments accounted for nearly 55
percent. By 2000, this pattern had reversed: earnings had leaped by an astounding 136 percent to constitute
almost 57 percent of income while welfare income had plummeted by nearly half to constitute only about 23
percent of income. Equally important, with earnings leading the way, the total income of these low-income families
increased by more than 25 percent over the period (in constant dollars).
Not surprisingly, between 1994 and 2000, child poverty fell every year and reached levels not seen since 1978. In
addition, by 2000, the poverty rate of black children was the lowest it had ever been.
Welfare reform allows black mothers to support their children – statistics prove
Jeff Jacoby, 9-13-2006, The Boston Globe
The results speak for themselves. Since peaking in 1994, the nation's welfare caseload plummeted by 60 percent,
falling from 5 million families to fewer than 2 million. Welfare recipients went to work in droves. The
employment rate among those who had been likeliest to slip into long-term dependence -- young mothers who
had never been married -- soared by nearly 100 percent. And as more and more mothers left welfare and got
jobs, more and more of their children were lifted out of poverty.
Far from throwing a million kids into the streets, welfare reform sent the child poverty rate tumbling, from 20.8
percent in 1995 to 17.8 percent in 2004. In black communities, where welfare had done the most damage, the
decline was even more dramatic. ``Black child poverty plummeted at an unprecedented rate, falling to 30.0
percent in 2001," Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation testified before Congress . ``In 2001, despite the
recession, the poverty rate for black children was at the lowest point in national history."
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Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Welfare Good – Employment
Welfare-to-work is a successful in bringing the unemployed back into the workforce
Gary Bryner and Ryan Martin, professors of political science at Brigham Young University, 05-2005,
“Innovation in Welfare Policy: Evaluating State Efforts to Encourage Work among Low-Income
Families”, http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=3&hid=101&sid=20da24d3-bba8-41f8-bec2f20e1bc39367%40sessionmgr104
To encourage work, states have experimented with eligibility rules, self-sufficiency programs, the structure of
benefits, time limits, sanctions, provision of support services, and participation requirements. They have
transformed their welfare systems from providers of cash assistance to employment offices. States have
restructured state welfare and employment offices into employment-oriented departments and brought a number of
social services under one roof.2 They have simplified the rules and streamlined the application forms for cash
assistance, child care, Medicaid, and Food Stamps. The consolidation of these services in an employment
department has helped cement the state’ efforts to reorient its traditional welfare program toward work, and
provides a clear case of how government agencies can dramatically reorient the administration of social
programs. States typically require recipients to immediately begin applying for work, even before officials conduct
assessments of employability and needs. This not only highlights the importance of work, but also uses the labor
market to sort out which recipients are capable of working and which ones will need help before they can
successfully compete for jobs. States have increased the amount of earnings and the value of assets such as vehicles
that they disregard in determining eligibility in order to encourage work. Most states have eliminated rules that limited
the number of hours two-parent family heads can work and still be eligible for assistance. States largely rely on
unsubsidized jobs; only a few states have developed subsidized job programs or relied on public service employment.
One important way in which states differ is that some emphasize sanctions, shorter time limits, and caseload
reduction, while others take a more positive approach, emphasizing incentives and engagement in work. The first
approach is usually associated with more restrictive eligibility thresholds for earnings, work requirements that
take effect before assistance is approved, and lower benefits. The second approach typically also includes more
generous disregards of income and assets, and relatively high cash benefit levels (Gais, 2002).
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Welfare Good – AT: Hunger/Poverty
Welfare bad arguments are outdated 1. Two million fewer hungry children
Rich Noyes, Mr. Noyes has a bachelor’s degree in political science from George Washingtin University and a master’s
degree from Georgetown University, 9-10-01, MediaNomics
The media predicted that welfare reform would mean more hunger. “For the first time in decades the federal
government will no longer guarantee open?ended help to the poor,” CBS Evening News anchor Harry Smith moaned
on Thanksgiving Day, 1996. “This could mean hunger in America will grow, even in places famous for food and
plenty of it." On January 11, 1998, NBC Nightly News Sunday anchor Dawn Fratangelo, introducing a story by Roger
O’Neil, similarly insisted that welfare reform meant empty stomachs: “While many former recipients may be working,
often there is not enough money for one basic need — food.” In his report, O’Neil warned about “the dark side of
welfare reform.” He lectured his audience that “the demand for food is now greater than the supply. Those who serve
the poor worry about empty shelves if welfare reform continues to leave the poor hungry, even if they have a job.”
That was nearly four years ago. Today, “according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), there are
nearly 2 million fewer hungry children today than at the time welfare reform was enacted,” Rector and
Fagan reported. Oops.
2. Four million fewer people in poverty
Rich Noyes, Mr. Noyes has a bachelor’s degree in political science from George Washingtin University and a master’s
degree from Georgetown University, 9-10-01, MediaNomics
Back in 1996, the airwaves were filled with stories about the potentially-damaging consequences of welfare
reform. “Once the welfare bill becomes law, millions of Americans will find their lives starting to change in startling
and unwelcome ways,” then-CBS anchor Paula Zahn announced on the July 31 Evening News. That night, ABC’s
Nightline anchor, Chris Wallace, questioned Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala from the left: “You
find yourself now in the position of being praised by Newt Gingrich, at the same time Senator Pat Moynihan calls this
the most brutal piece of social policy since Reconstruction. Doesn’t that make you the slightest bit nervous?”
“Welfare reform could leave Los Angeles as penniless as the poor who line up each day for public assistance,” Mike
Boettcher prophecied on the August 1 NBC Nightly News. That same evening, his CBS counterpart, Bill Whitaker,
similarly warned that “in Los Angeles, America’s dream factory, many local politicians are calling the welfare reform
bill a nightmare.” Fast forward five years. On September 5, the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector and Patrick
Fagan released “The Good News About Welfare Reform,” a paper detailing what’s actually happened since welfare
reform became a reality. Instead of “plunging more than a million children into official poverty,” as journalists
such as White predicted, there are now 2,300,000 fewer children living in poverty than there were in 1996,
according to Rector and Fagan, with the strongest improvements among African American children. Overall, the
Heritage paper reports, “there are 4.2 million fewer people living in poverty today” than there were five years
ago.
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Marriage Aff
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Welfare Good – AT: Poverty
Welfare-to-work allows people to become financially independent
Gary Bryner and Ryan Martin, professors of political science at Brigham Young University, 05-2005,
“Innovation in Welfare Policy: Evaluating State Efforts to Encourage Work among Low-Income
Families”, http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=3&hid=101&sid=20da24d3-bba8-41f8-bec2f20e1bc39367%40sessionmgr104
States have emphasized the development of self-sufficiency plans. These plans are the primary means for
structuring the interaction between caseworkers and recipients. Recipients must comply with the requirements of these
plans in order to maintain their benefits. In many states, officials provide relatively generous support for recipients,
but are also quite willing to impose sanctions if recipients fail to do their part. This approach raises interesting
questions about balancing aggressive enforcement of requirements and a supportive environment that helps
families become self sufficient. Figure 1 shows the proportion of TANF recipients involved in different job related
activities 2001 (United States Department of Health and Human Services, 2003, p. 94).
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Marriage Aff
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Welfare Good – Local Level
Welfare reform solves local level problems – California proves
Bay City News, 11-14-2k, The Berkeley Daily Planet, “Study cites welfare reform success”
BERKELEY — A report by the University of California at Berkeley suggests welfare reform legislation
increasing local control has inspired some flexible and innovative county-level programs in the Bay area.
Professor Michael Austin from the School of Social Welfare said today that the results are “very positive.” “We
thought welfare reform might create more problems than it solved, but we have been pleasantly surprised in
California,'' he said. The study, which provides the first insight into how social services agencies are coping with the
1996 federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, looked at the approaches to welfare
reform taken in nine counties around the Bay Area. Austin said incentive money provided in the legislation had
allowed counties to address problems at the local level in areas such as transportation, family support, job
programs and child care. Among the outstanding programs cited in the report were neighborhood job centers in
Alameda County, a “Job Keeper” hotline in Santa Clara County to address employment problems, a coalition of
nonprofit services in Napa County and an “Adopt-a-Family” program in San Mateo County.
88
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
TANF Solves Economy
The TANF funds from 2009 to 2010 can create a new Emergency Contingency Fund to benefit the economy and end
the recession.
(Sharon Parrott and Liz Schott, Specialists on Welfare reform and Income Support, 02 25 09, “The Overview of the TANF
provisions in the Economic Recovery Act,” http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2693)
The TANF provisions in section 2101 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 create a new
Emergency Contingency Fund under which states can receive 80 percent federal funding for increases (relative to a
base year quarter) in certain TANF related expenditures in federal fiscal years 2009 and 2010. States can access
“emergency contingency funds” based on increased expenditures in each of three categories: basic assistance, nonrecurrent short-term payments, and subsidized employment. To draw down funds for increases in the basic assistance
category, a state must have an average monthly TANF/MOE caseload increase in a quarter relative to the corresponding
quarter of the base year, but there is no caseload increase requirement for the other two categories.
The emergency fund is a temporary provision for 2009 and 2010. The appropriation is capped at $5 billion total for the
two years. This cap is roughly double the amount that the Congressional Budget Office assumes states will draw down; it is
almost certain that the $5 billion fund is sufficient to ensure that all states will be able to draw down the amount of funds they
qualify for under the Emergency Contingency Fund formula.
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Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
2AC Poverty Add On
Increased TANF funding is critical to combating the root causes of poverty.
National Advocacy Center 2005, “A CALL TO POVERTY REDUCTION IN THE CONTEXT OF REAUTHORIZATION
OF TEMPORARY ASSISTANCE TO NEEDY FAMILIES,” http://www.gsadvocacy.org/tanf_faith_3-9.pdf
In the robust economy of the late 1990s, TANF -- combined with the increased availability of jobs -- significantly
reduced the number of people on the welfare rolls throughout the nation. There is, however, unfinished
business with regard to those who have left the rolls. Many have gotten jobs that do not provide a familysustaining wage. At the same time, many have lost the supportive services that are essential to maintaining their
households, so that they are often poorer than they were on welfare. TANF must continue to provide work
supports for people moving into the workforce but earning low wages. Congress should provide more funds for
TANF to ensure its ability to act as both a work support program and a safety net for those for whom work is
not an option. A strong and reliable safety net is more essential than ever at times of disaster. We recognize the
benefit to the entire community of helping people move from welfare to work when possible and appropriate.
Acknowledging current economic realities, however, we believe that TANF reauthorization must be undertaken
in the context of current economic issues, including large state deficits, unemployment, and inadequate wages.
There are also important family issues such as strengthening families to assure that children are raised in a healthy
home environment, caring for a disabled child or family member, the availability of affordable, high quality child care
and the economic value of care-giving in the home. It is important to acknowledge that, according to the most recent
data from the federal Office of Family Assistance, 73 percent of the TANF caseload is children whose well- being
depends on that of their parents. Reducing poverty will depend on addressing these concerns along with a range
of related issues such as safe and affordable housing, reliable child care, equitable wages, education and
training, and access to transportation and health care. Meeting these basic human needs would benefit the
whole community by giving all people the opportunity to reach their potentials.
That outweighs nuclear war.
Mumia Abu Jamal, former Black Panther Party activist, 1998, “A Quiet And Deadly Violence,”
http://www.mumia.nl/TCCDMAJ/quietdv.htm
"[E]very fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a
nuclear war that caused 232 million deaths; and every single year, two to three times as many people die from
poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in
effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide on the weak
and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world." [Gilligan, p. 196] Worse still, in a thoroughly
capitalist society, much of that violence became internalized, turned back on the Self, because, in a society based
on the priority of wealth, those who own nothing are taught to loathe themselves, as if something is inherently
wrong with themselves, instead of the social order that promotes this self-loathing. This intense self-hatred was
often manifested in familial violence as when the husband beats the wife, the wife smacks the son, and the kids
fight each other. This vicious, circular, and invisible violence, unacknowledged by the corporate media, uncriticized
in substandard educational systems, and un-understood by the very folks who suffer in its grips, feeds on the
spectacular and more common forms of violence that the system makes damn sure -- that we can recognize and must
react to it. This fatal and systematic violence may be called The War on the Poor. It is found in every country,
submerged beneath the sands of history, buried, yet ever present, as omnipotent as death. In the struggles over the
commons in Europe, when the peasants struggled and lost their battles for their communal lands (a precursor to
similar struggles throughout Africa and the Americas), this violence was sanctified, by church and crown, as the
"Divine Right of Kings" to the spoils of class battle. Scholars Frances Fox-Piven and Richard A Cloward wrote, in
The New Class War (Pantheon, 1982/1985):
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Poverty Impact - Economy
Poverty destroys the economy.
Center for American Progress. November 3, 2008. The Price of Poverty.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/11/price_of_poverty.html
Arguments for ending child poverty often rely on a feeling that it is simply wrong to allow any child to miss out on the
experiences that so many take for granted. But now new research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in the
UK shows that a high child poverty rate imposes a substantial drag on a country’s overall economy.
The Center for American Progress made this case in January 2007 in an innovative report from Harry Holzer
and colleagues, which laid out the heavy costs to the U.S. economy of not tackling child poverty. Inspired by
this example, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report set out an estimated cost to the UK of £25 billion—
around 1 percent of GDP.
The Rowntree report identifies two ways in which child poverty imposes costs. Growing up poor is associated with
a range of poorer outcomes in adulthood, and poor physical and mental health, which place extra burdens on
public services. And the lost potential associated with growing up poor means that we lose out on productivity,
earnings, and taxation.
The research reviews evidence on the long-term effects that growing up poor has on children’s outcomes. As we
reported earlier this year, poverty has clear implications for health over the long term and therefore imposes
additional costs on the health service. Poverty can also damage mental health, leading to a higher risk of suicide
and to a range of antisocial behaviors. And while poverty does not lead children and young people to commit
crimes, and the vast majority of poor children do not engage in criminal behaviour, there are associations
between economic disadvantage and criminality—leading again to higher costs for services and society.
In order to estimate the costs of these additional services, researchers looked at the association between the number of
children in poverty in an area and the costs of services in this area, controlling for other factors that would make
spending higher. Around half the costs of child poverty, or £12 billion, are associated with this additional
spending.
But if poverty imposes extra costs on society, it also drains the resources with which to meet them. Growing up
poor has a strong effect on educational outcomes and on the prospect of finding employment as an adult. The
research also estimates the costs to the economy of this loss of potential, both in terms of lost tax revenues and
in terms of the benefits that are required to support adults who would otherwise have been working. A
conservative estimate puts these costs at £13 billion.
What does this mean for policy? Many believe that the moral case for ending child poverty is already clear. But this
research makes clear that failing to tackle poverty today imposes substantial financial costs on society as well. We’ve
recently seen governments across the world spending vast sums on stabilizing the banking system with the argument
that not doing so would lead to even greater costs in the long term. Investing in child poverty today should
similarly be seen as spending to save.
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2AC Unemployment Add On
Increased funding is critical to combat poverty and accomplish TANF goals.
Wendell Primus, director of income security at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2002, “Making the Case: Has
Welfare Reform Worked? Yes, but ...” http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=114&subid=143&contentid=250082
To better accomplish the goals of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), funding needs to be
increased. First, the overall size of the TANF block grant, as well as required levels of state spending for TANF
programs (maintenance-of-effort), should be increased and indexed for inflation. In addition, the TANF
contingency fund needs to be renewed and restructured so that states can provide for increased numbers of needy
families when the economy slows. Funding disparities among the states need to be reduced; if states want to
sustain (and increase) the flexible funding available under TANF, they should agree not to supplant federal
TANF dollars.
TANF increases employment rates – decade long experience proves
Jason A. Turner, visiting fellow for domestic policy at the Heritage foundation, 4-11-02, Heritage Foundation
The TANF program has been extraordinarily successful at reducing the caseload and moving individuals into
employment, as we have seen above. State programs have achieved this by instituting good up-front job search
programs in what is termed as a "Work First" approach. Experimental research over the past decade
and a half, influential among the drafters of the current law, had revealed that education and training alone is
less effective at helping individuals succeed in the private labor market than early entry into employment if
feasible, where on-the-job learning can help individuals move up the employment ladder faster than holding
them out of the labor market for classroom instruction. Most often actual work can be combined with education and
training in a more effective combination than either one alone. From this "Work First" orientation, our experience
has shown further that for those unable to find immediate private employment, either full or part time, the next
best alternative usually includes some work experience as a core part, although not the only part, of an overall
schedule and effort resulting in employment. This is especially true for those without extensive prior work history.
There are two key components which together influence the effectiveness of welfare-to-work programs under
TANF. One component is the number of hours of activity required of a participant, which is a measure of his
or her effort. The second is the overall proportion of individuals engaged in such activities, which is a measure
of the breadth and reach of the program. Both components, the intensity and the breadth of program
participation, are important to the overall effectiveness of the program. The authors of the current TANF
program clearly intended that both program intensity and program breadth be the focus, and they did so by setting
meaningful levels of weekly work requirements (measured in hours), and participation rates (measured by the
proportion of adults actually engaged in the activity).
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2AC Unemployment Add On
Unemployment risks global nuke war.
Walter Russell Mead, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, 1994, “Commerce and Trade Speeches or
conferences,” Federal News Service
I'd like to add to that that unemployment is not unrelated to the question of world peace. We've had today hanging over
us a couple of times mentions of hundreds of millions of people in developing countries who would like to join the
advanced industrial democracies in their standards of living. We've spoken of the former communist states of Europe, all
of whom are looking for a place at this table. Our modern economic system originated after the second world war with
some very important insights, where people looked at why did the world get into World War II. And a big answer was
the mass unemployment of the '30s that led to fascism, that led to a climate of international confrontation, and
ultimately led to war. And the idea that full employment was central to concept of building peace after the second
world war. Today we tend to say that if you can get full employment at all it will follow free trade, if you -- you know,
except for low interest rates and GATT there is essentially no Western program today for jobs. This is putting the cart before the
horse in the view of the people who sort of originally designed the post-war system, where they said that free trade was actually a
consequence of full employment rather than a cause of it. And I think you can still see that in that the ink is hardly dry on the Uruguay
Round agreement when the United States and Japan are firing opening volleys in a trade war. So we are talking about the viability of our
democratic systems of government and we are talking about world peace when we are talking about unemployment. What is so interesting
is the -- and alarming, is the enormous gap between the gravity and intractability of the problem and the very small scale measures being
proposed to deal with it. I suspect that we will see out of this job conference a very few recommendations coming forward on improving
the efficiency of labor, sort of marginal improvements, and there will be essentially a throwing up of the hands in despair about this thing.
All of us have spoken more or less this morning about the need for some kind of G-7 cooperation, international cooperation here. We've
been talking about this for a long time, really since the Bretton Woods system broke down in the early 1970s. There have been a whole
series of efforts to create some kind of international economic cooperation among the leading economies, and they have generally ended
either in disaster or in platitude -- sometimes in both. I think there is a reason for this; the reason is the fallacy of composition, a fallacy of
composition similar to the one that Keynes looked at, talking about how a nation can save itself into poverty, that when times are bad what
makes sense for the individual household or firm is to cut back on expenses, to draw in your horns; if you're a firm to defray any new
investments, and so on. This exacerbates the national problem as people stop consuming and investing. In the same way, when you have a
difficult global economic climate, it makes sense for each country to try to bolster up its own finances, its own balance of trade. We've seen
plenty of competitive devaluation. Indeed, here we are sitting in the international capital of competitive devaluation, widely considered in
the '30s to be the most evil of all protectionist schemes, today endorsed and praised to the skies by people who enjoy reputations, even
among financial journalists, if I can say so, as free traders. Competitive devaluation is a tariff, it is an attack on free trade. And yet
somehow today this has become a normal part of international economic planning. What is needed? Just as Keynes argued that you needed
a macroeconomic policy agency looking at what is good for the entire national economy, you also need to have agencies in the world
economy, in the global economy, whose mandate is for the health of the overall global economy. The World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund, the EBRD, the Inter-American Development Bank can all, I think, play a constructive role in this, although they need to
have somewhat larger resources and to take a broader view of their mandates in some cases. But I think we need to clearly get beyond this
notion of ever six months finance ministers sit down and issue a platitudinous communique saying, you know, basically all bad things
should be reduced and all good things should be increased, and then we all go home. If we can't provide institutional, ongoing agencies for
international cooperation, then we might as well just write the whole thing off. People have spoken about ideas like a global central bank. I
would simply like to suggest here, rather than prescribing a lot of things, that there are ways in which a more demand-oriented,
expansionary-oriented program can also be a more market-driven program and can reduce trade tensions as well as employment tensions
among advanced countries. To give you just a quick example, that instead of the advanced countries spending their time squabbling with
each other over agricultural subsidies, it might be interesting to look at consumption subsidies for developing countries for hungry people,
underfed people in the developing world. The same money now spent, essentially wasted, on agricultural subsidies for producers, if
pumped onto the consumption side of the equation could reduce regulation, free up agricultural trade, and even potentially raise incomes of
farmers in developed and developing countries. There are ways in which institutions with a global mandate and whose basic
charter is concern for the health and growth of the overall global economic system can relieve us of some of our
problems and address even some of our particularly pressing political problems, such as the chaos and desperation that
is threatening to turn Eastern Europe into an arena of, God forbid, nuclear war, but to make Yugoslavia, to make the
Bosnian mess
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2AC Public Transportation Add On
Increased TANF funding is critical to sustaining the public transportation system.
Nancy Jakowitsch, Surface Transportation Policy Project, and Kate Bicknell, Smart Growth America, 2002, “RE:
Integrating Transportation and Housing Services for TANF Recipients,”
http://www.edf.org/documents/2141_JeffordsLetter.pdf
Increased TANF funding is critical to ensure that states are able to attend to the transportation and housing
needs of low-income families. We understand that the Senate Finance Committee is considering adding resources for
these purposes, and that such funding would provide an opportunity to build on efforts like the JARC program.
According to the General Accounting Office, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the
Congressional Research Service, states spent $594 million in federal and state welfare funds on transportation
services in FY 2000 alone. Without additional funding for work support programs or for the TANF block
grant, state TANF agencies may have to eliminate TANF-funded transportation services to handle growing
caseloads, compensate for the effects of inflation on the block grant, and implement changes to work
requirements.
The lack of public transportation reinforces racial discrimination and entrenches poverty.
Gwendolyn Mink, Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Alice O'Connor, assistant
professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, 2004, “Poverty in the United States: an encyclopedia of
history, politics, and policy,” p721-723
The interstate highway system also played an important role in deconstructing the economic life of the metropolitan
areas away from urban centers and towards suburban peripheries, encouraging plant relocation as well as the massive
boom in suburban shopping malls that drew businesses away from central cites. The growing suburbanization of
industry and commerce affected poor and working class urban dwellers profoundly albeit less directly, by
reducing their access to many available jobs. The inconvenient or nonexistent city to suburban areas public
transportation options available in most metropolitan areas and the scarcity of low income housing opportunity in
most suburban areas combine to increase commute times and dependence on cars. Those among the urban poor
who could not afford to buy maintain and insure a reliable automobile was effectively cut off from the rapidly
growing suburban labor market. Residential segregation compounded the problem for people of color who
were barred by a powerful combination of racial covenants, discrimitory real estate and lending practices and
racist attitudes from moving to- and often from getting jobs- growing suburban areas. In addition to altering the
physical and economic environment the building of new highways contributed to a new political environment
especially by the mid 1960s and later community based citizens groups were beginning to mobilize in opposition to
road builders’ plans to condemn and clear land in low income urban neighborhoods; such organizing in turn created a
powerful venue for residence to express their anger with city development policies and decision-making processes.
When fighting alone poor communities still lost many more highway battles than they won. But when they were part
of a larger coalition some notable victories occurred. Metropolitan Boston for example groups representing the urban
poor working class ethnic neighborhoods suburban environmentalists and large educational institutions combined in
the early 70s to convince state officials to cancel the remaining highways planned for the area and shift substantianal
state resources to public transportation instead. Furthermore the many highway fights – along with other
simultananeously conflicts such as those ever urban renewal antipoverty funds – contribution to the beginning of a
new political era in many cities in which community participation increased significantly and the concerned of poor
neighborhoods could not be as easily ignored. Despite an altered political culture, however, the public
transportation systems that the urban working classes relied on disproportionately continued to suffer in the
1970s 1980s and 1990s legislation passed by congress especially in the mid-1970s and early 1990s provided small
new financial boosts to these mass transit systems, but the overwhelming bias public policy continues to favor the
private automobile and the publicly subsidized roads on which it travels.
(Read or cross apply the poverty/racism impact)
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DDW 2009
Add On – TANF Needs More $$$
Current TANF funding is tight. States need more money to be able to continue supporting lowincome families.
Sharon Parrott and Zoë Neuberger Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. May, 20th 2002.
“STATES NEED MORE FEDERAL TANF FUNDS”
Welfare reauthorization legislation that is pending in Congress will set Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and
child care block grant funding levels for the next five years. Some have suggested that because the number of families receiving
cash assistance has fallen substantially since the 1996 welfare law was enacted, states do not need additional federal funds. While
the number of families receiving cash assistance has fallen, states now provide work supports and other services — such as child
care, transportation subsidies, wage supplements, and training for low-income working parents — to more than one million lowincome families that do not get counted in official "caseload" figures because they do not receive cash aid. The House-passed
TANF reauthorization bill, H.R. 4737, would freeze the federal TANF block grant at its current level — so that by 2007, the
purchasing power of the block grant would fall 22 percent below its level when it was established in 1997. The bill would increase
mandatory child care funding by just $1 billion over five years — just under the amount needed so that the child care block grant
keeps pace with inflation. (The bill also would increase the authorization level for discretionary child care funding, but there is no
assurance these additional funds would be appropriated.)The House bill's freeze in TANF funding and very modest increase in
child care funding will force states to cut back benefits and services they now provide for two reasons. First, states already are
spending over their annual block grant allocation by drawing on reserves from prior years, but these reserves are shrinking and in
many states will soon be insufficient to maintain current program levels. Second, the House bill imposes costly new work
requirements that will force states to redirect TANF funds away from supports for low-income working families and other efforts in
order to pay for these new work mandates.
States Already Are Spending Above the Annual TANF Block Grant Level Federal TANF spending data show that states are
currently spending above their annual block grant allocation by drawing on reserves of unspent funds from prior years. These
resources are dwindling quickly and as a result states are already considering cuts in TANF-funded benefits and services.(1) As the
value of the underlying block grant erodes due to inflation and as reserves disappear, states would be unable to continue providing
their current range of services to low-income families even without additional work requirements. Treasury Department data show
that states spent a total of $18.6 billion in federal TANF funds in fiscal year 2001 — some $2 billion more than the basic annual
TANF block grant. States augmented their annual TANF block grant with unspent funds from prior years. These reserves accrued
during the early years of TANF implementation as cash assistance caseloads fell dramatically and states needed time to redirect
freed up resources to programs to support low-income working families, many of whom were former welfare recipients.
Federal data show that TANF reserves are diminishing. By the end of fiscal year 2001 most states had only modest reserves. In 17
of the states now spending above their annual funding level, unobligated TANF funds from prior years are insufficient to allow
them to maintain their fiscal year 2001 spending level this year, fiscal year 2002. An additional six states have insufficient reserves
to maintain their fiscal year 2001 program level through fiscal year 2003. States now offer a broad range of supports to low-income
working families to help them make ends meet and remain in the workforce. For example, some states bolster earnings through
wage subsidies, earned income tax credits, or matches for individual savings accounts. In addition, many states provide work
supports like child care or transportation subsidies to help working families retain jobs, or education and training to help families
progress in the workforce. Of the various work supports that states provide, child care has received the most significant influx of
TANF funds. It is important to note that families that receive TANF-funded services and benefits, but do not receive cash
assistance, are not counted in frequently-cited TANF caseload figures. A very conservative estimate, based primarily on a recent
report by the General Accounting Office (GAO), indicates that more than one million working families receive TANF-funded
services without being counted in the caseload. More complete data available from a few states suggest that the actual number of
families receiving services in TANF-funded programs without being counted is much higher. (2)The following chart, based on data
reported by states to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, shows how states allocated the federal and state welfare
funds they used in fiscal year 2001. Less than 40 percent of funds were devoted to cash assistance — down from 70 percent in
fiscal year 1997 — while 30 percent of the funds were spent on work supports, child care, and welfare-to-work programs. Work
Requirements in the House Bill Would be Costly for States The House bill would increase the work participation rates states must
meet, increase the number of hours parents must participate in work activities, and, for the bulk of the required hours, limit the
types of activities that count toward the state's work participation rate. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that it would
cost states up to $11 billion to meet the new work participation rates — $6 billion in work program costs and $5 billion in child
care costs. If states have to comply with costly new work requirements without additional federal funds, they will not be able to
maintain the range of supports they have put in place to help low-income working families keep their jobs and make ends meet.
95
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Add On – TANF Needs More $$$
Current TANF funding is stretched and will result in poor education opportunities, which hurts
the economy.
Laurie Dinnebeil 6-22-09, Ph. D. Prof. of Early Childhood Education at the University of Toledo
Cuts proposed for programs such as Help Me Grow and Public Preschool stand to negatively impact thousands of
children ages birth to 5. As a taxpayer, a voter, and an advocate for young children and their families, I deeply respect the
difficult decisions that our legislators face in crafting a budget in the face of significant revenue shortfalls. Cutting funds to
early care and education programs, however, is shortsighted and will ultimately have long-term detrimental effects on Ohio's
economy and future global position.
Help Me Grow is a statewide effort that gives support to families of children from birth to 3 years. In Ohio, Help Me
Grow providers meet with expectant mothers, provide home visits to families of young children, and work with
parents of children who are at-risk for developmental problems or have diagnosed special needs.
Funds to support Help Me Grow are an investment in the future. This investment results in fewer children in need of
costly special education services and citizens who are better prepared to be productive (and taxpaying) members of
society. As a stop-gap measure, the Ohio Senate proposed moving $43 million for Help Me Grow from the General Revenue
Fund to Temporary Aid to Needy Families block grant funds. While this doesn't seem significant, it is, because the TANF
block grant fund is already overextended and will result in cuts to other important social services.
In addition, cutting general revenue funding for Help Me Grow will limit our ability to draw down federal Medicaid
funding and new federal home visitation funding being proposed by President Obama for the at-risk infant and toddler
home visitation program.
Lucas County is facing a 31 percent cut in Help Me Grow funding for next year. This means that one out of every three
eligible children will not have access to these important supports and there will be fewer resources to serve children with
developmental delays and medical conditions that may lead to delays. As a result, Lucas County residents can look forward
to the need for increased funding for specialized services that these children are likely to need as they grow and enter
school.In addition to cutting investments in Ohio's infants and toddlers, the proposed budget also cuts investments in
preschool-aged children by significantly reducing the support for effective, research-based programs like Public Preschool
and the Early Learning Initiative. These state-funded programs give high quality early learning experiences to preschoolers
between the ages of 3 to 5 years.
In the current budget plan, one out of every three children in Lucas County will lose the opportunity to learn in a highquality Public Preschool or ELI-funded program. These cuts don't just affect children or their families, they affect all
of us since they are likely to result in children who are not as well prepared for success in school. It will also result in
less access to child care for working families. Finally, the cuts will result in more layoffs when unemployed early
childhood teachers lose their jobs.
96
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
***ETC***
97
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: Alt Cas – States Continue Funding
States wouldn’t continue federal marriage policies – lack of funding, untested, politically
controversial.
Deborah A. Harris and Domenico “Mimmo” Parisi, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and
Social Work within the Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State University, November 29,
2005, Gender Role Ideologies and Marriage Promotion: State Policy Choices and Suggestions for
Improvement, Review of Policy Research, Volume 22 Issue 6, Pages 841 – 858
Second, the scarcity of resources is another reason why states have been reluctant to address marriage
promotion in many of their social policies. While conservative advocates were very influential about the
benefits of promoting marriage at the federal level, individual state leaders were more skeptical of marriage
promotion as an antipoverty strategy (Haskins & Blank, 2001). While there was ample evidence to draw from
regarding successful welfare-to-work programs, welfare-tomarriage was uncharted territory and many states
were unwilling to spend the funds on programs they were not sure would achieve the desired goals (Orth &
Goggin, 2003; Seefeldt & Smock, 2004). Furthermore, state leaders were concerned that shifting monies from
established programs shown to help low-income women (such as emergency and domestic violence shelters)
toward marriage promotion programs would make the issue of marriage promotion even more of a political
hot potato than originally thought (Orth & Goggin, 2003).
98
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Definition - TANF targets those “living in poverty”
TANF specifically targets families living in poverty.
Oregon DHS, Oregon Department of Human Services, 2009, “Temporary assistance for needy families (TANF),”
http://www.oregon.gov/DHS/assistance/cash/tanf.shtml
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program provides cash assistance to low-income families
with children while they strive to become self-sufficient. The program's goal is to reduce the number of families
living in poverty, through employment and community resources
99
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Child Poverty Impact - Economy
Preventing child poverty will prevent economic collapse.
Harry J. Holzer. (professor at Georgetown University and the Urban Institute) January 24, 20 07. Hearing on the economic
and Social Costs of Poverty. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/01/holzer_testimony.html
Most arguments for reducing poverty in the U.S., especially among children, rest on a moral case for doing so – one
that emphasizes the unfairness of child poverty, and how it runs counter to our national creed of equal opportunity for
all.
But there is also an economic case for reducing child poverty. When children grow up in poverty, they are more
likely as adults to have low earnings, which in turn reflect low productivity in the workforce. They are also
more likely to engage in crime and to have poor health later in life. Their reduced productive activity generates
a direct loss of goods and services to the U.S. economy. Any crime in which they engage imposes large
monetary and other personal costs on their victims, as well as the costs to the taxpayer of administering our
huge criminal justice system. And their poor health generates illness and early mortality that requires large
healthcare expenditures, impedes productivity and ultimately reduces their quality and quantity of life.
In each case, we reviewed a range of rigorous research studies that estimate the average statistical relationships
between growing up in poverty, on the one hand; and one’s earnings, propensity to commit crime and quality of health
later in life, on the other. We also reviewed estimates of the costs that crime and poor health per person impose
on the economy. Then we aggregated all of these average costs per poor child across the total number of
children growing up in poverty in the U.S. to estimate the aggregate costs of child poverty to the U.S. economy.
We had to make a number of critical assumptions about how to define and measure poverty, what level of income to
use as a non-poverty benchmark, and which effects are really caused by growing up in poverty and not simply
correlated with it.[2] Wherever possible, we made conservative assumptions, in order to generate lower-bound
estimates.
100
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Social Programs Affect Econ
Social Programs Increasingly Benefit Accounting for GNP
Paul Pierson. (American Political Scientist, author, taught at Harvard University and Berkeley) 2001.
(http://www.jstor.org/pss/25053959)
The much-discussed crisis of welfare state is now two decades old. The tremendous twentieth- century expansion of social
programs has been a remarkable feature of advanced industrial societies. In all these countries the welfare state is a
core institution, accounting for between one-fifth and one-third of GNP. Ever since the postwar economic boom ended in
the early 1970s, however, social programs have faced mounting political challenges. Questions of expansion have long since
given way to an acknowledgement of the limits to welfare state growth and the prospect for extended austerity. Despite this
fundamental change, however, we still know stunningly little about the politics of social policy retrenchment. In contrast to
our vast knowledge of the dynamics of welfare state expansion- arguably the most well-tilled subfield of comparative public
policy- welfare state retrenchment remains largely uncharted terrain. Theoretically informed discussion has been limited to
very abstract commentaries or the rather reflexive, often implicit application of propositions derived from the study of social
policy expansion.
101
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
***2AC BLOCKS***
102
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
2AC T – Substantially Increase
1. We meet increase – plan text specifies an increase in TANF funds.
2. We meet substantially – any increase in welfare would be a substantial increase.
3. Counterinterpretation – substantial is $1 billion.
Nancy Pindus 98, senior research associate at the Urban Institute and case study coordinator for
income support and social services for the Assessing the New Federalism project, “Income Support
and Social Services for Low-Income People in Texas: Highlights from State Reports”
The healthy economy in the state and additional Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (formerly Aid to
Families with Dependent Children) funding provide opportunities for Texas to invest more in its new welfare and
workforce development systems and move many families off welfare and into jobs with a future. But despite a
generally favorable political climate toward immigrants and a large budget surplus, the state continues to limit
spending on social programs in favor of tax cuts. Although Governor Bush's foremost policy initiative, a substantial
restructuring of the tax system including $1 billion in tax relief, was not passed by the legislature, the legislature
did pass H. B. 4, the homestead exemption, which resulted in a property tax cut of the same magnitude. The
legislature authorized appropriation of $1 billion in state revenues to replace local property taxes.
4. We meet the counter-interpretation – 1AC Olsen indicates that the $1.5 billion put into marriage
promotion campaigns would be used for TANF welfare programs.
5. Counterinterpretation is best:
A. Precision – It’s in the context of TANF and related policy programs – that makes it the most
predictable.
B. No impact to limits – even if their interpretation of substantially limits the topic down, it doesn’t
do it in a predictable way – kills fairness.
6. Prefer reasonability – they can always find the most limiting interpretation to exclude any aff.
Competing interpretations creates unresolvable debates that incite judge intervention. Debates
over “substantial” are uniquely bad – its meaning changes relative to its context.
Words and Phrases 02, Volume 40A
Minn. 1959. The term “substantial” is relative and its meaning is to be gauged by the circumstances – State by
Lord v. Pahl, 95 N.W 2d 85, 254 Minn. 349
103
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
2AC T – Can’t Remove a Barrier
1. We meet – We don’t remove a barrier, we only increase social services to those that aren’t
married.
2. No impact to being effectually topical – plan directly increases welfare funds for those that arn’t
married, there are no alternate steps.
3. We meet the counterinterpretation – increase means to amplify, extend, or intensify. Aff extends
TANF benefits to anyone in poverty that didn’t previously get them.
Words and Phrases 08, Volume 20B, p267
Under statue providing for modification of compensation award on ground of “increased” means amplified,
enlarged, expanded, extended or intensified or that there exists a material and substantial change for the worse
in the workman’s condition
4. AND – for means “intended to be given to”
Cambridge Dictionary of American English 2k
Intended to be given to • There’s a phone message for you on your desk. • There will be a prize for the best costume
at the Halloween party.
5. Even if the counterinterpretation unlimits, affs are bound by “for” – they must be given to all
persons living in poverty. Debates over the mechanism are far more limited than debates over
subsets.
6. Prefer reasonability – they can always find the most limiting interpretation to exclude any aff.
Competing interpretations creates unresolvable debates that incite judge intervention.
104
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
2AC T – Decrease a Social Service
1. We meet – we don’t decrease a social service – those getting married will still get the same
benefits. We only extend those same benefits to those that aren’t married.
2. No resolutional basis – rez only mandates an increase in a social service, EVEN IF we decrease
one form of social service, we still increase other forms.
3. We meet the counterinterpretation – increase means to amplify, extend, or intensify. Aff extends
TANF benefits to anyone in poverty that didn’t previously get them.
Words and Phrases 08, Volume 20B, p267
Under statue providing for modification of compensation award on ground of “increased” means amplified,
enlarged, expanded, extended or intensified or that there exists a material and substantial change for the worse
in the workman’s condition
4. AND – for means “intended to be given to”
Cambridge Dictionary of American English 2k
Intended to be given to • There’s a phone message for you on your desk. • There will be a prize for the best costume
at the Halloween party.
5. Even if the counterinterpretation unlimits, affs are bound by “for” – they must be given to all
persons living in poverty. Debates over the mechanism are far more limited than debates over
subsets.
6. Prefer reasonability – they can always find the most limiting interpretation to exclude any aff.
Competing interpretations creates unresolvable debates that incite judge intervention.
105
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: Targeting CP
1. Perm – do both. Solves 100% the policy only targets people living in poverty and the perm solves
any net benefit of extending the program further.
2. The current marriage policy only gives incentives for low-income earners – the counterplan
effectively does nothing.
3. The marriage policy specifically targets women in an attempt to manage them.
Jyl Josephson. 8/28/03. Associate Professor, Dept. of Politics and Government, Illinois State University. “Coercive
Visibility: Gender Deviance, TANF Reauthorization, and State Control of Low-Income Women and Men.”
The law is very clear regarding what kinds of educational activities related to abstinence may be funded. Among the
requirements are to teach that sexual activity outside of (heterosexual) marriage “is likely to have harmful
psychological and physical effects” and to “teach the importance of attaining self-sufficiency before engaging in
sexual activity”. Under these definitions of the proper heterosexual practice of sexuality in the abstinence only
provisions of the welfare law, women on TANF are not properly or sufficiently heterosexual women. Since most
women who receive TANF benefits are single parents either through divorce, abandonment, or non-marital
birth(s), they are failing to meet the standards of sexual behavior outlined by the law as desirable. This is by
definition true of women whose children were conceived outside of marriage, and it is by extension true of any
woman receiving TANF as a single parent who is sexually active. Consequently, the punitive aspects of the law
receive implicit justification; failed heterosexual women must be controlled and managed, by social disapproval
as well as by government policy. A number of feminist scholars have noted the connection between the kinds of
sexual shaming present in policies toward sexual minorities and toward low-income women who receive
government transfer payments such as TANF. In an influential essay urging attention to the coalitions possible
among sexually-stigmatized groups, Cathy Cohen suggests that attributions of sexual deviance to “welfare
queens” serve to “demonize and oppress various segments of the population, even some classified under the
label ‘heterosexual’.” (Cohen 2001, 218). Janet Jakobsen analyzes the naturalization of the term “family values” to
justify public policies that actually harm specific families, such as by cutting TANF benefits, noting that “only a very
specific set of assumptions can make cutting support for families seem like a coherent expression of valuing the
family” (Jakobsen 1999, 110). Jakobsen argues that this logic results from the construction of binaries that set up the
marriage/work/regulation regime as the only moral position. If the only acceptable form of family life is the very
specific neo-traditional form (Burack and Josephson 1998), then the regulation of other forms of family life via public
policy is not only justifiable but also necessary. And such regulation clearly includes sexual regulation and the
reinforcement of existing class, racial, and gender hierarchies (Jakobsen 1999, 115). Anna Marie Smith also notes
this connection between the sexual regulation of non- heterosexuals and of deviant heterosexuals. Comparing
the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) with the 1996 welfare law, Smith argues that the welfare law has “a
significant sexual regulation dimension” (Smith 2001, 304).: “Unmarried mothers are particularly singled out
for moral regulation under the PRA,” and this moral regulation is in part about improper heterosexuality
(Smith 2001, 312). Even as the state is reducing the amount of assistance available, it is increasing the degree of
intervention in the personal lives of those who receive TANF benefits. The 1996 welfare law thus “places most
of the blame for poverty...on what it regards as sexually irresponsible women” (2001, 315). The focus of the law
then becomes control of the sexual behavior of recipients, including marriage promotion policies and family
caps.
106
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
2AC Spending Non Unique
1. Huge increases in social service funding was found in the econ stimulus package, which should
have triggered their impacts.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/123501.php 08
The House on Friday voted 264-158 to approve a $60.8 billion second economic stimulus package (HR 7110) that
includes additional federal funds for Medicaid and other programs, CQ Today reports (Higa, CQ Today, 9/26). The
bill would provide $14.7 billion in additional funds for state Medicaid programs.
2. Even if they win that the stimulus package couldn’t have triggered their impacts, there is
another stimulus package solely for social services that intends to spend around 95 billion. This
makes their impact inevitable.
Suzanne Perry 09 (http://www.mrodgers-fcs.com/2009/01/nonprofit-economic-stimulus-from.html - Economic-Stimulus
Package to Help Nonprofit Groups Meet Social Needs
This package does not take up those ideas, although many of the measures to bolster the social safety net and state
finances would trickle down to charities that rely on government revenue. The proposed new spending includes:
- $87-billion to temporarily increase the federal portion of Medicaid, the health program for poor people that is
managed by the states. This will help states that are experiencing deep budget shortfalls as tax revenues fall. (See The
Chronicle’s story on state budget woes.)
- $2.1-billion to Head Start, the early-education program, to allow it to serve 110,000 additional children and create
50,000 jobs.
- $1-billion for Community Services Block Grants, which help states provide social services to low-income residents,
and $1-billion for Community Development Block Grants, which helps them provide housing and antipoverty
projects.
- $1-billion for Child Care and Development Block Grants, which help states provide child-care services to lowincome families.
- $1-billion to the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides money to states to help lowincome families pay for heat and air conditioning.
- $1-billion to help community health centers renovate their facilities, and $500-million to help them provide care to
uninsured and underinsured patients.
- $120-million to the Community Service Employment for Older Americans program, which would allow charities
and other groups to add 24,000 participants. The program pays low-income older people to take part-time communityservice jobs.
- $100-million to the Compassion Capital Fund, which provides grants to religious and other charities to provide
social services. The money would be directed to groups that provide job training, energy conservation, and other
services for low-income families.
107
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
2AC Spending Link Turn - Welfare Solves Econ
( ) Spending on social welfare creates a healthy business climate.
Joel Blau, Professor of Social Policy and Director of the PhD Program at the School of Social Welfare, Stony Brook
University, and Mimi Abramovitz, professor at the Hunter College School of Social Work, 2007, “The Dynamics of Social
Welfare Policy,” p25
Corporations also reap indirect benefits from standard social welfare programs. Although not generally looked
at in this way, as detailed later in this chapter, social welfare spending helps to create the conditions necessary for
profitable business activity. The nation's income support programs put cash into people's hands, which creates
a steady supply of consumers for the goods and services produced by private enterprise. By underwriting the
cost of family maintenance, the dollars spent on education, public health programs, Medicaid, and cash
assistance programs help to supply industry with the healthy, properly socialized, and productive workers they
need. Social welfare provisions also helps to mute social unrest by cushioning inequality in the wider social
order. By forestalling or co-opting social movements and other political disruptions, the welfare state contributes
to the social peace on which profitable economic activity also depends.
( ) Welfare benefits the economy: 3 reasons.
Joel Blau, Professor of Social Policy and Director of the PhD Program at the School of Social Welfare, Stony Brook
University, and Mimi Abramovitz, professor at the Hunter College School of Social Work, 2007, “The Dynamics of Social
Welfare Policy,” p61-62
In reality, the role of social welfare in the modern U.S. economy includes three distinct tasks that go to the heart
of our economic life. Without each one individually, and certainly without all of them together, the U.S. economy
could not operate. As indicates in chapter 2, the first task of social welfare is to reduce economic insecurity.
Social Security for the elderly performs this function, as do unemployment benefits for the unemployed and
TANF (popularly called welfare) for poor mothers and their children. By giving their recipients a little more money
to spend, these programs supplement the total amount of consumer spending in the economy and cushion the
effects of poverty. The second task of social welfare affects even more people. This task involves social
regulations that aim to protect the citizenry from the harmful consequences of the market. For example,
because the market does not put a price on air and water, it lacks a method of calculating the true cost of pollution.
When companies claim a profit, they often can do so because the real costs do not appear on their balance sheet. That
is why environmental regulations must draw on standards outside the market to preserve the quality of our air and
water. Likewise, on the job, rules about occupational safety seek to limit the risks of working in dangerous
conditions. These rules save lives. They also increase productivity, because it is employees' skills, and not
merely their fear of unemployment, that keeps them on the job. The third task involves government spending
on many aspects of the public infrastructure. The government not only spends money to provide individuals with
education and health care, it also helps to build the schools and hospitals that make these services possible.
Expanding this conception of the government's role, spending on the public infrastructure can include the
construction of piers, bridges, and highways to facilitate commercial activity, the development of industrial
zones to subsidize business, and even the maintenance of parks to provide workers with suitable forms of
recreation. Although social workers may not specifically engage in industrial development, no conception of
social welfare in the modern U.S. economy would be complete without recognizing this important role.
108
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
2AC Spending Link Turn - Poverty Kills Econ
Poverty hurts the economy: workforce participation.
Sigurd Nilsen, Director, Education, Workforce, and Income Security, U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2007, “THE
ECONOMIC AND SOCIETAL COSTS OF POVERTY,” CQ Congressional Testimony, Lexis
Economic research shows that poverty is associated with a number of adverse outcomes for individuals, such as
poor health, crime, and reduced labor market participation, and has a negative impact on the economic growth
rate. Some research suggests that adverse health outcomes are due, in part, to limited access to health care as well as
exposure to environmental hazards and engaging in risky behaviors. The economic research we reviewed also
suggests that poverty is associated with higher levels of certain types of crime. The relationship between poverty and
adverse outcomes for individuals is complex, in part because most variables, like health status, can be both a cause
and a result of poverty. Regardless of whether poverty is a cause or an effect, however, the conditions associated
with poverty can work against the development of human capital-that is the ability of individuals to remain
healthy and develop the skills, abilities, knowledge, and habits necessary to fully participate in the labor force.
Human capital development is considered one of the fundamental drivers of economic growth. An educated labor
force, for example, is better at learning, creating, and implementing new technologies.
Economic theory suggests that when poverty affects a significant portion of the population, these effects can
extend to the society at large and produce slower rates of growth. Though limited, empirical research has
demonstrated that higher rates of poverty are associated with lower rates of growth in the economy as a whole.
That’s key to the economy.
Center for American Progress 2007, “From Poverty to Prosperity: A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half,” Report and
Recommendations of the Center for American Progress Task Force on Poverty,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/04/pdf/poverty_report.pdf
Addressing poverty and economic security takes on greater urgency in the new economy. Employment for
millions is now less secure than at any point in the post-World War II era. Jobs are increasingly unlikely to
provide health care coverage and guaranteed pensions. The typical U.S. worker will change jobs numerous times
over his or her working years and must adapt to rapid technological change. One-quarter of all jobs in the U.S.
economy do not pay enough to support a family of four above the poverty line. It is in our nation’s interest that
those jobs be filled and that employment rates be high. It is not in our nation’s interest that people working in these
jobs be confined to poverty. In the global economy, the greatest potential for success turns on having an
educated, healthy, adaptable workforce. It is in all of our interests that children grow up under conditions that
prepare them for the economy of the future. Yet an estimated eight percent of all children and 28 percent of
African-American children spend at least 11 years of childhood in poverty.5 In The Economic Costs of Poverty
in the United States: The Subsequent Effects of Children Growing Up Poor, Harry Holzer, Diane Whitmore
Schanzenbach, Greg Duncan, and Jens Ludwig conclude that allowing children to grow up in persistent poverty
costs our economy $500 billion dollars per year in lost adult productivity and wages, increased crime, and
higher health expenditures.6 Holzer and his co-authors explain that children who grow up in poverty are more
likely than non-poor children to have low earnings as adults, reflecting lower workforce productivity. They are
also somewhat more likely to engage in crime (though that is not the case for the vast majority) and to have poor
health later in life. Holzer and co-authors explain: Our results suggest that the costs to the U.S. associated with
childhood poverty total about $500 billion per year, or the equivalent of nearly 4percent of Gross Domestic Product.
More specifically, we estimate that childhood poverty each year: Reduces productivity and economic output by about
1.3percent of GDP Raises the costs of crime by 1.3percent of GDP Raises health expenditures and reduces the value
of health by 1.2percent of GDP. Holzer and his co-authors emphasize that these estimates almost certainly
understate the true costs of poverty to the U.S. economy. They omit the costs associated with poor adults who
did not grow up poor as children. They do not count all of the other costs that poverty might impose on the nation,
such as environmental impacts and much of the suffering of the poor themselves. Reducing poverty would allow
more people to contribute to the economic and civic life of the nation, strengthening our economy and fortifying
our democracy.
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2AC Spending Link Turn –Poverty Kills Econ
Poverty hurts the economy: state economies.
Iris Lav, senior advisor to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Elizabeth McNichol, Senior Fellow at the Center
on Budget and Policy Priorities, 5-18-09, “State Budget Troubles Worsen,”
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=711
States are facing a great fiscal crisis. At least 47 states faced or are facing shortfalls in their budgets for this
and/or the next year or two. Combined budget gaps for the remainder of this fiscal year and state fiscal years
2010 and 2011 are estimated to total more than $350 billion. This figure, however, does not account for recent
state actions to close their 2009 budget gaps or their projected gaps for 2010 or 2011, or for the $140 billion in fiscal
relief that Congress provided for states in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. States are currently at the
mid-point of fiscal year 2009 — which started July 1 in most states — and are in the process of preparing their
budgets for the next year. Over half the states had already cut spending, used reserves, or raised revenues in
order to adopt a balanced budget for the current fiscal year — which started July 1 in most states. Now, their
budgets have fallen out of balance again. New gaps of $59 billion (some 9 percent of state budgets) have opened
up in the budgets of at least 42 states plus the District of Columbia. These budget gaps are in addition to the $48
billion shortfalls that these and other states faced as they adopted their budgets for the current fiscal year,
bringing total gaps for the year to 16 percent of budgets. The states’ fiscal problems are continuing into the next
two years. At least 46 states have looked ahead and anticipate deficits for fiscal year 2010 and beyond. These
gaps total $133 billion — 19 percent of budgets — for the 45 states that have estimated the size of these gaps and are
likely to grow as gaps are re-estimated in the next few months. The deficit figures for FY2010 and FY2009 show the
impact the economic downturn has had on state budgets. These figures are the total size of the shortfall identified by
each state listed. In some cases all or part of this shortfall has already been closed through a combination of spending
cuts, Figure 2 shows the size and duration of the deficits in the recession that occurred in the first part of this decade,
and estimates of the likely deficits this time. This recession is more severe — deeper and longer — than the last
recession, and thus state fiscal problems are likely to be worse. Unemployment, which peaked after the last
recession at 6.3 percent, has already hit 8.9 percent, and many economists expect it to rise higher, which will
reduce state income taxes and increase demand for Medicaid and other services. With consumers’ reduced access
to home equity loans and other sources of credit, sales taxes are also likely to fall more steeply than they did in the last
recession. These factors suggest that state budget gaps will be significantly larger than in the last recession. All but a
handful of states face shortfalls in fiscal year 2010. Based on past experience and the depth of this recession these
deficits will end up totaling about $145 billion. If, as is widely expected, the economy does not begin to significantly
recover until the end of calendar year 2009, state deficits are likely to be even larger in state fiscal year 2011 (which
begins in July 2010 in most states).[1] The deficits over the next two-and-a half years are likely to be in the $350
billion to $370 billion range. It may be particularly difficult for states to recover from the current fiscal
situation. Housing markets may be slow to fully recover; the decline in housing markets has already depressed
consumption and sales taxes as people refrain from buying furniture, appliances, construction materials, and
the like. Property tax revenues are also affected, and local governments will be looking to states to help address the
squeeze on local and education budgets. And as the employment situation continues to deteriorate, income tax
revenues will weaken further and there will be further downward pressure on sales tax revenues as consumers
are reluctant or unable to spend. The vast majority of states cannot run a deficit or borrow to cover their operating
expenditures. As a result, states have three primary actions they can take during a fiscal crisis: they can draw down
available reserves, they can cut expenditures, or they can raise taxes. States already have begun drawing down
reserves; the remaining reserves are not sufficient to allow states to weather a significant downturn or
recession. The other alternatives — spending cuts and tax increases — can further slow a state’s economy
during a downturn and contribute to the further slowing of the national economy, as well. Some states have not
been affected by the economic downturn but the number is dwindling. There are a number of reasons why. Some
mineral-rich states — such as New Mexico, Alaska, and Montana — saw revenue growth as a result of high oil prices.
However, the recent decline in oil prices has begun to affect revenues in some of these states. The economies of a
handful of other states have so far been less affected by the national economic problems. In states facing budget gaps,
the consequences sometimes are severe — for residents as well as the economy. Unlike the federal government,
states cannot run deficits when the economy turns down; they must cut expenditures, raise taxes, or draw down
reserve funds to balance their budgets. As the current fiscal year ends and states plan for next year, budget
difficulties have led some 36 states to reduce services to their residents, including some of their most vulnerable
families and individuals. [2] For example, at least 19 states have implemented cuts that will affect low-income
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children’s or families’ eligibility for health insurance or reduce their access to health care services. Programs for
the elderly and disabled are also being cut. At least 21 states and the District of Columbia are cutting medical,
rehabilitative, home care, or other services needed by low-income people who are elderly or have disabilities, or
significantly increasing the cost of these services. At least 22 states are cutting or proposing to cut K-12 and early
education; several of them are also reducing access to child care and early education, and at least 30 states have
implemented cuts to public colleges and universities. In addition, at least 39 states and the District of Columbia have
made cuts affecting their state workforce. Workforce cuts often result in reduced access to services residents need.
They also add to states’ woes by contracting the state economy. If revenue declines persist as expected in many
states, additional budget cuts are likely. Budget cuts often are more severe in the second year of a state fiscal
crisis, after reserves have been largely depleted and thus are no longer an option for closing deficits. The
experience of the last recession is instructive as to what kinds of actions states may take. Between 2002 and 2004
states reduced services significantly. For example, in the last recession, some 34 states cut eligibility for public health
programs, causing well over 1 million people to lose health coverage, and at least 23 states cut eligibility for child care
subsidies or otherwise limited access to child care. In addition, 34 states cut real per-pupil aid to school districts for K12 education between 2002 and 2004, resulting in higher fees for textbooks and courses, shorter school days, fewer
personnel, and reduced transportation.
That’s key to the economy.
David Patterson, Governor of New York, 2008, CQ Congressional Testimony, Lexis
When states are hurting, our national economy suffers. State governments are engines of both economic and
social progress. They are a key source of job creation in this country, through aid for small businesses,
incentives for economic investment, and workforce development programs. Likewise, investments at the state
level both expand our national tax base and lower entitlement pressures on the federal budget. For example, the
innovative Federal State Health Reform Partnership (F-SHRP) program provides federal assistance to reform our
health care industry and to deliver more cost effective services, which saves money for both levels of government. An
investment in state governments is an investment in the health of both our overall economy and the federal
budget. And, while I acknowledge that the federal government is facing fiscal difficulties of its own right now, I
submit that avoiding the long-term adverse consequences of failing to aid state governments greatly outweighs
any short-term financial costs.
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2AC Spending Link Turn – Poverty Kills Econ
Poverty hurts the economy: metropolitan economies, and that’s key.
David Cicilline, Mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, 2008, “REDUCING THE NUMBER OF FAMILIES LIVING IN
POVERTY,” CQ Congressional Testimony, Lexis
The reality is that the American economy is a metropolitan economy. In fact, the nation's 100 largest metro
areas, which make up only 12% of the nation in land area account for 68% of all jobs and 75% of national GDP.
Furthermore, as we expedite the transition of our economy into one that meets the demands of the information age and our need to become
dependent from foreign oil, the strategic importance of cities grows even more. Already, cities have 76% of the knowledge jobs and are poised to
grow an even higher proportion. Additionally, cities house our great scientific research centers that will give birth to the innovations that will power
America with new forms of energy. Also, contrary to most people's ideas about urban America, cities are the greenest places we can live based on
existing consumption patterns. Chairman Schumer, you may already know that those living in the New York metropolitan region have on average
half the carbon footprint of the average American. The more Americans that continue to move to cities, the less dependent America will be on
foreign sources of energy. Cities are the solution. But, as a nation, we are not tending our metropolitan garden. In recent years, the evolution of
cities has continued in spite of national policy, not because of it. As a result, we are severely restraining our metropolitan
transformation at a time when we need to accelerate it. Foremost among these restraints, without a doubt, is
poverty. Poverty is to a family and a community what inflation is to an economy. Its consequences spill over into
everything else and have a lasting and devastating impact. But, what makes it worse, is that there are measures
we know we can take to prevent it from persisting. Not surprisingly, the headway we made on poverty in the
1990s coincided with the metropolitan comeback. But in recent years that headway has been reversed. In my
view, one of the reasons for this is the sharp decline in funding. First Focus, the children's advocacy group on whose advisory
board I sit, recently discovered that the share of non-defense spending on kids has declined by a full 10% in just five years. And, as you know, the
Community Development Block Grant - one of our country's great domestic programs for cities - has also been significantly cut in recent years. Just
to name two examples. But you are presented with lots of statistics every day and the call for funding is constant. So my job today is to report to
you from a Mayor's perspective about what can work and is currently working to lessen poverty in our communities. I know that many view
poverty as a great complex of interrelated problems, but I view it very simply. Poverty is a lack of opportunity. So to me, the fight is not so much a
war on poverty as it is a war for opportunity. The long-term answer does not lie in merely relieving the stresses and pain of poverty. The long-term
answer lies in rebuilding upward mobility in America. The war for opportunity means rebuilding the economic ladder. When there is
upward mobility there is hope. Families will work harder to make sure their children are educated, stay out of
trouble and develop a strong work ethic. But when there is not, it creates the environment for many of the
social ills that can ruin lives and drive up the costs of social programs. Unfortunately, all across the country, the economic
ladder has been badly weakened in recent years. It used to be that the American Dream was available to anyone who was willing to work hard
enough, but in today's economy too many families are doing everything right and still getting left behind. At my second inauguration in 2006, I
identified this as one of the highest priorities for my city. I signed an executive order creating a task force made up of our foremost experts on
workforce development, poverty, and early childhood development and family supports. I asked them to offer me their best recommendations for
what we can do at the city level - as a government and as a community - to reestablish upward mobility for our working poor, and to help re-build
the middle class in our city. They developed a set of action steps called Pathways to Opportunity to move people into the workforce, keep them in
the workforce, and open up more opportunity to get ahead once they're in. With the report in hand, I formed a partnership with the Annie E. Casey
foundation, to open an office that is charged with overseeing the implementation of these recommendations in coordination with the city and the
agencies that helped to develop them. It also serves as a community-based site for residents to connect to new opportunities. We have launched a
number of ambitious projects as part of this initiative. We initiated a major long-term effort to rebuild many of our old and decaying school
facilities and replace them with 21st-century learning environments. As part of this, we launched a large-scale apprenticeship program in the
construction trades. We have young people from across the city who are integral parts of these major construction efforts that involve cutting edge
green technology and learning how to build to LEED standard. We have partnered with our hospitals that are facing a serious nursing shortage to
get young people access to the skills they need to begin a good career in the health care field. Taking the lead from Brookings' work on "the high
cost of being poor," we are working with local banks in an organization called Bank on Providence. It is developing financial instruments
specifically designed for low-wage families and individuals. I am also working with the state legislature to regulate the ability of predatory lenders
and check cashers to extract usurious rates and charges from their customers - most of whom haven't been able to access mainstream banking
services. We are aggressively engaging with ex-offenders who come back to their communities to make absolutely sure they meet all of their reentry obligations or else face consequences. But at the same time ensuring that the support necessary for their success is in place. These are a few
examples of the kinds of meaningful, measurable, and effective strategies being undertaken by this office. It is all about creating more opportunities
and removing any barriers to existing opportunities. Mr. Chairman and honorable members of the committee, if I had more time I would love to
also describe to you the incredible effect that city-wide after school is having in Providence. I'd like to describe the success we've had with
integrating our police force with the communities they serve. There is so much that has an effect on opportunity and poverty that we know will be
effective. But instead I will quickly conclude with a general comment. Our cities represent tremendous opportunities for our
21st-century economy. We can unleash that potential by making opportunity for every American a national
priority again. After all, the other name for a robust economic ladder and upward mobility is the American Dream.
That is what made our economy the envy of the world, and it is the only way we can preserve its position in our
global economy.
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AT: Cap K
Turn – marriage incentives entrench capitalism, focusing only on upper class values.
Emily Amick, The Nation, March 6, 2007, “Marrying Absurd: The Bush Administration's attempts to
encourage marriage,” http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070319/marrying
In The State of our Unions 2006: The Social Health of Marriage in America, the National Marriage Project, much
like The New York Times' "51 percent" article, focuses on upper-middle class career women. The project tells a
story in which women's increasing education and independence has caused them to abandon marriage and fulltime motherhood at alarming rates. According to the report, while motherhood used to be women's primary
passion, today women are more motivated by work, sex, and romantic love, shunting children off to the wayside.
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2AC AT: States CP (1/6)
1. Counterplan flaw – states can’t legally end marriage incentives because they’re federal policies.
2. Legislative patriarchy – counterplan doesn’t have the federal government end marriage
incentives –patriarchy and hetero-normativity are still embedded in the law, that triggers our
advantages. That’s X.
3. Perm – do the plan and the counterplan.
4. Federal role is key – the federal government has empirically had a unique post Civil war
responsibility to maintain a national standard of equality
Weil, 06 – President of the Food Research and Action Center (James, Clearinghouse REVIEW Journal of Poverty Law and
Policy, May–June 2006, “The Federal Government—the Indispensable Player in Redressing Poverty,”
http://www.frac.org/pdf/Weil06.pdf
If economic insecurity and poverty were trivial matters, the federal government would not need to become
heavily involved. But they are not trivial matters. The damage that poverty, unequal opportunity, and material
deprivation inflict on people is deeply injurious to our democracy as well as our economy—one key reason that they
must be a matter of fundamental concern to the society as a whole and compel a national response. As Aristotle wrote:
It is therefore the greatest of blessings for a state that its members should possess a moderate and adequate property.
Where some have great possessions, and others have nothing at all, the result is either an extreme democracy or an
unmixed oligarchy; or it may even be … a tyranny.… … Where democracies have no middle class, and the poor are
greatly superior in number, trouble ensues, and they are speedily ruined.23 Similarly Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt said
that “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.… People who are hungry and
out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”24 Poverty quashes the spirit and saps the energy of
America’s workers and parents, and this weakens the economy and dulls the political vibrancy of the nation. Denial of
opportunity corrodes the American social compact. Parental and child poverty reduces infant birth weight; harms
health and mental health; leads to higher rates of disabilities, impairments, and injury; causes school absenteeism,
lower achievement scores, and higher special education and dropout rates; and leads to higher rates of delinquency
and other self-destructive and antisocial behavior during adolescence.25 America’s high rate of child poverty costs the
nation an estimated $130 billion per year (in 1996 dollars).26 Those issues that America cares about and is serious
about tackling receive a national response. Having federal atten- tion is not just a matter of marshaling resources;
it is also an ongoing statement about the centrality of the issue and the needs of those affected in our national
value system. It raises the ranking of an issue in the hierarchy of the nation’s concerns and makes it a matter of
sustained and extensive concern. Symbolically as well as programmatically and organizationally, when something
matters to our society, the federal government is assigned important tasks. Thus a preeminent federal role is a
national political and moral statement about poverty and economic security. One part of that statement has to
reflect a societal commitment to some national minimum standard of well-being. All people who live in this
country, wherever they live, should have access to certain essentials in life. Too much inequality from state to
state subverts the post–Civil War concept of the nation and subverts our political and economic roles in the world.
The low-income people of Alabama and Mississippi should not lack access to primary health care if everyone
else has it. The people of New Mexico and Oklahoma should not go hungry, the people of Massachusetts should
not freeze in winter, the seniors of Minnesota should not have to live in shelters, children in Texas should not have
to go without support from their fathers, and young children in North Carolina should not have to work in cotton mills
because we have no national standard of minimal decency and their states have chosen to deny them the basics.27 The
other dimension of fundamental national morality is race, and the ongoing need to redress the nation’s history of
racial injustice. The post–Civil War amendments to the U.S. Constitution redefined the concept of national
citizenship and gave the national government the primary responsibility to ensure equal rights and opportunity
for all Americans. Nearly a century and a half later, this responsibility is undiminished, as is the need for the
nation, through its national institutions, to fulfill the responsibility. The historian John Hope Franklin concluded
his autobiography with an impassioned plea to meet the particular needs of young African- American males. After
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describing the history of violence, racism, and economic deprivation that they have faced, Franklin writes: [O]ur
society as a whole and the fate of the least among us are inextricably woven together. And our entire social system
bears the special responsibility for the plight of these young people who, in a very real way, may be regarded as a
metaphor for the ills of our society and the problems we face.… [T]hey must be reached, through legis- lation,
goodwill, understanding, and compassion. The test of an advanced society is not in how many millionaires it can
produce, but in how many lawabiding, hardworking, highly respected, and self-respecting loyal citizens it can
produce. The success of such a venture is a measure of the success of our national enterprise.28 Our moral and
political success depends on the quality of our national enterprise, but so, as discussed below, d Federal
Management of the Economy Is Essential in the Fight for Opportunity and Against Poverty When
political debate turns to the national role of fostering opportunity and reducing poverty, the default assumption is that
the speaker is talking about spending—especially spending on social insurance and means-tested welfare, health,
child care, nutrition, and similar programs—and the comparative advantage that the federal government has in raising
revenue, creating such programs, and spending adequate sums on those programs. In much of this article I focus as
well on the spending issues. But the federal government does much more to combat domestic poverty and to
improve economic security and opportunity in its other roles of manager of the national economy and regulator of
labor, business, and international affairs. A full discussion of these roles is beyond the scope of this article, but
consider the impact on poverty, opportunity, and economic security of just the examples on the following list: ■ The
balance struck by the Federal Reserve Bank, in managing interest rates and the money supply, between keeping the
inflation rate low versus pushing toward full employment and keeping the economy growing rapidly and real wages
increasing. The highest poverty rates in the last forty years were in the early 1980s when unemployment skyrocketed
as “the Fed” drove up interest rates to control inflation.29 ■ The role of federal fiscal as well as monetary policy in
stabilizing the economy and limiting the depth of recessions and the growth of unemployment. ■ The federal
government support for or hostility to labor organizing. ■ The level of the federal minimum wage. ■ The federal rules
regarding bankruptcy and the extent to which destitute individuals and families can get a fresh start or are
enmeshed in endless debt. ■ The regulation of private pensions and the extent to which the government strengthens that system or allows pension
underfunding and corporate bankruptcy laws to undercut security for workers when they retire.30 ■ The extent to which the government does or
does not tax the earnings of low-income people and thereby deepen or alleviate their poverty. ■ Whether the government protects workers against
job and earnings loss when family circumstances, such as the birth of a child or a spouse’s or child’s illness, interrupt the ability to work. ■ How the
federal government defines overtime eligibility and overtime pay. ■ The ways in which tax policy subsidizes housing, health care, child care, and
other basics and work supports, and the degree of subsidy at different income levels. ■ Federal immigration policy and labor and public benefits
policy for immigrants. ■ The scope, strength, and level of enforcement of civil rights laws, including laws requiring equal pay and fair credit. ■ The
definition of which political, civil, and economic rights receive special protection under the Constitution. ■ The way in which the federal
government defines poverty and counts the number of poor people—this going far toward shaping public attitudes as to
how widespread poverty is and how deep the deprivation involved is. In all of these areas the federal government
has the predominant role. In some areas it has an exclusive role according to the Constitution. In others its exclusive
authority is not constitutionally mandated, but, when it acts, it preempts state action. In yet other areas it may not be
preemptive, but it still became a dominant or important presence in the twentieth century as the national ideal evolved
and the economy changed. Many of these areas of federal action, of course, are seen as being “about” the economy,
not “about” opportunity or economic security or poverty. But often they also have a more profound impact, for good
or ill, on poverty and opportunity and security than most spending decisions. By definition, then, the federal
government is taking a leading role on these matters. The key question is whether increasing economic security
and opportunity and reducing poverty—reducing suffering and deprivation among the American people— is
an important consideration in the development of these policies. When it is, the poor will be better off, and
spending policy will complement that. When it is not, the poor will suffer, and spending policy will not be able to
redress that. In no area of American life are these interactions as serious, and so contentious, as when race
discrimination is involved. As President Bush said in his speech in New Orleans two weeks after Hurricane Katrina
hit: [T]here’s also some deep, persistent poverty in this region, as well. That poverty has roots in a history of racial
discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this
poverty with bold action.… [W]e’re tied together in this life, in this nation….31 The two periods of greatest
leaps in empowering and creating opportunity for African Americans in our nation—the Reconstruction period
after the Civil War and the period of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s—were periods of political
and economic progress complemented by federal spending policy. In both instances the economic change created
through access to property, to jobs, to political power, to the courts, and to education dwarfed that created by
new federal spending initiatives. But, in both periods, spending initiatives were an important secondary source of
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change.32 And both produced a fierce reaction stemming from the defense of the economic and political power of
whites and of economic elites. Both times the challenge to poverty, economic injustice, and racial discrimination
slowed or reversed. In other words, political cycles tend to drive federal economic management and federal spending
policy to move in tandem: both are likely to be inadequate for the poor when political weakness means that the
national government can ignore their needs. For example, in the last few years Congress passed damaging bankruptcy law changes and the Bush administration sought damaging changes in overtime and civil rights policy, while
Congress cut Medicaid, child support, child care, and other spending for the poor. But when spending and economic
policy are positive and complement each other, great strides can be made in increasing opportunity and reducing
poverty. The mid- and late 1990s, while far from ideal, saw economic policy (e.g., low unemployment and a higher
minimum wage) complementing some spending policy (e.g., an increase in the earned income tax credit) to a degree
that poverty (particularly African American poverty and poverty in families headed by single women) dropped
significantly, even in the face of the aftershocks of the 1996 welfare law.33
4. Object fiat is bad.
A. Steals aff ground – object fiat moots the 1AC impacts – this makes it impossible to
generate offense.
B. Unfair research burden – object fiat allows the neg to fiat away our harms – they would
never have to research new counterplans
C. Voter for fairness and education
5. States can’t solve – only the federal government has the appropriate resources to respond to
poverty. They can’t fiat this away – state funding capacity has empirically been a fundamental
problem.
Weil, 06 – President of the Food Research and Action Center (James, Clearinghouse REVIEW Journal of Poverty Law
and Policy, May–June 2006, “The Federal Government—the Indispensable Player in Redressing Poverty,”
http://www.frac.org/pdf/Weil06.pdf
In addressing poverty and economic security through social insurance, means-tested benefits, and other antipoverty
efforts, the federal fiscal advantage is decisive. Personal poverty is the result of individuals and families lacking
income and resources, and one central answer to that poverty is helping increase their income and resources. Some
states and localities are far less able to respond to this need than others. Moreover, places with the most poor
people generally are the places with the greatest shortage of resources. Community poverty and personal poverty are
entwined. If jobs are scarce and wages are low, then per-capita income is low and so are local or state tax
revenues. The locality or state cannot mount an adequate or robust response to the poverty.34 Because of
disparate resource bases, the states’ responses to poverty become widely disparate.35 While disentangling
political from fiscal factors is difficult (and the political factors themselves have economic causes), clearly state and
local funding capacity is a fundamental problem. In 1935, before Congress passed the Aid to Dependent
Children program (later renamed the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program) as part of the Social Security
Act, the Committee on Economic Security, in its recommendations that led to the Act, reported:36 Less than one-half
of the local units [of government] authorized to grant mothers’ aid are actually doing so. Many others are
granting amounts insufficient to defend the children involved. Part of this situation is due to indifference, but in
part it is due to the poverty of many local government units….37 Today we still see vast disparities in payment
levels in TANF, the successor to mothers’ aid and Aid to Families with Dependent Children, as well as in eligi- bility
levels for Medicaid benefits among parents, in state child care and preschool policies, and in other areas left to state
and local control—and resources.38 The disparities,
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moreover, are enduring. Localities, states, and regions are beset by long-term poverty and economic distress.
In 1970 the per-capita income of the wealthiest state (Connecticut) was 194 percent that of the poorest state
(Mississippi).39 In 2004, nearly two generations later, Connecticut still had percapita income 187 percent
that of Mississippi.40 Similarly in 2004 the five states with the highest incidence of poverty (Mississippi,
21.6 percent; Louisiana, 19.4 percent; New Mexico, 19.3 percent; District of Columbia, 18.9 percent; West
Virginia, 17.9 percent; Arkansas, 17.9 percent) and the District of Columbia had rates more than twice as
high as the six with the lowest incidence (Maryland, 8.8 percent; New Jersey, 8.5 percent; Minnesota, 8.3
percent; Alaska, 8.2 percent; New Hampshire, 7.6 percent; Connecticut, 7.6 percent).41 While some
differences in the costs of living between many wealthy and many poor states are real, those differences
narrow in effect but hardly eliminate the poverty rate and resource disparities. States such as Mississippi,
Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisiana (as seen vividly after Hurricane Katrina) suffer from longterm
deprivation that robs them of the public resources they need to combat poverty and maximize opportunity.
The federal government response to these human needs and these state resource disparities is a set of
social welfare and antipoverty programs that often are completely or overwhelmingly federally funded
(e.g., social security, Supplemental Security Income, school lunches, Medicare, food stamps, refundable
earned income tax credit, and child tax credit) or in which poorer states receive a higher level of federal
matching funds (e.g., Medicaid). These financing mechanisms— and these and other programs to improve
economic security, cover health care insurance, and reduce poverty—have proven to be both effective and
durable. Some have suggested that most or all antipoverty programs should be designed as well as operated
completely at the state or local level even if the federal government is needed for robust funding. Federally
funded block grants generally are an example of this. Certainly the relative amount of federal power over the
design of a program should differ markedly depending on the type of program it is. Income support for
retired seniors based on a fixed formula or for families with children through the tax code has imperatives
different from those of community development spending where a national bureaucracy likely would be too
rigid and distant to make first-rate allocation decisions. Most programs, even when overwhelmingly
federally funded, do operate with shared federal and state or local responsibility for program design; and
most have primary state or local responsibility for the day-to-day administration of benefits. But generally
programs in which the federal government provides money but has no meaningful programmatic role tend to
be unsuccessful or short-lived. Over time Congress and the Executive Branch lose interest when they are not
engaged in program design, much less control, and so funding erodes, often dramatically. Title XX of the
Social Security Act, which funds social services, the revenue- sharing program that Pres. Richard Nixon
started, and many of the block grants that Congress created at Pres. Ronald Reagan’s behest in 1981–82 are
examples. By contrast, when the federal government provides both funds and direction, the outcome
usually is better. Some of these programs are so successful that we no longer remember how deep
(how “intractable”—to use a phrase often applied to the problems of the poor) the problems that they tried
to solve supposedly were. Social security, Supplemental Security Income, Job Corps, Medicare, Medicaid,
Head Start, school lunch and school breakfast, food stamps, child support enforcement, immunizations, and
the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (commonly known as the
WIC program) are among the many programs that fit this model. All of this focus on the federal role is not
to denigrate the importance of state action, innovation, experimentation, flexibility, and leadership.42 They
all play a key role. But too often such actions are small-scale or vulnerable to quick political
shifts or (no matter how successful) do not spread into very many other states unless the
federal government takes the lead. The states and localities are not the only entities that do not
have adequate resources for the job. As helpful as are private charities, they simply do not have sufficient
resources to substitute for the federal government either. The Red Cross that ran out of food vouchers in
England, Arkansas, in 1931 raised considerable funds after Hurricane Katrina and did not run out of money,
but that was in significant part because its resources were dwarfed by the federal response. One difference
between 1931 and 2005, for example, was that the federal Disaster Food Stamp Program quickly issued
hundreds of millions of dollars worth of food vouchers in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi.43 When
President Bush spoke in September 2005 in New Orleans, two weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit, the charity
for Katrina relief that his father and Pres. Bill Clinton had begun had gathered $100 million in pledges,
while Congress had appropriated $60 billion for the effort.44 One sector besides the national government
117
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
2AC AT: States CP (5/6)
does, in theory, have adequate resources for a job as big as redressing poverty: the private, for-profit sector.
That sector plays the central role in generating the productivity and growth that make economic security
possible for most people. But experience makes clear that growth alone will not foster adequate opportunity
and security for workers at the bottom, much less for those who cannot work. As Christopher Jencks has
written: [A] market economy is not designed to ensure that workers get paid what other people think they
deserve. The logic of a market economy is that we should all be paid the smallest amount that will ensure
that our work gets done, and that is what low-wage workers generally receive.45 The work of ensuring
equal opportunity, adequate economic opportunity, and the redress of poverty is left, then, to the public
sector.
5. 50 state fiat is a voter
A. Not real world – all 50 states have never uniformly passed legislation
B. Research burden – the aff is forced to research all 50 state TANF policies
C. Voter for fairness and education
6. Recessions make federal action key – only the federal government can run a deficit; states can’t.
Weil, 06 – President of the Food Research and Action Center (James, Clearinghouse REVIEW Journal of Poverty Law and
Policy, May–June 2006, “The Federal Government—the Indispensable Player in Redressing Poverty,”
http://www.frac.org/pdf/Weil06.pdf
Not only is there a long-term disparity in state resources (and state poverty rates) that calls for a national
response, but also there are short-term spikes in need and troughs in resources that exacerbate long-term
disparities or that themselves create a more urgent need for federal investment. Some of these are caused by
natural or man-made disasters—a September 11 attack or a Hurricane Katrina. Most have economic causes.
Although to some significant degree state economic trends move “in sync” with the nation’s economy,
sometimes a local, state, or regional economy diverges from the direction of the nation as a whole. An industry
or economic sector such as defense or the Internet or agriculture or oil and gas is hit hard by its own
climatic, economic, or political cycle or by worldwide supply and demand forces. In such circumstances, a
state faces a “double whammy.” First, its people have greater need for help: unemployment rises; wages,
private health insurance coverage, and other benefits decline; poverty grows. Second, state tax resources
decline. The state has declining capacity to cope with rising need, even if other states and the nation as a
whole do not face similar problems. In these circumstances the national government, with its ability to
distribute resources across state lines, can be particularly effective in responding, meeting the growing
need, and priming the local economic pump with countercyclical spending. The Federal Fiscal Advantage Is
Even More Pronounced During a Nationwide Economic Problem When the nation as a whole faces particularly
rough times—that is, during a widespread recession—the federal government is the one that has the
resources to respond. The recession means that need increases in many geographic areas for job creation,
unemployment insurance, public assistance, and other spending to keep families from suffering greater
deprivation as their earnings decline or disappear. The private market cannot respond: businesses are the
ones laying people off and reducing wages. Charities and state and local governments face declining resources
themselves as their contributions and tax revenues shrink. In these circumstances, although the federal
government suffers shrinking tax revenues also, the federal government has the ability to run a deficit—to
increase essential social spending even in the face of declining revenues. States generally cannot. They may
have tied their own hands with balanced-budget provisions in their constitutions, so their inability to respond has
political as well as fiscal origins, but their inability to respond is indisputable. The federal government’s ability
to borrow not only gives it the resources to act, and act decisively, but also makes it the unique
countercyclical actor—it can spend in a way that softens the impact of the recession and should stabilize
118
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
2AC AT: States CP (6/6)
the economy and restart growth. Individual states do not have comparable capacity or the same interest in
taking large fiscal risks to prime the national economy, especially because other states may not be sharing
the burden and doing the same.
119
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
States 1AR Ext. #1
2AC 1 – States have no jurisdiction over federal policies – marriage incentives can only be
decreased by the federal government.
This takes out the entire counterplan – the Supreme Court would just strike down the counterplan
because it violates the separation of powers.
120
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
States 1AR Ext. #2
2AC 2 – Counterplan does nothing to remedy federal responsibility – State action does not change
federal policy toward marriages. Even if they win that states would be able to increase welfare
funds to non-married women, the federal government would still be intervening in relationships
between impoverished persons – that’s the crucial internal link to our advantages.
Case is a disad to the counterplan – X says federal policies are creating legislative patriarchy where
single minority women are oppressed by the law. [insert impact calc when we finish 1ac impacts]
121
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
States 1AR Ext. #4
2AC 4 – Counterplan uses object fiat, that’s a voter. The plan requires states to allocate TANF
funds whereas the counterplan just fiats the states allocating funds. This is bad:
First it steals aff ground – we can’t generate any offense against the counterplan because it unfairly
fiats plan solvency. That makes it impossible for the aff to win debates. Also, it moots critical 1AC
time used to generate offense – that puts unfair time pressure on the 2AC, hurting aff time
allocation. Fairness is crucial to preserve debate otherwise the negative would always win.
Second, this destroys neg research burden – the neg will always win the counterplan because they
get to fiat away our harms. That destroys in depth topic education because every debate will be a
counterplan that uses object fiat
122
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: States CP – States Can’t Decrease Incentives
States can’t decrease marriage incentives – states over ruling federal law violates the Constitution
Gary Imhoff, Washington writer and vice president of DC Watch,11-26-06, DC Watch
The reason that DC has to obey an “old federal law” is because of an even older US Constitution, which made
the national government preeminent over state governments. I think that Bill and Larry misunderstand what was
at stake in this case. The Johnson Act, the major federal law regulating gambling devices, is a national law that applies
nationally. The section of the law that applies specifically to the District of Columbia also applies to almost all areas
that are not states or are otherwise directly under federal control, such as US territories and possessions, Army bases,
and so on. The sponsors of the slots casino initiative and the DC Board of Elections and Ethics held that the DC city
council, and thus an initiative passed by DC voters, could overturn, repeal, or amend the Johnson Act. They held, in
fact, that DC could overturn any federal law passed by the US Congress and codified in the US code, if that law
applies only to the District of Columbia. Larry and Bill agree. They argue that DC citizens’ rights are harmed if the
DC city council isn’t given priority over the US Congress, if it doesn’t have the power to overturn federal laws that
apply to the District of Columbia. But no state has the power to overturn federal laws, and DC isn’t shortchanged
in any way by not being given that power. Bill’s and Larry’s position goes much further than home rule or self
government, by a long stretch. Before the Civil War, an extreme version of states rights theory held what Larry and
Bill say, that a state should be able to nullify a federal law and overturn a federal law within that state. However, the
theory of nullification held only that a state could overturn a federal law that it believed to be unconstitutional. Larry
and Bill, the slots proponents, and the Board of Elections promote what would have been an extreme form even of
nullification — that DC should be able to overturn any federal law applying to DC, whether or not the city council
believed it was unconstitutional. The Civil War settled permanently any doubt about whether the federal
government or the states were preeminent, and whether state law could trump federal law. Since then
nullification theory has been unquestionably invalid. No state can overturn federal law, and DC’s power isn’t
greater than that of the states. Judge Judith Retchin in the Superior Court got that question wrong, and the decision of
the Court of Appeals simply affirmed that. It didn’t curtail DC’s powers in any way; it just affirmed that in this respect
DC citizens have the same rights as all other citizens, no less but also no greater. If we want to change national law,
we have to change it at a national level; we can’t do it in the city council or by a local initiative. If Larry and Bill
want DC’s lawmakers to be more powerful than Congress, then statehood won’t satisfy their ambitions — DC will
have to become an independent nation.
123
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: States CP – States Have To Incentivize Marriage
TANF aims at strengthening marriage, and requires states to carry out their plan.
(Robin Cohen, Principal Analyst, 09 29 01, “Marriage incentives in State Welfare Law,”
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2001/rpt/olr/htm/2001-r-0786.htm)
TANF addresses marriage and single parenthood in a very frank and urgent manner. The text of the act begins
with a "findings" section in which Congress characterizes the increasing numbers of teen pregnancies and out-ofwedlock births as a "crisis." The findings include a statement that marriage is the "foundation of a successful society"
and an "essential institution of a successful society which promotes the interests of children." The findings end with a
resolution that federal welfare law must address the problem of teen pregnancies and out-of-wedlock births. (The
legislation acknowledges that some families cannot and should not stay together with its inclusion of domestic
violence exceptions.) Three of TANF's four enumerated purposes include language directly related to strengthening
families. These include (1) ending the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job
preparation, work, and marriage; (2) preventing and reducing the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies and
establishing numerical goals for achieving such; and (3) encouraging the formation and maintenance of two-parent
families. The legislation contains numerous provisions aimed directly at the enumerated purposes. For example,
it requires a state's plan for implementing the block grant (state plan) to establish the above stated goals of teen
pregnancy prevention and illegitimacy reduction for the period 1996 through 2005. Moreover, it offers cash incentives
to states that successfully reduce their illegitimacy rates by providing $20 million annually to each of the five states
with the greatest success in reducing out-of-wedlock births without increasing the number of abortions. The grant
amount rises to $25 million if there are fewer than five eligible states. The act permits states to deny assistance to
unmarried teen parents with children. (Connecticut has not exercised this latter option.) Some might argue that the
act's work requirements, which tie the receipt of assistance to participation in work activities and penalize both the
recipients and the states when they fail to meet these requirements, induce women to think twice about having
children or to look more favorably upon the institution of marriage. Or, they might have the opposite effect, especially
since education and training are discouraged in favor of immediate work in any available job.
124
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: States - Resources
States fail – resource constraints.
Deborah A. Harris and Domenico “Mimmo” Parisi, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and
Social Work within the Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State University, November 29,
2005, Gender Role Ideologies and Marriage Promotion: State Policy Choices and Suggestions for
Improvement, Review of Policy Research, Volume 22 Issue 6, Pages 841 – 858
Second, the scarcity of resources is another reason why states have been reluctant to address marriage
promotion in many of their social policies. While conservative advocates were very influential about the
benefits of promoting marriage at the federal level, individual state leaders were more skeptical of marriage
promotion as an antipoverty strategy (Haskins & Blank, 2001). While there was ample evidence to draw from
regarding successful welfare-to-work programs, welfare-tomarriage was uncharted territory and many states
were unwilling to spend the funds on programs they were not sure would achieve the desired goals (Orth &
Goggin, 2003; Seefeldt & Smock, 2004). Furthermore, state leaders were concerned that shifting monies from
established programs shown to help low-income women (such as emergency and domestic violence shelters)
toward marriage promotion programs would make the issue of marriage promotion even more of a political
hot potato than originally thought (Orth & Goggin, 2003).
125
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: States - Resources
States can’t continue policies-budget problems governments don’t work
Associated Press Writers Juliet Williams, Samantha Young, Don Thompson in Sacramento, Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus,
Paul Davenport in Phoenix, Christopher Wills in Springfield, Ill., Mike Smith in Indianapolis, Susan Haigh in Hartford,
Conn., Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Miss., and Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg contributed to this report.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — July 1, 2009
Legislators in more than a half-dozen states, their revenues evaporating in the recession, frantically worked to stave off
government shutdowns and devastating service cuts. California failed to meet a midnight deadline and now may need to issue
IOUs instead of paying bills. Across the country, lawmakers were feeling the heat as their legislatures began the new fiscal
year without a budget in place. In Illinois, the sputtering drive to come up with a state budget broke down completely
Tuesday, leaving the state without any plan for paying its employees or delivering government services. The session ended
without any firm plans to return or even for Gov. Pat Quinn and legislative leaders to resume negotiations. In Pennsylvania,
talks between Gov. Ed Rendell and top legislators ended Tuesday night with no substantial progress, aides said. Rendell said
he didn't think an agreement would come soon. The state faces the prospect of not being able to pay state employees if they
cannot resolve an impasse. The end of June marked the end of the fiscal year in many states, meaning lawmakers worked late
Tuesday to pass budgets in a year that has seen the recession take a devastating toll on government finances. Fallout from
California's budget mess threatened to spread nationwide because of the sheer size of the state's economy. The Senate
rejected three bills designed to save $5 billion, including $3.3 billion in education funding cuts that had to be enacted before
Wednesday. Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat, called Republicans' refusal to vote for the measures
"an irresponsible position to take." At least two Republican votes were needed to put together the two-thirds majorities
required to approve the legislation, which passed the Assembly last week with bipartisan support. Arizona, Indiana, Ohio,
Connecticut and Mississippi also were among the other states that raced against the clock to pass budgets _ and avoid
crippling consequences. Faced with a budget stalemate, the Ohio House voted in favor of a seven-day spending plan that will
allow the state to keep operating while budget talks continue, the first temporary budget Ohio has been forced to approve in
18 years. Indiana narrowly averted a large-scale government shutdown after coming to terms on a budget. Mississippi
lawmakers approved most of the $6 billion budget, but left one agency _ the state's utility regulatory agency _ unfunded. The
Public Service Commission said it didn't know how the agency would continue to function, but Gov. Haley Barbour has said
he can run the agency by executive order. In Connecticut, Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed an executive order to keep the
government running without a two-year budget in place. While she contends the average taxpayer won't notice any change,
municipal officials fear delays in state grants that fund everything from road repairs to education. In the wee hours
Wednesday, the Arizona Legislature completed action on budget bills to implement most of a compromise $8.4 billion
budget negotiated with Gov. Jan Brewer. Lawmakers omitted a sales tax increase that Brewer wanted, and his spokesman
declined to say if he would sign the bills. In Pennsylvania, state workers will receive only partial pay on July 17 and July 24,
after which paychecks will be withheld entirely until the impasse is solved. They will then be paid retroactively. Rendell said
10 banks and credit unions have agreed to help 69,000 state employees by offering them low- or no-interest loans and lines of
credit. In most states, the debate centers around whether states should be raising taxes to bridge the budget gaps. California
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he wouldn't sign anything that raised taxes or fees beyond what he has already proposed.
“They should forget about that," the Republican governor said, accusing Democrats of going through a "song and dance. Let's
get to work, fix it. "State Controller John Chiang has said he would have to start issuing the IOUs on Thursday unless
lawmakers took steps to stem the state's red ink by then. Roughly $3 billion worth of IOUs will be issued in July unless a
compromise on closing the deficit is reached quickly. They will be sent to state contractors, college students, welfare
recipients, low-income seniors, the disabled and others who depend on or deliver state services. Counties will not get paid for
social programs they administer.
126
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: States – Federal Government Key to Marriage Incentives
The Federal Government is key to marriage incentives programs – they have the biggest
responsibility to decrease them
(Robert Rector, Domestic Policy Studies Senior Researcher in the Heritage Foundation, 02 10 05,
“Welfare Reform and the Healthy Marriage Incentive,”
http://www.heritage.org/research/welfare/tst021005a.cfm)
First, the government is already massively involved when marriages either fail to form or break
apart. Each year, the government spends over $150 billion in subsidies to single parents. Much of
this expenditure would have been avoided if the mothers were married to the fathers of their
children. This cost represents government efforts to pick up the pieces and contain the damage
when marriage fails. To insist that the government has an obligation to support single parents—
and to control the damage that results from the erosion of marriage—but should do nothing to
strengthen marriage itself is myopic. It is like arguing that the government should pay to sustain
polio victims in iron lung machines but should not pay for the vaccine to prevent polio in the first
place. Second, the government is already heavily (and counterproductively) involved in individual
marriage decisions, given that government welfare policies discourage marriage, by penalizing
low-income couples who do marry and by rewarding those who do not. The President’s Healthy
Marriage Initiative would take the first steps to reduce these anti-marriage penalties. Third, under
the President’s initiative, the government would not “intrude” into private matters concerning
marriage, since all participation in the marriage promotion program would be voluntary. Nearly all
Americans believe in the institution of marriage and hope for happy and long-lasting marriages for
themselves and their children. Very few wish for a life marked by a series of acrimonious and
broken relationships. The President’s program would offer services to couples seeking to improve
the quality of their relationships. It would provide couples seeking healthy and enduring marriages
with skills and training to help them to achieve that goal. To refuse services and training to lowincome couples who are actively seeking to improve their relationships because “marriage is none
of the government’s business” is both cruel and shortsighted. Finally, the government has a longestablished interest in improving the well-being of children. For instance, the government funds
Head Start because the program will ostensibly increase the ability of disadvantaged children to
grow up to become happy and productive members of society. It is clear that healthy marriage has
substantial, long-term, positive effects on children’s development: Conversely, the absence of a
father or the presence of strife within a home both have harmful effects on children. If government
has a legitimate role in seeking to improve child wellbeing through programs such as Head Start, it
has a far more significant role in assisting children by fostering healthy marriage within society.
127
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
2AC AT: Essentialism
1.) No link – the entirety of the 1AC examines how women who have different races, classes, and
sexual orientations have different experiences in the world. Nothing about the 1AC indicates that
ALL poor people have bad marriages – we merely say that it is bad to coerce people into marriage.
2.) Perm do both –
a.) It’s legitimate – It does the entirety of the 1AC and doesn’t add anything new.
b.) It’s net beneficial – changing the marriage policy is essential to solving patriarchy,
domestic abuse, and heterosexism, and it also accesses any impact that the alt solves.
3.) Preference theory is not essentialist – on the contrary the “victim feminism” of the neg relies on
essentialism to base its critique.
Catherine Hakim The British Journal of Sociology 2007 Volume 58 Issue 1 “Dancing with the
Devil? Essentialism and other feminist heresies
From the start, preference theory was treated as controversial by feminist scholars, and was the subject of critiques, in the
British Journal of Sociology especially (Ginn et al. 1996; Crompton and Harris 1998; McRae 2003; Crompton and Lyonette
2005), with responses from Hakim in this journal (Hakim 1996b, 1998b, 2003b) and in recent books. Even those who
endorsed the new focus on human agency and labour supply were anxious to retain sensitivity to social structural
factors (Devine 1994). Crompton’s first critique treated preference theory as a development of neo-classical economics and
rational choice theory, the usual perspective on the new theory. Crompton’s latest critique (Crompton and Lyonette 2005;
Crompton 2007) accuses preference theory of being gender essentialist. All critiques have included the classic sociological
argument that choices are socially constructed, and that social structures remain the dominant, primary determinant of
behaviour, especially labour market outcomes. None have presented research evidence on the social constraints squeezing
men’s choices, to show that these remain less oppressive than the social constraints on women in modern societies.
Preference theory is not gender essentialist, and there is nothing to support such a claim in any of Hakim’s
publications. On the contrary, preference theory is an explicitly unisex theory which shows that in modern societies
sex and gender are now redundant concepts, which cease to be important factors and are already being replaced by
lifestyle preferences as the crucial differentiating characteristic in labour supply (Hakim 2000: 280, 2003a: 261) and
even that lifestyle preferences are replacing sex and gender as the central determinant of social activities and social roles
more generally (Hakim 2004a: 202). Normal logic indicates that preference theory is totally incompatible with the
essentialist idea of important and unalterable differences between men and women. Indeed some regard victim
feminism as flawed by essentialism.1 To support the essentialist claim, Crompton and Lyonette (2005) ignore all rules
of evidence and proof in scientific discourse and resort to gross misrepresentation. They assert (2005: 605) that, in
contrast to men, the majority of women are home-centred. In fact, preference theory states clearly that a small minority of
women, 10 per cent to 30 per cent, are home-centred (Table II). They claim (2005: 604) that preference theory draws upon
Goldberg’s (1993) theory that testosterone is a major source of sex differences in motivation, ambition and behaviour. In fact,
Hakim (2004a) presents socio-physiological theories (including Goldberg’s thesis) as one of four
competing explanations for women’s position in the labour market – the other three being feminist theories (Hartmann,
Walby), rational choice theory (Becker, Polachek, Mincer), and preference theory (Hakim). There is no suggestion, here or
anywhere else, that preference theory rests on Goldberg; they are presented as competing theories! Furthermore, Hakim cites
chaos theory as a major intellectual influence, and explicitly rejects biological and evolutionary explanations, noting that
Goldberg’s thesis has yet to be proven as an explanation of women’s position in the labour market (2004a: 16, 208). In
Preference Theory, Goldberg is only one out of over 900 references cited in the Bibliography; and data on testosterone
available at that time is stated to be misleading in its implications for sex differences in behaviour (Hakim 2000: 260). His
work does not feature in the four main tenets of preference theory (Table I). There are no references to him in papers on
preference theory, not even in a discussion of sex differences in work-life balance goals (Hakim 2005). Crompton’s
opposition to preference theory is all the more puzzling because it predicts and explains continuing gender inequality in the
workforce,
which is Crompton’s main subject. She does not dispute the trend towards the polarization of women’s employment patterns,
which has been documented by many social scientists across OECD countries, and is further illustrated in her
own work.
128
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
2AC AT: Essentialism
4.) The alt doesn’t solve the aff –
a.) Even win some reasons why re-conceptualization is a good thing there is no risk that
they can win any spillover solvency which means that patriarchy and heterosexism will
remain as dominant ideologies in the world of the neg.
b.) Nothing about re-conceptualization solves any of the aff impacts. Our impact scenarios
are based on the ideology based in a federal policy. Only changing that policy can solve.
5.) Describing women as a series solves the alt. – it avoids the essentialist trap of grouping but still
allows for political progress.
Iris Marion Young Prof. of Political Science at the University of Chicago Spring 1994
“Gender as Seriality: Thinking about Women as a Social Collective”
The purpose of saying that women names a series thus resolves the dilemma that has developed in feminist theory:
that we must be able to describe women as a social collective yet apparently cannot do so without falling into a false
essentialism. An essentialist approach to conceiving women as a social collective treats women as a substance, as a
kind of entity in which some specific attributes inhere. One classifies a person as a woman according to whether that
person has the essential attributes of womanness, characteristics all women share: something about their bodies, their
behavior or dispositions as persons, or their experience of oppression. The problem with this approach to conceptualizing
women as a collective is that any effort to locate those essential attributes has one of two consequences. Either it empties
the category woman of social meaning by reducing it to the attributes of biological female, or in the effort to locate essential
social attributes it founders on the variability and diversity of women's actual lives. Thus, the effort to locate particular
social attributes that all women share is likely to leave out some persons called women or to distort their lives to fit the
categories. Conceptualizing gender as seriality avoids this problem because it does not claim to identify specific
attributes that all women have. There is a unity to the series of women, but it is a passive unity, one that does not arise
from the individuals called women but rather positions them through the material organization of social relations as
enabled and con-strained by the structural relations of enforced heterosexuality and the sexual division of labor. The
content of these structures varies enormously from one social context to the next. Saying that a person is a woman
may predict something about the general constraints and expectations she must deal with. But it predicts nothing in
particular about who she is, what she does, how she takes up her social positioning.
6.) Case Outweighs –
a.) Millions of people experience domestic abuse in the status quo as a direct result of the
TANF marriage incentives – this is dehumanizing and the basis for other violence – even if
they win their case turn impacts you still vote aff on this.
b.) Essentialism exists because there are oppressive forces like patriarchy, which results in
the grouping of women. Solving for these forces is critical to solving oppression.
c.) Empirical example such as World War II and the Holocaust prove that hypermasculinity is more likely to cause extinction than the K impact.
129
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
2AC AT: Capitalism
1.) Perm – do the plan and every part of the alternative that doesn’t reject the aff.
a.) The perm is legitimate it does the entirety of the plan without adding anything new.
b.) The perm is net beneficial – it allows us to break down capitalism while specifically
addressing issues like domestic violence and patriarchy.
c.) Any reason that the perm doesn’t solve is a reason why the alt fails. If the alternative
isn’t strong enough to overcome to plan than it will inevitably fall in the face of state
resistance.
2.) The perm solves best – capitalism is build on patriarchy, which allows males to get the best jobs
and forces lower wages on women.
Dr. Heidi Hartmann Research prof. at George Washington University. Spring 1976. “Women and
the Workplace: The Implications of Occupational Segregation” University of Chicago Press
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173001
The present status of women in the labor market and the current arrangement of sex-segregated jobs is the
result of a long process of interaction between patriarchy and capitalism. I have emphasized the actions of male
workers throughout this process because I believe that emphasis to be correct. Men will have to be forced to give up
their favored positions in the division of labor-in the labor market and at home-both if women's subordination
is to end and if men are to begin to escape class oppression and exploitation.99 Capitalists have indeed used
women as unskilled, underpaid labor to undercut male workers, yet this is only a case of the chickens coming
home to roost-a case of men's co-optation by and support for patriarchal society, with its hierarchy among men,
being turned back on themselves with a vengeance. Capitalism grew on top of patriarchy; patriarchal capitalism
is stratified society par excellence. If non-ruling-class men are to be free they will have to recognize their cooptation by patriarchal capitalism and relinquish their patriarchal benefits. If women are to be free, they must
fight against both patriarchal power and capitalist organization of society. Because both the sexual division of
labor and male domination are so long standing, it will be very difficult to eradicate them and impossible to eradicate
the latter without the former. The two are now so inextricably intertwined that it is necessary to eradicate the
sexual division of labor itself in order to end male domination.100 Very basic changes at all levels of society and
culture are required to liberate women. In this paper, I have argued that the maintenance of job segregation by sex is a
key root of women's status, and I have relied on the operation of society-wide institutions to explain the maintenance
of job segregation by sex. But the consequences of that division of labor go very deep, down to the level of the
subconscious. The subconscious influences behavior patterns, which form the micro underpinnings (or complements)
of social institutions and are in turn reinforced by those social institutions.
3.) The alternative doesn’t solve the case – Patriarchy, domestic abuse, and heterosexism all existed
long before capitalism. The only way to solve these problems is through policy action that
empowers these currently oppressed peoples. The alternative addresses a separate cause of
violence – allowing oppression to continue.
130
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
2AC AT: Capitalism
4.) Case Outweighs –
a.) The aff is a prior question – deconstructing gender roles is a prior issue to deconstructing class
based disparities. Capitalism relies on specific societal roles and thus necessitates heterosexism
and patriarchy to operate – the plan solves this. That’s the Peterson and Incite evidence.
b.) Magnitude – Heterosexual masculinity is based on an attempt to eliminate the feminine and
homosexual. This type of macho posturing inevitably results in extinction war and genocide. Any
violence impact that the neg can isolate is at best a subset of our impact. – That’s the Tatchell
evidence. Addressing domestic violence and racism first is also critical because capitalism relies
on this kind of violence to thrive.
c.) Probability - Long before capitalism existed violence was being carried out in the name of
things like strength, pride, and honor – these are all inherently masculine concepts. Even if they
win that capitalism provides some incentives for war the reason that the wars actually happen is
rooted in masculinity.
5.) Framework – The aff must be allowed to weigh the 1AC impacts against the K.
A.) The interactions between patriarchy, heterosexism, racism and classism mean that the only way
to have any responsible decision-making is to compare the claims made by both sides.
B.) Fairness – Debate that artificially excludes the aff from weighing their impacts hurts core aff
ground and kills debate.
C.) Education – Preventing impact comparison prevents us from learning the interaction between
different hierarchies.
131
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
2AC AT: Capitalism
6.) In the face of the inevitability of capitalism the proper action is to make specific demands
against the state rather than nebulas critiques.
Slavoj Zizek. Socialogist member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. 11/9/ 07 “Resistance is Surrender”
So what should, say, the US Democrats do? Stop competing for state power and withdraw to the interstices of the state, leaving state power to the Republicans and start a
campaign of anarchic resistance to it? And what would Critchley do if he were facing an adversary like Hitler? Surely in such a case one should ‘mimic and mirror the archic violent
? Shouldn’t the Left draw a distinction between the circumstances in which
one would resort to violence in confronting the state, and those in which all one can and
should do is use ‘mocking satire and feather dusters’? The ambiguity of Critchley’s
position resides in a strange non sequitur: if the state is here to stay, if it is impossible to
abolish it (or capitalism), why retreat from it? Why not act with(in) the state? Why not accept
the basic premise of the Third Way? Why limit oneself to a politics which, as Critchley puts it, ‘calls the state into question and calls the
sovereignty’ one opposes
established order to account, not in order to do away with the state, desirable though that might well be in some utopian sense, but in order to better it or attenuate its malicious
effect’?
These words simply demonstrate that today’s liberal-democratic state and the dream of an ‘infinitely demanding’ anarchic politics exist in a relationship of mutual parasitism:
anarchic agents do the ethical thinking, and the state does the work of running and regulating society. Critchley’s anarchic ethico-political agent acts like a superego, comfortably
bombarding the state with demands; and the more the state tries to satisfy these demands, the more guilty it is seen to be. In compliance with this logic, the anarchic agents focus
their protest not on open dictatorships, but on the hypocrisy of liberal democracies, who are accused of betraying their own professed principles.
The big demonstrations in London and Washington against the US attack on Iraq a few
years ago offer an exemplary case of this strange symbiotic relationship between power and
resistance. Their paradoxical outcome was that both sides were satisfied. The protesters
saved their beautiful souls: they made it clear that they don’t agree with the government’s
policy on Iraq. Those in power calmly accepted it, even profited from it: not only did the
protests in no way prevent the already-made decision to attack Iraq; they also served to
legitimise it. Thus George Bush’s reaction to mass demonstrations protesting his visit to London, in effect: ‘You see, this is what we are fighting for, so that what
people are doing here – protesting against their government policy – will be possible also in Iraq!’
It is striking that the course on which Hugo Chávez has embarked since 2006 is the exact opposite of the one chosen by the postmodern Left: far from resisting state power, he
grabbed it (first by an attempted coup, then democratically), ruthlessly using the Venezuelan state apparatuses to promote his goals. Furthermore, he is militarising the barrios,
and organising the training of armed units there. And, the ultimate scare: now that he is feeling the economic effects of capital’s ‘resistance’ to his rule (temporary shortages of
some goods in the state-subsidised supermarkets), he has announced plans to consolidate the 24 parties that support him into a single party. Even some of his allies are sceptical
about this move: will it come at the expense of the popular movements that have given the Venezuelan revolution its élan? However, this choice, though risky, should be fully
endorsed: the task is to make the new party function not as a typical state socialist (or Peronist) party, but as a vehicle for the mobilisation of new forms of politics (like the grass
roots slum committees). What should we say to someone like Chávez? ‘No, do not grab state power, just withdraw, leave the state and the current situation in place’? Chávez is
often dismissed as a clown – but wouldn’t such a withdrawal just reduce him to a version of Subcomandante Marcos, whom many Mexican leftists now refer to as ‘Subcomediante
Marcos’? Today, it is the great capitalists – Bill Gates, corporate polluters, fox hunters – who ‘resist’ the state.
The lesson here is that the truly subversive thing is not to insist on ‘infinite’ demands we
know those in power cannot fulfil. Since they know that we know it, such an ‘infinitely
demanding’ attitude presents no problem for those in power: ‘So wonderful that, with your critical demands, you remind
us what kind of world we would all like to live in. Unfortunately, we live in the real world, where we have to make do with what is possible.’ The thing to do is,
on the contrary, to bombard those in power with strategically well-selected, precise, finite
demands, which can’t be met with the same excuse.
132
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
2AC AT: Capitalism
7.) No link – Nothing about the 1AC supports a capitalist ideology. The current marriage policy is
based on an elitist desire to control oppressed populations, which is essential for the efficient
functioning of a capitalist economy. The aff prevents this management and thus is a stance against
capitalism.
8.) The state will respond ruthlessly to the alternative resulting in massive violence and preventing
alt. solvency.
Callinicos – Professor of European Studies – 2003 (Alex, “An Anti-Capitalist
Manifesto”)
The police charged violently. We fought back and I stand by our response as a political fact. Nonetheless, for us
to also take up militaristic tactics would be crazy and political suicide. At Genoa there were all the forces of order,
the army, the secret services of the eight most powerful – both economically and militarily – nations on the
planet. Our movement can't measure up with that type of military power. We would be crushed within three
months . . . Two, three years ago we thought at length about how to act in a conflict without it becoming
destructive. Our technique was different: we stated publicly what we wanted to do, letting it be known that if the
police attacked us, we would defend ourselves only with shields and padding. It was our rule because it was
essential that we create conflict and consensus about the objectives that we set up for ourselves. In Genoa we
expected that more or less the same thing as usual would happen. They deceived us . . . The police forces used
firearms, even though they had assured us that they would not. The right to demonstrate that [Italian Foreign
Minister Renato] Ruggiero agreed was an inalienable right was run over under the wheels of the police armoured
cars." The right-wing government of Silvio Berlusconi had dramatically altered the rules of the game. In doing so it
drew attention to a truth long stressed by classical Marxism –that the state, as concentrated and organized violence,
acts as the last line of defence of capitalist property relations. After Genoa, an intense debate developed within
the anti-capitalist movement over whether or not it should abandon mass protests altogether for fear of the
violence they were attracting, both from the police and from the Black Bloc (which many believed had been
infiltrated by agents provocateurs).' But the deeper difficulty posed by Genoa concerned how the movement could
confront the centralized power of the capitalist state without reproducing the hierarchical and authoritarian
structures it was seeking to challenge. Celebrations of fragmentation and dispersal are of no help whatsoever in
addressing this problem.
133
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
Capitalism 1AR Exts.
Alt fails – patriarchy preceded cap.
Dr. Heidi Hartmann Research prof. at George Washington University. Spring 1976. “Women and
the Workplace: The Implications of Occupational Segregation” University of Chicago Press
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173001
The work in this school of anthropology suggests that patriarchy did not always exist, but rather that it emerged as
social conditions changed. Moreover, men participated in this transformation. Because it benefited men relative to
women, men have had a stake in reproducing patriarchy. Although there is a great deal of controversy among
an-thropologists about the origins of patriarchy, and more work needs to be done to establish the validity of this
interpretation, I believe the weight of the evidence supports it. In any case, most anthropologists agree that
patriarchy emerged long before capitalism, even if they disagree about its origins.
134
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: HEALTHCARE Reform Politics
1. Democrats don’t want marriage incentives so it won’t cost political capital
(Mary Leonard, Globe Staff and Correspondent, 05 22 01, “Marriage incentives for poor considered,”
http://lists101.his.com/pipermail/smartmarriages/2001-May/000639.html)
The marriage-promotion issue is difficult for many Democratic lawmakers. While most acknowledge that two-parent
families help lift children out of poverty, and some, including Vice President Al Gore in the past campaign, have
advocated responsible-fathering programs, many fear that earmarking money for untested marriage-promotion
initiatives will deny assistance to single parents in need. A senior Democratic aide said the big question is whether
Republicans are going to force states to set up marriage programs or take money from the Temporary Assistance
block grant and fund a separate marriage initiative. ''Both would be very controversial and set off a very partisan
fight,'' the aide said.
2. Universal healthcare fails – Empirically look at Massachusetts
3. Healthcare won’t pass- emperially
By Pat Williams, 06-26-09 “Convoluted Health Care Reform Won’t Work”
. Members of Congress believe, correctly, that single-payer does not have the votes to pass. That does not, however,
absolve them from considering single-payer and conducting hearings dedicated to it or, at the very least, inviting
experts of that system to testify at the general hearings on the issue. I refer to this with some experience. When
President Clinton offered his plan for universal health care coverage in the fall of 1993, I was chairman of the House
Committee on Labor Management – one of the three subcommittees in the U.S. House with jurisdiction over the issue.
As chair, I knew full well that single-payer was unlikely to pass the House and would surely die in the Senate, which,
frankly, was cowed by reform opponents. Nonetheless, my committee and I decided to have hearings on both the
President’s complex proposal and single-payer, both of which I sponsored. The dual process was very beneficial; each
proposal informed the other. Our committee came to understand that there were benefits and liabilities in both plans
and considering them together allowed us to improve each. I managed to round up the votes to pass the two bills
through both my committee and the full committee of Education and Labor. Unfortunately that was the end of the
reform road. Suspecting that the Senate would not act, we held my bills. The Senate eventually refused to even
consider reform. Can single-payer pass this time? No. However, the champion of health care reform, Sen. Ted
Kennedy, D- Mass., has the best idea about making something out of the current flawed efforts. He has proposed a
version of single-payer as an integral piece of the current reform proposals. He has proposed to include within the
overall legislation a separate, truly public health care option. No doubt because of Kennedy and out of respect for him
and “the cause of his lifetime,” President Obama recently wrote to both Kennedy, who chairs the Committee on
Education and Labor, and to Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chair of the Senate Finance Committee, “I strongly believe
that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans. This will
give them a better range of choices, make the healthcare market more competitive and keep insurance companies
honest.” A recent nationwide poll shows that 72 percent of Americans support the public option. Will we get one?
Yes, but it is likely to be a watered down version that will be far more acceptable to the insurance companies than it
will be to Kennedy. As New York’s Sen. Chuck Schumer recently said, “It’s pretty certain that Sen. Kennedy could
not support the Baucus plan and Sen. Baucus could not support the Kennedy plan.” With the gravely ill Ted Kennedy
unable to put his full energy into passing his proposal, it will apparently be up to the House and the President to act as
the public’s backstop in passing a bill that contains a good, competitive public health care option. That is, in fact, the
sad predicament because the Senate Finance Committee is more interested in “consensus” and “bipartisanship” (i.e.,
agreeing with the insurance companies) than it is in fighting for full appropriate healthcare reform and wrangling the
majority necessary to pass it – even if by only one vote.
135
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: Health Care Reform Politics
4. Even if it does universal health care will cost 235 billion a year 2x the number expected
John Torinus Jun. 27, 2009 “'Free' health care figures a lot worse than fuzzy” chairman of Serigraph Inc. of West Bend
and a founder of BizStarts Milwaukee
The numbers on the various Democratic reform plans bounce around by hundreds of billions of dollars, and they
invariably come nowhere near the real cost. Let's do some simple arithmetic. As a starting point, let's get a per-head
count of what it costs to cover an uninsured person from the latest extension of governmental health care in
Wisconsin. The proposed state budget adds a whopping $215 million per biennium from state and federal sources for
BadgerCare Plus Core, which will cover 40,000 single adults without children. That comes to $2,688 per head per
year. But Medicaid reimbursement formulas are at work for this population, and it pays about half of what private
plans pay. What Medicaid doesn't pay gets shifted to private payers. So put the real number for Core at about $5,000.
That's a pretty representative figure for public plans. The vaunted plan for Wisconsin state employees comes in at
about $6,000. It uses what is known as managed competition, a rich plan that gets bids, and therefore competition,
from different HMOs but doesn't engender the competition driven by consumers. By comparison, the best-managed
private-sector plans are about $3,500. Going national Now, let's extrapolate the $5,000 to the national level. The tally
for uninsured tossed around by reformers is 47 million. It's a highly debatable number, but let's assume we cover them
all. So, 47 million times $5,000 totals $235 billion a year. Therein lies President Barack Obama's problem as he
attempts to sell universal coverage. He has been saying he can get the job done for $100 billion a year over the next
decade, or $1 trillion. It should come as no surprise, then, that the Congressional Budget Office reported that only onethird of the uninsured could be covered for the kind of money they have been talking about. Maybe they teach rhetoric
instead of math at Harvard. At least $2 trillion will be needed. Some analysts put the number at $4 trillion. The higher
estimates derive from elements of proposed national plans that drive up total costs, such as guaranteed coverage
despite pre-existing conditions, community ratings that homogenize risks and a broad set of mandated coverages
.
136
Marriage Aff
DDW 2009
AT: Health Care Reform Politics
5. Large amount of spending will blow the econ
Gerald J. Swanson, Professor; Thomas R. Brown Chair in Economic Education @ Eller College, America the Broke,
2004, pg. 13, BB
Because foreign investors view the dollar as nothing more than another asset they buy in hopes of making a return,
increasing economic turmoil in the United States would probably provoke them to sell some, if not all, of their dollar
assets, causing the currency’s value to drop farther. As this vicious cycle gathered speed, foreign investors might quit
buying Treasury securities altogether. They might even start cashing in the bonds they already held. That would force
the government to print the money it couldn’t borrow—a surefire trigger for inflation and another blow to the value of
the dollar. What would happen then? We can only guess, because such a debacle has never occurred in modern times.
At the very least, the United States—and because of our wide-ranging influence the rest of the world, too—would be
plunged into economic chaos, all because of our unwillingness to reign in our reckless spending.
6. Econ collapse means extinction
Mead, 9 – Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (Walter Russell,
“Only Makes You Stronger,” The New Republic, 2/4/09, http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=571cbbb9-2887-4d818542-92e83915f5f8&p=2)
Frequently, the crisis has weakened the power of the merchants, industrialists, financiers, and professionals who want
to develop a liberal capitalist society integrated into the world. Crisis can also strengthen the hand of religious
extremists, populist radicals, or authoritarian traditionalists who are determined to resist liberal capitalist society for a
variety of reasons. Meanwhile, the companies and banks based in these societies are often less established and more
vulnerable to the consequences of a financial crisis than more established firms in wealthier societies. As a result,
developing countries and countries where capitalism has relatively recent and shallow roots tend to suffer greater
economic and political damage when crisis strikes--as, inevitably, it does. And, consequently, financial crises often
reinforce rather than challenge the global distribution of power and wealth. This may be happening yet again. None of
which means that we can just sit back and enjoy the recession. History may suggest that financial crises actually help
capitalist great powers maintain their leads--but it has other, less reassuring messages as well. If financial crises have
been a normal part of life during the 300-year rise of the liberal capitalist system under the Anglophone powers, so has
war. The wars of the League of Augsburg and the Spanish Succession; the Seven Years War; the American
Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars; the two World Wars; the cold war: The list of wars is almost as long as the list of
financial crises. Bad economic times can breed wars. Europe was a pretty peaceful place in 1928, but the Depression
poisoned German public opinion and helped bring Adolf Hitler to power. If the current crisis turns into a depression,
what rough beasts might start slouching toward Moscow, Karachi, Beijing, or New Delhi to be born? The United
States may not, yet, decline, but, if we can't get the world economy back on track, we may still have to fight.
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