Meeting To Explore Effects Of Planned Welfare Cuts
DETROIT (WWJ) - Thousands of Michigan families could lose welfare cash assistance under a stricter, four-year lifetime limit approved by the Legislature and headed to Governor Snyder's desk, that tightens exemptions and requires more frequent reviews.
Meantime, a "Speak Out and Speak Up" summit Thursday in Detroit will look at the effect of those planned cuts. Reverend David Bullock heads up Rainbow PUSH Coalition Detroit, one of the sponsors of the meeting.
"We cannot talk about the poor as if we're not talking about children and seniors," said Bullock.
"If we don't come together and figure out what our urban and rural agenda for Michigan is, then we're going to be lost when the tsunami of poverty floods throughout the state."
Rev. Bullock said the meeting will focus on welfare cuts, foreclosures and jobs.
"People are falling through cracks in the floor. In Michigan, on October 1st, it's going to be doomsday when 13,500 families are going to be cut off from their cash assistance program from welfare. They'll be losing what will be equivalent to either their rent payment or their utility payment. And 124,000 children are going to lose a clothing allowance."
Rev. Bullock thinks the state is going after the wrong people in trying to amend their budgets.
"Michigan corporations got 86 percent corporate tax breaks. So now we have corporations getting a tax break, but we're balancing budgets on the backs of the poor, on the backs of working poor, seniors and children, the least, the lost, the left out."
The Speak Out and Speak Up meeting takes place Aug. 25 at 7 p.m. at the IBEW Local 58 offices on Abbott near Trumbull in Detroit.
