• Romance and finance Romance and finance Maybe it’s the sappy old movies we watch. Or maybe we’ve heard too many country and western songs. But we’ve long felt that people ought to get married because they’ve fallen in love.
• Romance and finance
Romance and finance
Maybe it’s the sappy old movies we watch. Or maybe we’ve heard too many country and western songs. But we’ve long felt that people ought to get married because they’ve fallen in love.
Silly us.
Just turn on reality TV and watch women in pursuit of real millionaires, or bogus ones. Watch winning contestants face the choice of accepting the mate they’ve been chasing or taking $1 million instead and running off gleefully with the money.
Always in sync with the pulse of culture and capitalism, some legislators in Jefferson City are proposing that welfare recipients marry for money – about $15 a month. What’s in it for the state? Potentially, smaller welfare rolls, since poor couples tend to have higher incomes than poor single moms – at least too high to qualify for welfare.
Under a bill introduced by Rep. Susan Phillips, R-Kansas City, single parents on welfare would reap that generous $15 sum if they got married. The bill mirrors efforts by President George W. Bush to change federal welfare programs to promote marriage. He wants Congress to use $1.5 billion in welfare funds to push marriage education programs. About 11 states have laws providing marriage incentives for welfare recipients.
As the Missouri law now stands, single moms risk losing their welfare benefits entirely when they marry. But single moms don’t have to report the income of a live-in boyfriend unless he is the father of her child.
The proposed law would flip that around. The income of live-in boyfriends would be counted in determining welfare eligibility. In addition to the $15 windfall for tying the knot, the state would wait six months to begin counting a new step-parent’s income against welfare eligibility.
So it’s marriage, you win; live together you lose. The bill, HB 968, would cost the state about $1.4 million in extra welfare benefits the first year. How much the bill would save as the rolls shrank is unknown.
“We do believe in marriage,” says Ms. Phillips, who argues, with copious research to back her up, that marriage improves the economic status of a family and children’s well-being.
She may believe in marriage, but she doesn’t understand it. Marriage is meant as the permanent union of people in love. A couple that finds such love has something worth more than the entire state treasury and needs no prodding toward the altar.
The decision is for the couple alone, without interference – even the well-intentioned kind – from Ms. Phillips, the Legislature or the president for that matter. The state is a stupid Cupid and a cheap one at that.
If the state wants to be helpful, it could stop penalizing welfare recipients for marrying without punishing those living with friends. Except in extraordinary cases, it should ignore the income of a newly married spouse for a year or so, giving the family time to get on its feet before losing its welfare checks. After all, a family living on the brink of poverty is not much stronger than a family living in the abyss.
Ms. Phillips ought to take heed of the old Scottish proverb, “Don’t marry for money. You can borrow it cheaper.”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
