Sen. Libby urges GOP to choose welfare reform over welfare politics

AUGUSTA — Sen. Nate Libby, D-Lewiston, is urging his colleagues in the House and Senate to focus the remainder of the session on on real, achievable welfare reform — not welfare politics.

The Health and Human Services Committee split along party lines Thursday on how to advance Sen. Libby’s bill to ban the use of welfare cash to buy alcohol, tobacco, lottery tickets and other items that don’t help families escape poverty.

“Democrats have made a good faith effort to reform welfare and get tough on fraud and abuse. We want to protect taxpayer dollars and restore credibility to welfare,” Libby added. “Mainers want politicians in Augusta to do their jobs. But I worry that no matter how much common ground Democrats seek with our GOP colleagues, there are some who will always be looking for a reason to disagree on this issue. We have to move past the politics of welfare reform and move forward.”

Sen. Libby has worked his bill for more than a year to narrowly craft a piece of legislation agreeable to Republicans and Democrats alike.

Libby’s version of the bill, supported by the majority Democrats on the committee, would ban the use of welfare cash to buy alcohol, tobacco, adult entertainment, lottery tickets and other gambling activity, tattoos, guns and ammunition, and bail. It also calls for changes to existing point-of-sale technology that will stop the misuse of benefits from taking place. Lastly, the plan institutes tough but fair penalties, including restitution of misused taxpayer dollars to a six-month loss of benefits.

Minority Republicans on the Committee, however, pushed a version of the bill that does not utilize technology to enforce the ban. Further, it would use the same penalties currently used to punish people who knowingly defraud the state, with one-year loss of benefits for first offenses and subsequent penalties including a permanent loss of benefits. Such a provision flies in the face of any sense of proportional justice.

“They want to impose a $4,800 penalty on the purchase of a $7 pack of cigarettes,” said Sen. Libby. “The only reason to add include such unreasonable penalties is to try to torpedo the bill. Some legislators, it seems, would rather keep fighting about our broken welfare system than actually do something to fix it.”

The bill faces how heads to the Senate, where Sen. Libby is encouraging senators on both sides of the aisle to focus their welfare reform efforts on common ground, and do the work Mainers sent them to Augusta to do.

The bill, along with one by Rep. Drew Gattine, D-Westbrook, comprise Democrats’ Welfare that Works plan, which restores accountability to welfare and transforms welfare from a one-size-fits-all program to one that targets specific services such as housing, job training and education, to help Mainers lift themselves out of poverty.

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