Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On The Poverty Industry 20160904

All people accused of a federal crime plead guilty, i would have said thats because most of them did it. Thats why they plead guilty. The governments right to go after them. Now that i know more i realize thats not the case. Government has ways of making innocent people plead guilty, its unbelievable. Essentially its a plea bargain. They come to a doctor, they say they want to get a doctor. Nothing wrong. Our federal statutes are so luminous and accordion like they can find something if not for your tax return, its looking like you administer Pain Medicine . Were going to charge you with the Illegal Administration of illegal drugs. But she was in pain, im a doctor. They say i know, but you exceeded the allowable dose of pain medication and they charge you with a crime that will put you away for five years but if you plead guilty, you will get three months and you can Practice Medicine again. So whats your choice . Rule growing your entire life, be locked up for five years and destroyed your relationship with your friends, undermine your family or, this is the strong arm tactics routinely used. I used to believe better than the nine innocent people go free, then on innocent people be locked up, now i believe lots of innocent people are locked up and they are locked up right now. Its a view of the way the world is. Its through countries likevenezuela where my wife grew up or me, india. Wed like to believe its totally different here. It is different but its not totally different. So these experience was were eyeopening for me. Its given my conservative position grittier which is to say i have a more solid foundation. The secret of movies that the fate of a movie depends on how the movie does the opening couple of weeks. If the movie does well at the beginning, people say how do you get your seen by independence . Doing this coming weekend because if you are seeing now you are putting fuel into our rocket. What you should learn to do is use your influence. Very few of us use our actual influence. You say i only have 300 friends on facebook. Yes, but they got 300 flat friends on facebook. Today you are a little publisher but if you use your information to get information out your able to change the way people think. The beauty of the movie, you can watch a movie in 90 minutes and it changes you a little on the inside. Movies have the power to do that. And books have the power to change minds by citing information and information is power so once again, i urge you to be not just apathetic but dangerous americans and go out there and change society and help save your country. Thank you very much. [applause] this is book tv on cspan2, television for serious readers. With our primetime lineup, tonight starting at seven former director of the Defense Intelligence agency, retired general Michael Flynn provides his thoughts on how to fight terrorism. At 8 pm eastern former White House Correspondent Kate Anderson brower highlights the first ladies from 1950 until today. Rosa brooks looks at the change in how america fights wars on book cds afterwards Program Starting at 9 pm eastern and at 10, neil baskin chronicles the Covert Mission to keep hitler from buildingan atomic bomb and we wrap up our sunday primetime lineup with Princeton University professor eddie gloss and his thoughts on race in the United States. That all happens tonight on cspan2s book tv. [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] thank you so much for coming out tonight for this bit of prozac busboys and poets as we have the honor of hosting Daniel Hatcher for his new book the poverty industry. Im glad to say this, i work with the event that and i just have a few quick notes about this before i introduce daniel tonight. First off, this is a politics and prose at the busboys and poets event. Through this partnership weve had going on for about a year in which we are selling and hosting events in three of the busboys andpoets locations so you are here, you can also find us at fifth and k and , but if you have a calendar you can see different events jewel through the city. Part of that partnership is that now you are at a restaurant, you can order drinks and food at the same time while hearing a bookstore and i encourage you to do that and tip your waitstaff well. If you will pick up your cell phones and assignments them so we dont have any unnecessary interruptions. After the event is over we will have a signing table and opportunity to chat with daniel and a little bit more that you will purchase a book at the front of the store, thats where we have the cash registers. Also, theres going to be time for q a and i have this phone right here so if you will raise your hand during the q a section, i will come around everyone can hear the questions being asked and also book tv is here tonight, shout out to them. [applause] you can look yourself up on the intro where later if you answer a question so anyway, all right. In this eyeopening examination of what all too often happens to medicaid funds, childsupport payments, other public assistance, design to ill the abuse, the elderly after it exposes how entrepreneurs for forprofit agencies themselves benefit from governor programs. We show authors waste reform policy that the aide doesnt reach beneficiaries. Mary ohara of the garden says this meticulously researched book is still in a system that helping communities to quote, a source of government. Daniel hatcher is professor of law at the university of baltimore. He teachers the public apathy clinic and worked for the maryland legal aid and assistant director of apathy as a staff attorney for legal aid at the baltimore Child Advocacy unit and is a senior staff member for the defense. Will you please join me in welcoming Daniel Hatcher. [applause] guest thank you for everybody being here, its such a beautiful Late Afternoon early evening to sit inside and talk about policy issues. Thanks to politics and prose andbusboys and poets. Hugethanks to nyu press for the amazing support publishing this book. I definitely think the university of Baltimore School of law and the Clinical Programs there. I had the honor to teach students who are representing on compliance and then i had the opportunity to learn from my students. I have a couple colleagues from there who are here today who are amazing advocates. I also thank my past clients, ive learned so much from their stories over the years and what they are going through and on an individual basis of difficulties and trying to understand how their problems connect on a more systemic level so i hope that keeps us a little bit informal and have a bit of a conversation and i thought start with acomparison and in fact a little bit with some introduction. In new york, on monday i was talking about a county they are, Westchester County. A few years back there was a small story in the newspaper about a child whose mother of cancer. And apparently the child had Survivor Benefits that were saving her about 16,000. The social worker apparently got a hold of the child Survivor Benefits, got action to the bank account after the adopted mother dies of cancer and took the money. So there was some outrage, criminal charges were brought against the caseworker. And the county officials put out press releases to talk about their efforts to go after the citizen. Meanwhile, whats happening in Westchester County countywide is , this is a county that has a contract with revenue maximization contractor to seek out not just Survivor Benefits for foster kids in their care but also disability benefits and the county is taking the money from children in their care and acting under a fiduciary relationship and were not just talking about 16,000. In this case where talking about tens of thousands of dollars that the county is taking from children but no one is up in arms about that in part because no one has known. I hope through getting this book out it increases awareness about some of the federal practice is occurring and with awareness we have the potential to bring about change so in the poverty industry, im hoping to expose and explain several of these revenue practices where states and state Human Service agencies are partnering with companies, usually revenue contractors to actually use vulnerable populations as a source for revenue. This is happening i think across the country because states are cashstrapped and both rich states and blue states alike across the country have been unwilling to raise revenue through general taxation. When you see that occurring you end up having the state looking for money elsewhere, sort of behind the scenes mechanisms if you will. Sometimes even to the point where they are using their own agencies against the vulnerable populations. Ive been looking into these issues for quite a while, both from past scholarships. Ive been involved in litigation, some policy advocacy efforts and i think it started for me almost 20 years ago. My first job was in Baltimore City representing kids in bono Baltimore Foster care system. I had a huge caseload. My first day in court i represented about 16 children in an afternoon so honestly, i still feel guilt from that time because i feel like i could have, should have done more for those kids but i was awakened to what foster kids were going through in the system, what they were going through before they came into the system and how hard its been for them when they age out of the system and the statistics are lined up against foster children and foster kids suffer from ptsd at twice the level of iraqi war veterans so this was then alarming to me when i realized that the very agencies that exist to serve the best interests of foster care children were actually finding a way to use those children as a source of funds, finding weight to seek out disability or Survivor Benefits and control of those monies as representative fiduciary capacity and then diver those funds to the state coffers. I then started doing some work as well with low income families and Child Support issues including representing low income fathers which was eyeopening to me to see the difficulty they were going through and i realized that some similar practices were happening with Child Support where states are not only taking disability provider benefits from children but taking childsupport from children. Sometimes the same children. When children are in foster care they go after Survivor Benefits. Some states i talk about in the book take more, nebraska has regulation related to take burial plots. In maryland there is a regulation where they will even take the earnings of the child if they are old enough to work so childsupport then is diverted from the childrens best interests and i started to learn as well about vast practices occurring with medicaid so even more dollars that are being diverted from their intended purpose so i wanted to try to understand and did and connect with these issues as much as i can with the book i tried to step back a bit and try to see how these interconnections are happening and the alth seeing a shift in mission where you have state governments and the state Human Service agency that exists to serve the Public Welfare are instead throwing their focus on maximizing revenue and even hiring companies to help in that process. So before, i want to discuss the examples in a little more detail before i do that so i dont forget, i wanted to stress a couple of themes that i hope come out of the book. First one is that i dont think the book provides any evidence whatsoever for apartments to cut aid to those who need theassistance. As you have state governors were really for funds from intended purpose and the answer is it cut the eight progress, the answer is to stop the misuse. This is complicated. The other thing i hope to stress and i hope to keep making a point of his eye hope the vast majority of our frontline caseworkers in this country are overworked and underpaid and they are trying their best to work for their client and these Revenue Strategies are happening on the ground, they are happening much higher as the state Agency Leadership level, sometimes down at the state level where the governors were Comptrollers Office is directing the practices. So to talk more about this practice of how states are using foster children, the way they do that in many states will partner with revenue maximization consultants. What maryland does is a state worker, where i practice law and where i teach in baltimore, maryland darted with an assessment contract or hired maximus to look at how the state potentially can pay more resources for children in their care and that assessment report which i changed through a public records request the company describes children as a met Revenue Generating mechanism. A hopeful increase in the number of children determined disabled at that time, the estimate was around two percent of the population determined disabled for the purposes of obtaining benefits. They increase that number from 15 to 20 percent of children and the goal, writes, was not to provide Additional Services and help the children with those disabling conditions but to diver those funds to general state coffers so when this occurs, the agencies arent even benefiting fiscally. I dont think foster agencies should be in the business of taking resources from abused or neglected children but the agencies themselves arent even getting any more Financial Capacity because when they do this the state, the states across the country reduce funding to the agencies based on how much money the agencies take from the children so its becoming a stealth funded foster care children system where children are safer in the care and that means giving estate dollars. In addition to going after disability benefits they also seek out Survivor Benefits above. Survivor benefits under the Social Security program, these are earnedbenefits when we work , pay into the system. We earn disability or Survivor Benefits but also Survivor Benefits if we die. Its much like life insurance. I represented a client, a former foster child in maryland who had this issue happen to him and he was placed in foster care at age 12 right after his mother died. He was moved around to several different places. They located a brother as a possible resource. His brother dies. They locate his father and his father was a potential resource and then his father dies. So every one of these four kids family is dying and the Foster Agency realizes after his father dies that the boy is entitled to Survivor Benefits. Theynever tell him. They never tell him they are applying for the benefits, they never tell him they are applying to be representative to take control of the money and they never tell him that they are taking the funds. This money, when alex aged out of foster care hes struggled ever since. Hes been homeless and struggle for unemployment. He couldve used this money to plan for his transition out of care, to think about he could best use it. He always talked about wanting to learn how to become an auto mechanic. Hes never had a drivers license or in it also provided an immense connection to his deceased parents for alex. Its not just the money where you have a connection from a parent who dies it could have provided an emotional connection from alex and as hes struggling on hisown, he could have that connection. The state took it without even telling him. Thats happening nationwide. In many states, they take veterans assistance benefits from kids in foster care who died in the Military Area the list goes on. So some of the language, ive seen in several state requests in contract documents, kids are described as they are sort of resources on a Conveyor Belt the mind. Being described as a unit, again as i mentioned in maryland, Revenue Generating mechanism. They are scored triage to determine which kids bring in the most money, algorithms for dissection of the goals of increasing the penetration rate of children whose resources can be obtained. Ive seen documents that are especially concerning as well when they determine which kids try to get to be determined to be disabled first. Its not based on which kids have most needs comments which kids bring in the most money. States will look at interaction with Funding Sources and those kids who might have other sources of federal aid for their foster care, for the state isnt spending as much money, they will go after those kids first regardless of their disabling conditions. They will go after the kid thats giving the state more money because thats saving the state more money when they take the kids fund. I hope that makes sense. Its all about the money, not about helping children. Another example, so this is just one. I may be starting with an example where medicaid funds are being maximized and some states are diverging from their intended purpose, not all states area you could have the same foster child, plus men who are low income and potentially disabled can also receive in their schools schoolbased medicaid to provide Additional Services for their special Education Needs and their disabling conditions so i described an example in the book out of new jersey where the state forces schools to participate in a program and they have a different revenue contract they are working with by the name of the public where the states are required to work with the contractor to try to maximize the amount of children were receiving these schoolbased claims and the amount of aid thats received , schools are punished in new jersey if they dont meet the target goals by reduction in School Funding from the state. And then after those equations, this gets complicated but they going to play in terms of how they determine how much money theyre going to set as goals. The pain for the children, the schoolbased federal medicaid and the state in their budget items and their budget, christine mentioned the administration is diverting over 80 percent of those funds from schoolchildren from the schools to general state coffers in the amount of tens of millions of dollars every year that are literally being taken from four disabled schoolchildren to save state coffers, again because theres another state like maryland, like all the state unwilling to raise enough revenue to general taxation looking for money elsewhere even taking money from disabled schoolchildren, new Jersey Schools are so underfunded that their schools are now seeking revenue by selling advertisements on the side of school buses so while this is occurring. Thats another example involving children. The other age and of the spectrum are Nursing Homes and unfortunately in this country are not doing very well. The quality of care on average for Older Americans is not great in the United States and some states are much worse than others, maryland where i live which is in many years, sometimes the richest state per capita, its a degrade according to some reports. It was tight i think with mississippi or alabama, one of the poorer states in the country at that time. The country is doing a little better according to one of the reports ive seen, getting a b grade. Jeanette as ive looked at this report was getting a degrade self much of this has to do with the Nursing Homes providing care, it has to do with them unwilling to provide sufficient staff at the Nursing Homes so we have a vast need for better care, better services, more funding to the nursing facilities caring for Older Americans, especially low income Older Americans. Unfortunately these Nursing Homes are used in some similar Revenue Strategies and many states will then diver the bonds from that purpose to provide better care to the elderly but rather to general state. Some coffers or municipalities or counties do it at the county level so one of the examples i described is out of indiana where a practice like this is happening statewide first using whats called a fed tax scheme. Theres multiple revenue financing mechanisms that are somewhat illusory where essentially money is moved around. The Medicaid Program is supposed to be a program so states spend their percentage map and claim a match from the federal government, maryland for example it is a 5050 match state so if maryland is 50 on Medicaid Services on an individual, you can claim an additional 50 from the federal government so thats 100 total to serve that individual for the type of care it claims were sought. What youre seeing is that states are moving money around, that they will move money sometimes to other facilities and take that money right back. Sometimes they will charge the facility attacks and give the money back so are roundtrip of money one way or anywhere the state are actually spending state funds but they can trigger the claim for federal aid. That in itself is concerning because its illusory what concerns me more is those states when they claim the federal aid, they are diverging it to general coffers so in indiana thats happening on a statewide level with that tax. In indianapolis, the state also found a way where the health and Hospital Corporations out of indianapolis, the county there is a Municipal Agency actually, they figured out a way, they started buying up forprofit Nursing Homes in indianapolis and now they are going all over the state of indiana by up forprofit Nursing Homes because they realize that in indiana, the way the legislation works is as soon as it becomes government owned they can trigger higher reimbursement rates from the federal government. What the corporation is doing is buying licenses for these Nursing Homes and often they are hiring the same company or the same facts they brought licenses from. So the care didnt improve at all and then instead of using the federal aid intended for better care at those nursing home facilities, the health and Hospital Corporation used it to build a multimillion dollar new Hospital System in indianapolis. At least thats being used for healthcare purposes in indianapolis but thats not the intent. That money for that facility would have normally occurred for property taxes, referendums, you name it. Instead they are literally using Older Americans who are languishing in for care while they take their funds around the corner of the state. These people at northwestern corner of indiana art benefiting at all from the services from the hospital in indianapolis. So thats a concern. Finally, and then ill pause a bit for questions, theres more examples. Some of them i didnt have a link to states to take us into the book, many people know about the prison industrial complex. I talk about the poverty industrial complex. Many of the same contractors involved in the militaryindustrial complex are now involved in the poverty industry. You have Companies Like Northrop Grumman involved in child services. Lockheed martin used to have a contract to run the baltimore Child Support office. Its also the company that has contracts statewide till obtain disability and Survivor Benefits from children which the state then will take from the children but as an example of this scope of this poverty industry, weve reached a point first where we have agencies actually dont have the capacity to monitor their own private contracts and contract were processed so they are hiring contractors to monitor their own contracts but as an example of the scope initiated that started here in dc, theres a company by the name of maximus, maximus had a contract to help the district of columbia try to maximize medicaid funds for foster children. There were concerns and allegations wrought by the department of justice called the doj that there may have been false claims so a medicaid claim that was allegedly filed that were not true. To the point of a Settlement Agreement with the department of Justice Maximus reached where these allegedly fraudulent medical claims of 30 million. Deferred prosecution agreement was deferred but in a short time maximus gets a contract with the state of new york to help new york run its Medicaid Fraud Program after it was, had these allegations of medicaid fraud in dc. The same Company Either enters new contracts or continues existing contracts with the centers for Medicaid Services for over 200 million worth of contracts and this is the same federal agency to which was allegedly fraud medication claims were submitted. Within a short time of that, the same company maximus lands a contract with the department of justice itself. The agency, the department of justice are prosecuting or brought charges against them initially and that was, lets see, to investigate, provide analytical support and financial management, case related professional support during the investigation of prosecution of criminal cases. Right . So the poverty industry is expanding. I hope there are some red flags that go off in terms of how funds are being diverted from those of us who need it the most and how the purpose of government is shifting in this case again from serving the Public Welfare to more of a focus on revenue maximization. Finally, i think a crucial theme for us to remember through all this, i use the term vulnerable a lot to talk about these populations but we are all. We are all interconnected. We are all interdependent on each other and what the government institutions are supposed to be serving us. We are all pretty much one paycheck away from poverty is not closer so we need to remember when a foster child in west baltimore is hard, it harms all of us. And not just from a moral perspective but financially, even if you think about the finances, when that child that does harder time when the age of foster care and is more likely to become homeless and more likely to become dependent on the Public Welfare system and more likely to become incarcerated, unfortunately the number of foster children involved in the criminal Justice System is huge. We all pay the cost so i hope we remember all that and try to help the most vulnerable among us. [applause] quest thank you for being here. What i have said and have to ask you about kind of full review thatbeing said that might be in the book. Im a hopeless advocate. I celebrated 10 years this month as an advocate. [applause] so when it comes to poverty, when it comes to poverty pending i have to ask what you have to say about the whole idea of multiple enrollment versus least vulnerable as an advocate, ive seen where cities across several administrations so its not just one but this administration has been reluctant to help ablebodied homeless to go and remain in the city, to find different ways to support about Housing Developments, Housing Development and i personally think that the constant focus on the most vulnerable is in some ways covered or we want to resimplify and dont want to address the elephant in the room and i spent the entire day of my life today, we dont want to address the fact that it takes 30 dollars an hour to live in dc as a single person. We dont want to address the high rent, low wages so we go. Theres innovation opportunities. Theres a federal law that requires cities to do better at conducting lowwage employees to live and get jobs so i experienced that so we take a federal law, federal initiative and they see if they can do anything better so now we are starting to brainstorm on how to connect ablebodied to jobs. Were just Getting Started and it was a lot of nonprofits really who would much rather keep serving the disabled. I know theres a lot but do you have any insights there on how nonprofits would keep serving the disabled because their lifelong cash cows and they will be held until the day they die whereas edelweiss get jobs and do you have any insights there . Guest great comments and Great Questions. We could talk for several days about these issues and is a great discussion. I agree with much if not most of everything you said. I guess the start, what i think is, you alluded to this as well. These practices in these different agencies, they are happening in red and blue states are i hope first, i think we can all disagree about the best structure and debate and dialogue and these are all good things and what our country are about. We can all agree that when you have public aid developed for a specific purpose that money should be used as intended but what youre hinting at, theres many interconnecting systems working around individuals and also not working well. I got a good amount of work with individuals who were in prison and when they leave prison and try to Reenter Society they are impacted by a lot of the issues youre talking about. Population is not viewed from a politically favorable lens and ive worked with those individuals who have Child Support obligations so they are labeled as exprisoners and deadbeat dads. Its not the most politically Popular Group but they need assistance and the labels are not accurate. Most individuals are labeled as dead broke or as deadbeats are often dead broke or somewhere in between and again, this Child Support practicewhere theyre going after money thats actually taken from the children , that doesnt benefit the children, states are forcing poor mothers to have custody but not always. Forcing poor mothers to sue for fathers for money that doesnt even help children and there are studies that look at these young Fragile Families and a half children at a young age and theres potential for these families to work well together and do well for their children, even if they dont end up living together to coparent well but when you force a poor mother to sue a poor father, thats not going to do much for that fragile relationship and if you have a father thats coming out of prison and hes trying to get back on his feet and live above board in a regular economy but he has 30,000 in Child Support owed to the government, his license is suspended because of Child Support, he owes the government much of it and if he does land a job despite the criminal record, those are difficulties in itself. As soon as he starts work, 65 percent of his wages will be garnished so a lot of the low income individuals in that case will quit and they will work underground so there are reports that look at that form of Child Support enforcement against low income populations, especially when the money can actually cause an increase in criminal activity and a decrease of people working in the aboveground economy. One of the most powerful things about your argument is that it seems that what youre saying is that all of these practices are legal or the vast majority of them are legal. So its very interesting to think about what sort of solutions you would propose in that context. You know, if these systems, practices often can be dehumanizing, you are really talking about a system where people are being moved around like a beans, counted like a beans and if that is for the most part awful, id be curious aboutwhere you think we could go from here. Guest its a great question. Unfortunately i think some of these practices are likely within the realm of legal although im stubborn. I think many of them are not legal. The practice regarding altar children where foster agencies are taking their childrens funds, theres a legal question that has not been resolved across the country that is a breach of fiduciary obligation. That state is taking on a fiduciary role both as guardians initially in their state run Foster Care Agency and when they take on the role of managing the childrens money, thats a fiduciary role, much as if you are an administrator of an estate. If you have an estate that takes on that fiduciary obligation and says were going to take the childs money and apply it to pay back the cost the child has no legal obligation to pay for, how is that not a breach of fiduciary obligation . It hasnt been decided on yet but i hope people will bring claims to that effect. Regarding some of the all other practices, Child Support and when the state is taking childsupport children, thats a policy that hopefully will change area its a failed effort at whats called welfare Cost Recovery and one of the past legal Journal Articles i wrote, i provided both policy concerns and legal analysis. From a pure fiscal standpoint, if you are looking at how are the states doing in taking this money from children and taking back welfare or foster care, when you look at the numbers the states are likely spending much more in administrative costs than they were collecting because parents are poor. And are there not going to be able to collect these dollars. Its much more, let alone the harm they are causing to the families. When medicated, i do think there needs to be some stronger legal analysis to look at whether these practices are unlawful. The Court Purpose of medicaid is to help states provide additional Medicaid Services. Its supposed to be this mainstream Grant Program so when you have a state like new jersey thats blatantly diverging funds to general coffers, i dont see how thats legal. This has been known about for many years. Part of it is capacity. Our federal agencies dont have the capacity to track what states are doing. The state budget processes are not transparent and it gets harder because much of this is happening at the county level so its hard enough to figure out what the states are doing with their level but then you go county about county and its amazing to try to count the money but i think some of these problems that states currently have, there wouldnt even need to be regulatory change. They just need to enforce whats already there and make clear that if you have medicaid funds claimed on behalf of a nursing home residents, those funds are supposed to be used for medicaid purposes, its not complicated or it i hope that will be the case. To follow up on this initiative that young people and children and dehumanizing them and taking people in units for a revenue stream, can you look backwards a little bit for me and kind of explain the evolution of the language. We know when they started the program they were thinking of children so was it like welfare reform that decided to shift or at what point did they start viewing them as less than human . Thats a great question. At what point is a harder answer. What ive seen with the particular practice of states looking to obtain resources from foster children, much of that terminology i think is coming in when the companies have come in and initially the companies were able to entice many of the foster care agencies in the first agency level and at the state level into these revenue contracts, they do it on a contingency fee basis. The number of children they can obtain benefits from, they can take the childrens money and the Company Takes a cut of that as a contingency fee and these are businesses. They exist and that their purpose so theyre using terminology in their contracts that sound like that, that thats the case with maximus where they describechildren as a Revenue Generating mechanism. [inaudible conversation] [inaudible question] the secretary of the Maryland Department of Human Resources testified against one of the bills i worked on in maryland. We worked on legislation to stop this practice for years now and the agency has blocked it. The secretary of the department of Human Resources stood up and in response to one question he described that foster care is like a business and i think thats an unfortunate statement for him to make because its not a business. The mission matters. When we are trying to maximize revenue rather than maximize the Public Welfare, for children, for all of us, we are hurt and you see that happen across the country. There was a good story in the New York Times earlier this week about this occurring in the area of public safety, both 911 and any system, the harm that happens as a result of that. Hi. Im going to talk about the purview here ive been seeing my whole life. I would say the nonprofits are doing the same thing that you talked about in forprofit and ill give you an example. One is Legal Services and one is intersection Advocacy Network , this is federally funded. Both, i talked about Northern Virginia where ive been working for the last two years. They have Legal Services that receive funds to help people with disabilities. They have funds to help people with disabilities but when i came to be a lawyer and i see accommodations to work with agencies, forget it. Theyre not hiring people with disabilities at those agencies to do the work to help us. These. Guest we need to look at ourselves first i can tell you people who go on ssi and ssc never drop it. And in virginia they live at 80 percent of the Poverty Level so we are not a welfare state but the problem i think is federal money. You should be hiring. You should be hiring people and working with dc. You should be training people in dc to work in dc. You should be hiring disabled people to work with disabled people but they are hiring middleclass white people to these jobs. And thats how i see it. Ive been doing this for years. Guest great comments and i think they are wonderful comments. I was a legal aid for years and ive worked with several nonprofits both advocating with them and sometimes i seen the process even where you have multiple organizations going after grants if there is a limited amount of money. They can have competition going after the money and we need to remember in that case as an advocate not to lose sight of the goal. Its not about us, its not about running the organization, its about working yourself out of a job and sometimes forget. Mission matters. Thanks for being here. What we need is an Inspector General to the foster care system, would that help . There have been reports in the past of both medicaid and some of these other practices with the foster care practice, it really has not been a look from the general county office or the office of Inspector General. There is discussion and im actually participating on a discussion with the Social Security Advisory Board in just a couple of weeks and in july where they are looking at this issue of providing benefits. Im hopeful. And i had the opportunity to work with amy heartfelt on wonderful advocacy on a potential federal bill with congressman danny davis out of illinois, we may be looking at a likely bill to fix this problem but i agree. You need a look about whats really happening with these childrens funds and particularly with the use of the revenue contractors about how not just , i think then taking the money is bad. But the process they are going through, that they are targeting targeting the children based on how much money rather than disabling need. There are real concerns here and some of the things happening with Medicaid Programs using various financial tools like something called an upper payment limit, theres incentive for states to pay less to its Healthcare Providers so they can take advantage of a gap between the actual medicaid payments to Nursing Homes or hospitals at a disproportionate from the poor, pay them less so they can take any advantage of the difference in the upper payment limit and some of the states will diver that two unintended uses. Oregon was doing this where using medicaid funds to fund the entire state Public Education system. Public education is a good thing but thats not the way those funds were supposed to be used. My friend eric chef talk here in dc and ive been honored for over 30 years, hes been working with snyder but you educated me tonight because we are told the homeless are addicted to drugs and alcohol, their mentally ill,they lost a job , their family broke up with what i learned tonight is they are recovering from the foster care system and becoming homeless. One more point, theres a wonderful opportunity right now with conserving these funds for foster children. Last year the federal government enacted, obama signed something called the able act that allows for children to receive disability benefits or children. Those funds can be concern and in may 29, 1980 plans. These are sustained saving vehicles that we use now for 529 plans for education. Now they are opened up where disabled children can use those benefits to use these expanded savings plans, not just for savings for college or education but also for a host of other services that child may need the to serve or meet their disabling needs and then become independent as they become an adult. So this is available right now, foster children are able to benefit because they are taking their money. We need to stop taking funds and then kids can save those monies for their own money and plan for their future. Not just the money but that money can then trigger planning process where the children can be engaged with the social workers and think about how do they most want to use and conserve their funds for their care and you learn Financial Literacy and feel empowerment, you name it. Its unlimited in terms of resource thats really going to waste right now. Thank you again for your book. You and i have worked together on the issues related to foster children but this book has put that in context of a larger poverty industry. This frames a lot of the issue youre talking about in perspective, it has to do with culpability and change. What we are talking about is rather than city tracking this nationwide. We worked specifically together on Social Security but i wonder in your experience on writing a book invent is investigating different communities relating to federal benefits, if this use and cost in talking about the reason this is happening, that the state taxes, taxes are low so theoretically you are talking about the power problem imposed upon states which become desperate for any money they can get their hands on and its easiest to take money from thepockets of poor people who might not be represented. But im wondering if you ever see the tax problem as essentially solving this or whether you think its so insidious and its a moral fiber of the agencies we are talking about practicing these things and what your experience was speaking to people who had a sense of shame about what they were doing, about it being morally wrong and morally bankrupt to practice the culpability you are talking about Great Questions and i do think its a horrible practice. Again i want to stress, i think frontline caseworkers are doing this. Theyre not the ones who often even know about the practice, is happening much higher up, usually with the agency and secretary level in maryland, this is someone has a business track background that came in but to be fair, this is happening before he came in. Its happening under the Hogan Administration in maryland this is happening in blue states and red states alike i hope that states will, i dont think too low of revenue states are willing to raise their taxes sufficiently but to raise enough revenue and taxation for general taxation under fair means, i dont think that opposed in some states, thats a decision they are making and then looking for money elsewhere. We also talked about privatization, i have my own concerns with privatization but the book is not looking at that as much because at the end of the day, the state leaders who are considering the scope of the contracts and purposes of the contracts and how the money is used. Theres a governor in maryland who decides after they work with this company maximus to pay more resources at the highest of levels and says were going to take that money and diverge to state coffers. I think another red flag comes out of the book on the same theme in terms of states control. Theres been an increasing number of proposals over the years to increase what are called lock grants and ryan has proposed this before, even on his website with the Medicaid Program. This book, being as objective as i can divide strong evidence that block rants are a horrible idea. If you have, even if you thought they might be a good idea in the first place but under the evidence that comes out, if you have governors who are using an illusory shell game to move money around and diverge in those funds from intended purpose under a complex Regulatory Framework from the federal government, whats that governor want to do if you are seeing is provided a blank check . Here, i hope you help the poor. Its a state cash strapped and is unwilling to raise revenue youre not going to see more money going there, youre going to see much greater waste of block grants. I want to echo others in thank you for what seems to be an extraordinarily important subject. Guest thank you so much. You can pass on this if you want. When the governors calculate that they can play these games, i think theyre calculating that if what they are doing it comes public, citizens in their state are not going to vote them out in horror. I think it speaks horribly about our culture and our country at this point in time. I wonder if you have any comments on that next sure. In part, i do hope awareness matters and as they become more aware of these practices that we will be outraged to the point where we hold our elected officials accountable to do whats right and use money intended for the vulnerable to help the vulnerable but unfortunately, too often most vulnerable among us dont have a loud voice in the political process. I think we are all responsible forthat. To help increase that voice, as we become aware and hope those individuals were more vulnerable to us become more engaged in the process, to work together. This sounds like a coup by moment but we are all connected. And we need to remember that. Were all vulnerable, we need to work together. Foster care child is impacted in baltimore, it impacts all of us and i hope we can start to realize that again. You brought to all of our attention, over here. There you are. You brought to our attention in a lot of the key instances of different federal organizations and private organizations with this certain shadowy games that they play in essence to create revenue. Do you believe that regulation or more oversight could tackle this issue or has it become such a large problem on the federal and local level . Guest im optimistic that we can fix and improve these problems. Its not going to happen overnight but i do very much think we can improve this area sometimes it will require more, this is like a dirty word, but more regulation but to clarify regulation and clampdown. To say if you have medicaid funds that are claimed for Older Americans, then that money is intended to help that poor older american. I think that is already present, we just need to make that more clear. Same thing with the practices that are using foster children. Child support is going to take a broader change because theres both federal and state law. I know that many of the leaders of Child Support agencies around the country agree with what i am saying. They realize that so much of whats called Child Support is owed to the government that isnt being collected and when it is being collected, its harming kids and theres an effort at the federal level to improve the rules of Child Support enforcement so very Good Progress along those lines at the federal level. The problem is youre going to keep the states to act on those opportunities because much of whats happening at the federal level is giving states options that they can take to make improvements. So that again falls back to us and our state leaders about why the changes are helpful and necessary. Maryland again, as an example of one of the things maryland could do, this gets a little complex but the way in which they collect Child Support for low income populations, the most that they did is prevention steps. Usually the money that goes to the government, some is owed to the child or the parent in cash assistance or if a child is in foster care for a while and some of those go to the family. Usually the family gets their money first. Families first policy. Theres an exception to that through tax intercepts which is the most successful way they go after the money. Theres a place in maryland that was simply going to say after this money was collected, pay the first kids first before the state takes there. That is an even saying you have to give away your obligation. Again, thats ahead of state Child Support agencies, maryland showed up and testified against that bill and made what i thought were incorrect statements saying that the agency was giving up this money when it wasnt the case, it was shifting first. That gets into a little too much detail but we need to be aware and some of these kids, we need to be aware of what the current and hold them accountable for doing the right thing. First of all i want to thank you for the work that youre doing like other people have. I heard you on w vfw, shout out. Yes, wp fw and i was intrigued by the things that i heard. I was disappointed but not surprised. I have a child that is now an adult that is disabled and the challenges that i went through to get Social Security for a known disability that hes had since he wasvery small was complicated and hard. We hear that states are going through nothing and that speaks to me because im a retired federal employee that is collusion. The Social Security Administration Knows this is happening. The Social Security administration for whatever reason is colluding with the state to make this happen and i would argue, and im going to buy your book but i would argue that there is sufficient law and regulation in place now to hold, to make this practice stopped. I figured that. This is my question to you. When you are dealing with situations like this, we always want to say will the state endorse x or the states are doing why. These states are doing nothing. Its individuals warmaking calculated decisions. And assume we have individual accountability from as this young lady said over here, nothing will change. You say you are hopeful because i understand the politics of this, that these corporations pay the legislators who thenmake sure that their interests are taken care of. You follow the money both up and down and keep these campaignfinance changes or how political officials get their money. You cannot stop the corporate influence on these. This is low hanging fruit. What are your comments to the political aspect and the companies actually controlling the politicians by money. Guest i agree with you when i use the phrase state, the state is made up of people and i do think the responsibility lies with our state leaders who are aware of these practices and are initiating them. Sometimes they continue from prior administrations but that doesnt make it okay. I heard the excuse in maryland when i worked with legislators in maryland , the practice of getting resources from children. Other states are doing this to. How they even use that as an argument is beyond me. Other states are doing bad stuffand that makes this good stuff . I dont see how that works. But im hopeful. I refuse not to be i guess and i think as we increase awareness i think i would hope all of us here, as we become aware of these practices are occurring we can let our affected officials know that we know and stop those practices but the one particular process that you mentioned, how the agencies are taking resources from foster children, there doesnt have to be a legislative change. It could be we could very much fix it through legislation but the agency could do it right now or the states to do the right thing right now. So i hope that people become aware of what needs to happen and im hopeful because the Social Security administration is starting to look at this. Im going to participate in this Panel Discussion that i think is occurring with elected officials from congress and folks whove been former commissioners of the Social Security administration so im hopeful but youre right, its an uphill battle. Good evening. I want to echo everyone elses sentiments, thank you for being here. Thank you for the important work that you are doing. My question involves whether the motivations that a lot of the states are using to with these practices or these Revenue Strategies, theres really one based on past practice again it hurts all of us. I do think when we can along broad discussion about this the history of taxation which states have been wanting to use to raise revenue is much lower and we are in expanding and growing society there are greater and greater needs we need a government for this in the government needs to have funding to provide the services that we need. So i hope at some point taxes dont become a dirty word anymore. I know that is the more pieinthesky was some of the other comments i made. Paying taxes is patriotic. Its one of those patriotic things we could do. With time for about one more. You have thrown a lot of problems at us and they dont seem to be all of the same cloth. The contra the conflict of interest problem with the state or private agency serving as the payee at the same time they are supposed to be protecting the interests of that client seems to be a very significant problem but there is an easy fix for that. And yet the politics of social welfare is often been addressed with issues around guaranty income. We could avoid all of us if we could just cut a check for everybody for certain amounts of money and see how they can sink or swim on their own with that entitlement. You have not mention that example of a solution but i think that is one of the elements in the room when problems like this do get raised. The privatization issue you identified but didnt put that front and center here and i am just wondering with all of these issues if they ought to be addressed in a more comprehensive way maybe in terms of the democratization of the Human Service planning ought to look like at a community level. Or whether we should be tackling one by one based on interest of various groups just in the comments that you listed here some people are saying people with disabilities have some special advantages over general welfare clients im just wondering how had we looking at your book how do we rein in the issues were not just muddying the waters further or catering to the strongest groups or creating a more humanistic society like exists in so many other social well for deciding where we can cap on the government to be more protective of the publics interest you are talking about multivolume set. My hope with the book is to spur discussion and i think that kind of discussion and disagreement amongst us we need to start a dialogue. I think it was an phrase einstein phrase you spend the first 55 minutes trying to understand the problem. We are so most of the book is looking at the problem. One set of them and i hope that this this does spur muchneeded discussion. I want to continue to do that. But much of what youre talking about our things im thinking about and its a hard discussion. I do think some of it should be simple even again when we disagree how to structure programs for vulnerable populations it is created with intended purpose. It should be used. Regardless of our politics we should be able to agree that it should be diverted from intended use. Thank you for that question. Thanks again there is so much to be outraged about in this book how can it be legal in summary broad issues. Just on the somewhat narrow issue of states becoming representative payees for children in foster care and not even telling them and taking all the money in your book a child should have inherited or did inherit a home that was a habitat for humanity home and the representative pay refuse to pay the very small mortgage so that could have been an asset for that child that was lost for that reason. How can this be legal and is there a litigation strategy i love that question. I dont know how its legal. I do think there are litigation strategies. I also involved for another case where my own Legal Aid Bureau was representing a child named ryan. We have some success. It was violating foster childrens constitutional due process rights. I didnt go there. But at least they found that this was a violation of constitutional d process. If they received that notice they can challenge the state they can put forth a Family Member you could have a Child Advocacy to really represent that child. I agree i think its a legal there are many other layers of this legal argument but the easiest one in the strongest argument is the breach of fiduciary obligation. I hope more lawyers bring mover lawyers bring these claims. Most people dont know its happening. And when they do know its happening another part of the problem is many of the states they cant file legal claims or when they do have lawyers maybe they are overworked. It takes an normas amount of time. Its a great question. I hope we both try to improve this. Im sure you wont like this but i have to say im unable to remember when i have seen such a combination of brilliance compassion humility and one person its quite amazing. Thank you for being you. [applause]