E-mail from Brownback’s office: ‘Shackles of artificial government assistance’ a burden to Kansans

Gov. Sam Brownback’s office sent a message to supporters this week criticizing government dependence and touting the governor’s welfare reforms.

In an e-mail to supporters, Melika Willoughby, the governor’s deputy director of communications, wrote that generations have been “locked into the crippling cycle of government dependence.”

“One of the central missions of the left in America is to increase the number of Americans who are dependent on the government. This growing dependency is necessary to justify the big government and high tax policies they support,” Willoughby wrote. “Under the guise of helping struggling Americans, they’ve spent billions of dollars in the so-called ‘war on poverty.’ ”

Since the governor won re-election, his communications office has regularly sent e-mails touting his policies to an e-mail listserv of supporters from his 2014 campaign. Kansas law does not forbid government employees, such as Willoughby, from sending e-mails that make political arguments unless they explicitly tell the recipient to vote for a specific candidate in an election.

Willoughby’s e-mail didn’t promote any candidate, but instead touted the governor’s welfare reforms. Brownback signed a bill in April that solidified in statute a work requirement for able-bodied welfare recipients without dependents.

“Poverty is subdued not when liberals throw money at an issue, but when Kansans are able to stand independently – without the confining shackles of artificial government assistance,” Willoughby wrote. “With work, comes dignity, self-respect, and a boundless future.”

Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City, said the suggestion that those who need government assistance are shackled shows “warped philosophy” about the nature of poverty.

He called it ironic that the governor’s office sent out this message the same week as Pope Francis’ visit to the United States, as the pope has been a major advocate for showing compassion to the poor.

Willoughby included a link to an editorial Brownback published last month in the Washington Times in which he warned that the number of able-bodied adults relying on food assistance “has skyrocketed, increasing dependency on government subsidies and plunging the food assistance program into fiscal crisis.”

“Restoring work requirements for food assistance has the potential to transform millions of lives by returning our welfare system to the hand-up it was designed to be,” Brownback argued.

In addition to the work requirement, the bill included several other policies, such as a restriction on the amount of money welfare recipients could withdraw from the ATM using their Vision cards.

That policy had to be scrapped by the state after federal officials warned that it would conflict with a federal law that requires welfare recipients to have “adequate access to their cash assistance” with minimal fees or charges.

Willoughby’s e-mail stirred backlash on social media. The Kansas Organization of State Employees said on Twitter that “Work requires jobs. Still waiting for promised jobs to materialize. Meanwhile, over 3,000 state jobs cut.”

This story was originally published September 25, 2015 at 7:22 AM with the headline "E-mail from Brownback’s office: ‘Shackles of artificial government assistance’ a burden to Kansans."