Kenneth Daniel October 23, 2013

3rd Period AP Lang & Comp

Government Assistance tied to Student Attendance There are more than 5.2 million dollars invested in welfare a year in Michigan alone. This is a startling but true fact about Michigan. There are many individuals that are on government assistance and out of those people a great deal of them are the head of household in their families. (This include single parents, grandparents, and aunts & uncles) The families that are on assistance assist on it. They plan their meals, shopping trips and transportation around their assistance. The State of Michigan wants to possibly take this assistance away from families with teenage minors that are enrolled in a public school system in Michigan. The State of Michigan want to revoke the assistance from families with teenagers with multiple unexcused absences. Certainly the government needs to take action for the deficiency of attendance of teenagers. Despite this parents and/or guardians should not be victim to the governments tactic of intimidation. The State of Michigan want to approve this system for all public school systems in Michigan. The major reason why the government have planned this is so someone take responsibility. Certainly parents are responsible for their teenage minors until the age of eighteen (18). Since the parents and /or guardians are responsible there should be some type of consequence. However the consequences should not involve targeting less fortunate families. The government (The State of Michigan in this case) is targeting less fortunate families by threatening to take an aide that has been promised to them. This is promised by the collection of taxes. The aide is the only way a lot of these families can survive. The cost of living has increased dramatically over the past fifty (50) years and with hiring rates at a record breaking

Kenneth Daniel October 23, 2013

3rd Period AP Lang & Comp

low a lot of families cannot make it without the assistance. Thus knowing this the government is using the need of assistance to threaten these families. Also parents and/or guardians should not lose their government assistance because the teenage minor will have no way to Pay the government back. Pay is in quotations because there is not a literal check being made to The State of Michigan, but instead there is knowledge being learned to get a job where the teenage minor can become a successful adult and pay taxes and help stimulate the economy. It is true that there are no guarantees that the minor will become successful. This is the gamble that The State of Michigan takes when they spend approximately 5.2 Million dollars in welfare a year (Cited from: Michigan.gov). Even so there is still a great chance that most minors will become successful. This is interpreted since most minors have seen their family suffer and struggle and they do not the same for themselves. Therefore if the government take away the assistance the government would have invested 5.2 Million dollars for failure. As well parents and/or guardians should not lose their government assistance because it makes the government look like bullies. If the bill is approved the government (as stated before) will be targeting low income families. These families do not have the power or the money to fight back. In reality there are ways to prevent this from happing. The main prevention would be for the parent and/or guardians to take their teenage minors to school and make sure they stay in school. Although this is the most common answer this does not make it the right answer. With any families there are problems that occur that make it impossible to take their teenage minor to school, and the same can happen to low income families. So a lot of the time low income families do not have the resources to come back from a problem as quickly as other.