This long-term un- or under-employment has taken a real toll on me. I’m an older woman whose home is in foreclosure, and who recently has filed for bankruptcy. I fear that all of these factors will make it even tougher to get a job. Where I’ll live and what I’ll do, at this point, is a mystery.

That’s why I am incensed by comments that people who can’t find a permanent position are not trying, or are lazy, or apparently are unemployable through some fault of their own.

In effect, eligibility for access to and continuation of governmental program assistance will result in a middle class person or family moving into the poor or impoverished class.

Congress leaves little or no ability for the Executive Departments or Agency bureaucracies to assess and adjust individual need limits. So once eligible for an income or health insurance support program, the bureaucracy has to provide all of the available support for income and services a program supplies, needed or not. The assumption of legislation is that recipients have no other sources of help available.

Congressional and state legislation assumes poverty or only very poor people can apply. As Digby writes, legislation ends up impoverishing applicants and participants-who had been self-sufficient-but now have a period when they cannot provide for themselves, or find they have a long-term, extraordinarily expensive needs for themselves or a dependent.

Circumstances beyond one’s ability to predict or prepare for– due to age or job loss and simply bad luck due to a car, plane or boat accident, or a debilitating or lethal disease, or the loss of a family’s income provider or the long-term but not permanent loss of one’s own ability to rejoin the competitive job market or return to one’s job– cause the loss of a domicile, self or dependent health care access, utilities, school transportation, supplies or fees, such daily expenses continue irrespective of a temporary income drop off from bad luck.

Unemployment “insurance”, a misnomer for income support, Medicare and Medicaid services access, farmers’ income support-have a built-in bias that can make the recipient fear seeking temporary or partial income resources because they will endanger their federal program eligibility for income support.

A health care savings account will be wiped out in a single emergency room, diagnostic or treatment unless the current income tax provisions and exclusions change. Our ability to travel worldwide is wonderful, but in so doing we may be exposed to diseases or “acts of war” that result in not $thousands but hundreds of $thousands in subsequent health care. Limits on the amount one can set aside (pre tax) annually or can deduct from Adjusted Gross Income on itemized federal and state tax liabilities simply will not make a dent in the expenses incurred for treatment and longer term care and treatments. This catastrophe can happen anytime and anywhere due to our travels for business or pleasure.

Sometimes an illness or disability takes more than one year to enable sufficient healing or rehabilitation for one to rejoin the workforce. Examples may include severe wound rehealing, cancer treatment, loss of one’s eyesight, hearing or a limb requiring rehabilitation and prosthetics, a mental health disease or treatment of traumatic experience mood or behavior symptoms, etc.

Assuming the applicant eventually should be able to earn his or her own income again and be self-sufficient, federal and state program assistance have eligibility requirements [such as means tests] for enabling recipients to retain enough of their own assets to no longer need government support. Or, during a period when one is receiving Medicare or Medicaid based on income levels, the aid recipient may have to pay out-of-pocket for services disallowed by the federal rules for reimbursement or are determined to be experimental therapies, or have waiting lists that prevent an applicant’s receiving the appropriate care and treatment.

Personal health or financial catastrophes can force one to access one’s IRA (401k or 403b retirement savings) to pay for extra home care attendants, chiropractic professional fees, therapeutic massage fees, co-pays, medications, etc. Unfortunately, if an employee has built up a traditional IRA savings amount for retirement the total amount in the IRA will be considered as “pre-tax” contributions from one total salary or wages and, therefore, sheltered from IRS taxation when earned. If the IRA holder withdraws cash before the age of 59 1/2, the nature of the need to withdraw may or may not be assessed a 10% penalty, plus the withdrawn amount will have income tax deducted at a 10% minimum rate. This requirement is required by the IRS. A $50,000 IRA early withdrawal to pay an invoice would add that $50,000 to “Unearned Income” that will add to the total gross income independently reported to the IRS for income tax liability.

So, another unintended effect of Congressional legislation are the tax liabilities for anyone intending to use an IRA for other than retirement, early depletion of the IRA that increases the probability that a person ends up with not enough savings to supplement their Social Security income when they retire. Another way conscientious Middle Class individuals and families lose their economic standing in American society and a further depletion of the American Middle Class that builds and sustains our standard of living. Two-class society, here we come.