"She's the one who told me about the Way to Work program," he said. "This is the best job I've ever had. It pays $13 an hour. That's life-changing money.
"I have two sons, who are 2 and 3, and a daughter who is 2 weeks old. We just moved into an apartment.
"This job gives me a chance to be a family man for real."
It's a pretty heartwarming story. Then you realize that Burgos is one of 240,000 Americans whose good-paying jobs are slated to end next month when authorization ends for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families fund that finances their salaries.
That emergency fund was a temporary jobs program under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Pennsylvania is one of 35 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands that have drawn down more than $1 billion from the fund, most of it in salary subsidies.
But, like a lot of government programs, a lot was lost in implementation. Legislatures in several states were in recess when the act passed. Application forms weren't available for months in some states.
Pennsylvania, where the program has been in place only since May, was slow to take advantage of the fund because of confusion about the 20 percent match that was required.
"We got an interpretation that supervision and training of these workers could be accounted as the 20 percent match," John Dodds, of the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, told me. "That got us in.
"But that means a program we just started to work in May could end in September. That's 12,000 jobs in Pennsylvania, including 1,200 in Philadelphia that may be lost just as they are getting started."
Burgos was one of about 50 people who held a rally outside the Fresh Grocer in Progress Plaza, on North Broad Street, yesterday to push Congress to retain the program before they all lose their jobs next month.
