Didn't take him long to see that "hustlin'," as he calls it, was a dead-end job. Sometimes literally.

Today, thanks to a program financed with federal stimulus money, Burgos, 22, is a supervisor in data entry for Mothers In Charge, a private agency formed by women who have lost children to violence. Burgos' godmother, Mina Pinckney, became active in the program after Burgos' brother, Tyrone Campbell, was murdered on the way to work by an unknown assailant.

"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.

They stood in 90-degree heat applauding the testimonies of workers like them whose "life-changing" jobs are in jeopardy.

But, if this program is to survive, the most effective testimonies might be those of small-business owners, some of whom have expanded their businesses by hiring Way to Work employees.

Sheila la Joie, an employment manager for the seven-store Fresh Grocer chain, extolled the value of the program in her turn at the microphone yesterday.

But talking to her later pointed up the inherent drawback in temporary-jobs programs.

"We have 75 Way to Work people in our stores here," she said. "We just hired 25 at a job fair last week.

"We actually developed new jobs in customer-service assistance. They man kiosks in the store, they help shoppers who need assistance, we use them as demonstrators. It's helping us to grow the business."

Problem is, those jobs would not exist without the subsidies. Even the "few people" she hopes to retain when the money runs out would have to work for a lot less than the $13 an hour that the program pays them.

"We don't start out workers at those rates unless they are in management," she said.

But, Dodds maintains, it may take pressure from business owners to keep the program alive.

"That's our hope," Dodds said. "When a conservative group like the American Enterprise Institute is for it, it's because of small business."

If they save it, Antonio Burgos won't care who he has to thank for his "life-changing" job.

"I'm not trying to go back to the way I used to be," he told me.