Building a Bridge

Welfare provides the bare necessities for nearly 7 million poor children and their mothers. Welfare is a grim way of life, but it can get better if more recipients manage to get decent jobs. Congress finally seems about to build a bridge from welfare to work.

Despite concerns over cost, the House passed the Family Welfare Reform Act last Wednesday. The measure, expected to cost $4.3 billion over five years, would require welfare mothers whose children are older than 3 to get jobs. It would also provide help in the job search with education, job training and placement, child care and extended health benefits so that living standards would not decline while parents attempted the transition from welfare check to paycheck.

The legislation in the House would cost more than a similar measure that has been proposed in the Senate, by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), because it would extend welfare benefits to unemployed parents--a provision that is currently allowed in 26 states. Both versions of the legislation would require employers to withhold child support from the paychecks of absent parents, primarily fathers, which could easily raise more than $1 billion. The Senate should follow suit next year.

The combination of training, child support and employment assistance is already working at the state level. In Massachusetts the Employment and Training Choices, a voluntary program, has placed more than 40,000 welfare recipients in full- and part-time jobs since 1983--a record that owes something to a buoyant state economy.

In California the ambitious Greater Avenue for Independence, a mandatory program that also provides day care and other support, is being phased in by counties. It is too early to determine the effect of GAIN, but it guarantees jobs that pay at least $5.14 an hour--enough to make a paycheck more attractive than a welfare check.

The new programs are necessary because welfare has grown from relief for a few widows to expensive assistance for generations of mothers and children. Aid to Families with Dependent Children now costs $15 billion. If nothing is done, one out of three young Americans will experience the miseries of welfare.

The Reagan Administration opposes the compassionate approach of Congress. The Administration’s idea of welfare reform is to count as income the value of charity--donations like canned goods, food baskets and blankets--against benefits. Fortunately, public outrage and quick Senate action have protected poor people from losing a dime.

Democrats in the House deserve credit for advancing the national debate on welfare policy despite the political pressures of the Administration’s enormous budget deficits. The Family Welfare Reform Act would provide a hand up along with the handout, but without abandoning the nation’s neediest children.