Welfare Recipients Fear the Effects of Proposed Cutbacks : Budget: One mother says freezing the cost-of-living adjustment would be ‘a matter of life and death.’ Deukmejian says the state can’t afford it.

Tara Williams and her four children live in a house where the blinds are always drawn and the lights always muted. Her youngest children, 3-year-old twins, are allergic to virtually everything--cheese, eggs, pork, chicken, even sunlight. Exposure to bright lights leads the children to break out in white welts.

“It’s a matter of life and death. If they get fed the wrong way or they’re out in the sunlight too long they can die,” Williams said matter-of-factly at her home in Citrus Heights, near Sacramento.

Williams, who is single and unemployed, supports her family through welfare payments she receives from the state. She receives $1,323 a month from two state welfare programs and another $170 in food stamps. Even so, the feisty 29-year-old said, “sometimes I have to go without so that my kids will eat.”

In recent years, benefit amounts for everyone in California receiving welfare have, by law, increased annually to cover the rising cost of living. But in trying to hammer out a state budget for next year, Gov. George Deukmejian has made it clear that he wants the Legislature to freeze the automatic cost-of-living increases for welfare recipients. The governor argues that the adjustments, fixed to rise based on the consumer price index, are driving up the costs of budget programs faster than the state can pay for them.

Deukmejian’s proposed cutback would be felt directly by the 2.6 million people getting state welfare benefits ranging from $341 to $1,435 per month.

Although at first glance Williams’ family may hardly seem representative of the average recipient, there are 458,957 Californians with disabilities--few as unusual as the ones that afflict the Williams twins but many even more severe--receiving welfare benefits.

People like Williams worry about losing next year’s increase. “I get real touchy when the bigwigs in the county or Sacramento say the extra money’s not needed. They don’t know what they’re talking about,” Williams said. “I’m not ready to bury my kids because (of state officials) doing what they think is right.”

The governor is not trying to stop the welfare budget from growing. His overall budget calls for an increase in funding for both of the state’s main welfare programs: Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which provides assistance mainly for poor single mothers, and Supplemental Security Income, which covers the indigent aged, blind and disabled.

But the new money--8.6% more for a total of $5.8 billion in AFDC benefits and 5.4% more for a total of $4.1 billion in SSI--would not mean increased payments to individuals. It would only cover the cost of more people joining the welfare rolls.

If the payments to individuals, scheduled to grow 4.6% next year, are instead frozen at current levels, the state would save $374 million.

Republicans defend the cutbacks as necessary to balance the budget. “California’s AFDC benefits are already the highest in the nation. California is a very generous state,” said Robert Gore, Deukmejian’s press secretary. “We’re not proposing real cuts in any programs; the increases simply wouldn’t be as much as anticipated.”

Williams and others on welfare could not disagree more.

“I can’t afford to have them not give me a COLA (cost-of-living adjustment),” said a 34-year-old mother of seven who asked that her name not be used for fear that a violent ex-husband would track her down. A former Atlanta police officer, she is now unemployed. Her family’s financial support consists of about $800 a month in child support payments from the three fathers of her children, and $1,024 in AFDC benefits.

“I’m barely able to make ends meet and have $20 left over every month,” she said. “I don’t buy a lot of steaks. I feed my family fruits and vegetables.”

The woman said she has been unable to work as a police officer due to a back injury. But she has been working toward a postgraduate college degree and vowed that “once I finish my Ph.D. I’ll be able to afford to take care of my family. Then I’ll get off aid, period. And I won’t come back.”

In the meantime, she has a message for Gov. Deukmejian: “Tell him he shouldn’t cut social programs because it’s the children who are most affected. AFDC is not for parents, it’s for kids. And when you cut it, it’s the kids who lose.”

Steven Lutz, 76, of Rancho Cordova, near Sacramento, is another worried welfare recipient. “It’s shaken the daylights out of us,” said Lutz of the possibility of no cost-of-living increase.

The retired businessman has been ravaged by cancer; he already has lost one lung to the disease and receives weekly chemotherapy treatments, but the cancer continues to spread. “It’s working in me; I can feel it,” Lutz said.

Lutz and his 74-year-old wife, Mary, live on their Social Security checks totaling $800 monthly, plus $212 in SSI.

“We live day to day,” Lutz said. “We scrape the bottom of the barrel 10 days before the end of each month and hope and pray that our check will get there. It’s taking more to buy the staples we need to get food on the table. Those prices have gone up.”

If he doesn’t get a cost-of-living adjustment, Lutz predicted that he and his wife would run out of food and other necessities before the end of every month. “And how we’ll exist at that time I don’t know.”

EFFECTS OF A WELFARE BENEFIT FREEZE

Here are estimates of how much typical recipients in the state’s two largest welfare programs--Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Supplemental Security Income--would receive in 1990-91 with an automatic cost-of-living-increase and without one.

In the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program:

Number in family Amount of aid per month, 1990-91 Without cost of living With cost-of-living adjustment adjustment One $341 $357 Two $560 $586 Three $694 $726 Four $824 $862 Five $940 $983

Supplemental Security Income program:

Type of recipient Amount of aid per month, 1990-91 Without cost of living With cost-of-living adjustment adjustment Aged/Disabled individual $ 630 $ 659 Aged/disabled couples $1,167 $1,221 Blind individuals $ 704 $ 737 Blind couples $1,372 $1,435

Sources: “Analysis of the 1990-91 Budget Bill” by the Legislative Analyst’s Office; “Governor’s Budget, 1990-91.”