Welfare Reform One Step at a Time : Governor and Legislature need to work together to contain costs while not hurting people

Is California a welfare magnet? Do poor families move to this state with an eye on relatively generous welfare checks? There is little evidence of such mass migration, but any who do move here now will have to survive for one year on the level of benefits doled out back home. That new policy, the result of an unusual display of harmony on welfare reform between Gov. Pete Wilson and the California Legislature, will translate to much smaller checks for most newcomers.

A typical welfare family, a single mother with two children, receives $633 per month in California. That same family receives $424 in New Jersey and $321 in Oklahoma. The payment is geared to the cost of living. High-cost states such as Alaska, California and New York, where housing is especially expensive, pay larger welfare checks than low-cost states. Each state sets its level and pays roughly half the benefits. The federal government, which handles the other half, must approve major changes in a state’s guidelines. California just received such a waiver. But children’s advocates now threaten to present a legal challenge.

Gov. Wilson proposed reducing benefits for new residents in his ill-conceived constitutional ballot initiative, Proposition 165, which failed in the November election. That measure also would have reduced most welfare checks by up to 25% and ended some other benefits in an understandable but heavy-handed effort to tame mushrooming costs.

In the less ambitious--but more realistic--welfare legislation that established the new policy, Sacramento Democrats embraced the lower levels for non-residents in a compromise brokered largely by state Sen. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena); this eroded voter support for Prop. 165.

In the prolonged budget battle, Wilson and the Legislature also managed to agree on a slight decrease, 1.3%, for current California welfare recipients. That cut will reduce December’s $633 check, for a mother and two children, by $8.

Now that the election is over, the governor and Legislature must retreat from the politicking and get back to the business of governing. Both sides must compromise on steps to encourage independence and rein in spiraling welfare costs. As the welfare debate escalates nationally, certainly there is room for additional agreement in Sacramento.