Spotlight on Moving Poor Off the Dole Fades After Election

As a presidential candidate, Bill Clinton drew sustained applause whenever he promised to provide jobs and incentives to move poor Americans off the public dole. In his manifesto “Putting People First: How We Can Change America,” Clinton proposed to “end welfare as we know it” by training people on public assistance for two years and then requiring them to take jobs either in the private sector or in community service.

But judging from Clinton’s statements since the election, reforming welfare will not be a priority during his first days in office. He never mentioned the subject during a news conference in which he cited an extensive laundry list for suggested legislation in his first 100 days. And virtually none of a dozen of welfare experts contacted recently believe the new President will spend his election honeymoon on so problematic an issue.

BACKGROUND: Welfare is a broad program, including federally supported Supplemental Security Income for the disabled and elderly, and food stamps. The largest program, Aid to Families With Dependent Children, which provides direct cash payments to 4.7 million families, is jointly financed by federal and state funds.

Clinton’s call for able-bodied recipients to receive training in order to continue getting payments “represents a rather fundamental shift in the way public assistance is operated in this country” and therefore faces enormous hurdles, said Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Congress has tried in recent years to reform the system. The 1988 Family Support Act established self-sufficiency as a goal for anyone receiving federal assistance. The legislation allotted $1 billion for the program, but it also required states to match the federal funds they received. The recession made that virtually impossible for most states.

Cliff Johnson, a policy analyst for the Children’s Defense Fund, said welfare reform would be given a better chance if the states were released from their matching requirement. Other remedies include stricter enforcement of child support payments by absent parents, special tax credits for poor working families or an increase in the earned income credit, which now provides a maximum credit of $1,384 to low-wage workers with two or more children.

THE DEBATE: The heart of the debate over such proposals is whether the objective is to eliminate welfare or eliminate poverty. Democrats and Republicans alike agree that people are better off working than depending on welfare. But many reject a policy that would remove recipients from the rolls without providing jobs that pay a livable wage.

Clinton has so far only hinted at creating such a job program, likely because of the huge costs of supplying materials, supervision and training to run the program.

Robert Rector, senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, has suggested requiring a woman to work if she has been on welfare assistance for over four years or if she does not have a child younger than 5.

Both his and the Clinton plan would affect about 2 million mothers, Rector said, but “in my case there would be more mothers with older children. In Clinton’s case, there would be more mothers with 2- or 3-year-old kids.”

OUTLOOK: One Senate staff member predicted Clinton would approach welfare reform in a piecemeal fashion, because “it’s going to take a little bit of time to put together a proposal that will have broad political support” given the enormous costs associated with changing welfare.

“He may seek some sort of demonstration project or phase it in over some prolonged period of time,” the staff member said.

Jerry Klepner is legislative affairs director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the large public service workers union. He said that whether Clinton offers welfare reform in the first 100 days or later in the first term is unimportant.

“One of the criticisms of the Carter Administration was that they tried to do too much too fast,” Klepner said. “I don’t think Clinton is going to make that same mistake.”