Reform Without Warfare

President Clinton plans to appoint a task force to answer this question: How can poor, and often unskilled, adults and their children be helped to advance from dependency to self-sufficiency? His effort reignites a much-needed national debate over welfare reform.

Unlike most traditional Democrats, the President is a centrist on welfare; his reform program in Arkansas showed that. Now that he is in the White House, Clinton can build on that wise model. It provides education, training and health care to help welfare recipients but also imposes a time limit. After two years, those who can go to work must go to work.

To give welfare reform the priority that it deserves, the President may chair the task force himself. Members will include the heads of various departments, among them the chiefs of the Office of Management and Budget, the National Economic Council and the Domestic Policy Council. All this participation should allow a comprehensive approach to dealing with persistent poverty, the chief cause of long-term welfare dependency.

To get the best thinking on welfare and poverty, Clinton should appoint to the panel noted academicians and researchers, such as William Julius Wilson of the University of Chicago and David Ellwood and Mary Jo Bane of Harvard. The finest conservative thinkers on welfare, such as Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute and Lawrence Mead of New York University, also must have a voice in the process.

Governors too, regardless of party affiliation, deserve a say, for the states shoulder half the cost of welfare. (The feds pay the other half.)

In the Congress, Republicans are already drawing the battle lines. To avoid an unnecessary partisan storm, the Democrats should take the lead, following the charge of President Clinton in the search for a politically nonpartisan approach to welfare reform. That would enhance the chance of success.