Vermont’s Welfare Limit Plan Given White House Approval

Most adults on welfare in Vermont would have to take public or community service jobs to get more than 30 months of full benefits under a state experiment approved Monday by the Clinton Administration.

The experiment would encourage welfare families to get jobs by allowing them to earn more and accumulate more assets without losing benefits. The plan still needs approval from the state Legislature, but that is expected.

“We are grateful and eager to proceed,” said Vermont Gov. Howard Dean after a telephone call from Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala. She announced the granting of a waiver of federal rules to allow the state’s Family Independence Project to proceed.

President Clinton, a former governor, has pledged to give states maximum flexibility to test welfare reform ideas and has promised sweeping reforms at the federal level.

Dean, a Democrat, said he told Shalala that he “appreciated the Administration’s recognition that states have to be the testing areas for welfare reform.”

Vermont would let recipients of its Aid to Needy Families With Children keep Medicaid health coverage for 36 months after they leave the welfare rolls, instead of the current 12 months.

People who stay on welfare longer than 30 months would not lose their benefits entirely. But the state would restrict how they could spend their welfare checks and bar them from choosing cash for food stamps. It also would remove medical benefits from parents but not from their children.

In two-parent welfare families, the work requirement would start at 15 months.

There would be exemptions for disabled people and others whose circumstances prevent them from working.

The state wants to begin the experiment July 1, 1994, and give it seven years.