COLUMN LEFT / ROBERT SCHEER : Mothers Lose in Wilson’s GAIN Plan : One small success (and one big failure) in the jobs program, and he wants to cut all welfare 19%.

The governor of California has a thing about welfare. When all else fails to boost his popularity, he turns to this low single-digit item in the state budget as the source of all that ails us.

He has a problem, though. A majority of the voters in the last election recognized that 70% of the people on welfare are children. Cutting their meager allowance just didn’t seem right.

But now Pete Wilson thinks he’s found his opening. A very modest success recorded in Greater Avenues for Independence (GAIN), the state job-training program, is being used by his Administration as a distraction for once again attempting to slash welfare payments.

The good news is that the governor is finally asking for an increase in funding for this program, when in the past he starved it. His failed welfare “reform,” Proposition 165, ignored GAIN entirely. He has consistently failed to match the federal funds available, which were left in Washington instead of being spent in California.

But with his Draconian welfare cuts rejected by the voters in the last election, Wilson’s proposed budget seeks to mask his new call for a 19% cut in welfare payments with increased support for GAIN. It is a cynical ploy implying that jobs exist for those on welfare and that cuts will not hurt.

They will hurt. They will force a welfare mother with two children to live on $507 a month plus food stamps. That puts such families 20% below the poverty line.

No one, Wilson included, could defend pushing those families deeper into poverty as sound government practice. But he has now seized upon the limited results of the GAIN program to inexplicably justify a new round of cuts and argue that those mothers could make up the difference by finding work. “This validates our approach,” said Eloise Anderson, Wilson’s Social Services Department director.

Just the opposite is true. The GAIN program involved spending more money rather then less in helping welfare mothers. And for GAIN to save money, in the long run, the carrot of good jobs has to exist.

Indeed, GAIN’s major success in this state occurred in Riverside County, which has experienced a 3% growth in jobs in each of the past two years--the highest in the six counties studied. In Los Angeles County, with its far bleaker employment picture, welfare mothers who went through the GAIN program earned a mere $108 more over a two-year period than those not enrolled in the program. In depressed Tulare County, those enrolled in the GAIN program earned $115 less than welfare recipients not in the program.

The media, as well as the governor, have been quick to seize on the “positive” results of the recent GAIN study conducted by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. and paid for by the state. But they fail to note that the study does not contain a cost-benefit analysis either to the recipients or to the state.

Serious welfare reform is expensive and the GAIN program is no exception. The GAIN program picks up child care, transportation, counseling and education costs for the working participant, and it is questionable whether those costs are offset by reductions in welfare checks. The Manpower report does not address the issue of overall savings, nor whether welfare families end up better off.

Even so, if increased work experience leaves the welfare mother as a more productive person and better parent, then the extra cost can be justified. But the Manpower study does not tell us if this is the case. There is anecdotal evidence of greater confidence and employability gained from such experiences. But, as is often the case, forcing welfare mothers to take dead-end minimum-wage jobs does nothing to reduce poverty or the costs to the state that result from it.

Nor is it clear that requiring mothers to leave home for low-paying jobs is good for their children. It may be, but a study such as this one, which does not evaluate the consequences of reform to the 1.7 million children on welfare, misses the point.

Having discovered GAIN, the governor now seeks to gut its most promising feature, education for better-paying jobs, by cutting back support for secondary and community college education. Education is essential if the goal is to get mothers and children out of poverty rather then simply off the welfare rolls.

GAIN should be supported and studied as a delicate experiment that requires nurturing. It should not be trumpeted as a panacea or used as a weapon against the poor, as the governor is now doing.