Politics as Usual Ambushes Welfare Reform : Presidential leadership--not more money--is crucial to pull America out of the morass.

President Clinton is learning just how difficult it is to “end welfare as we know it” at the same time the American people are being reminded how urgent it is that he keep that promise.

Clinton’s welfare reform task force has been bedeviled by leaks. The latest was in last Sunday’s New York Times, headlining one option the task force is studying: taxing welfare benefits to pay for increases in related programs, such as job training. A legitimate policy point was lost in the ensuing media frenzy that deep-sixed the tax proposal: During the course of a given year, many welfare families get money from different sources, including work. To say that work income is taxable while welfare income is sheltered only further discourages work.

So once again, the leakers who oppose reform won by ambush. The Times reporter forthrightly stated that his source was an opponent of the proposal. The story achieved its goal: to paralyze Administration welfare reformers in justifiable paranoia. They now know that anything they say in a meeting or any number they put in a draft paper can and will be used against them.

What’s Clinton to think about all this? Preoccupied with health care and Bosnia, he might conclude that the time for real welfare reform is not yet right. After all, if his own aides can’t work together, what are the prospects for an ambitious proposal in the Congress? So is discretion the better part of welfare reform? Yes, but for the horror of 219 N. Keystone Ave. on Chicago’s West Side.

Earlier this month, police raided what they thought was a crack house. What they found was worse: 19 children, huddled amid garbage and filth in a two-bedroom apartment. The kids had little food and clothing, but they had even less attention from the seven adults, including five different mothers, living there, too.

This was not a failure of “compassion” as it’s usually measured. All the kids were signed up for welfare: The total cash flow into the apartment, including food stamps, was $4,500 a month. That’s $54,000 a year--tax-free. Of course, very little of that government money trickled down to help the kids. As one Chicago official put it, the cash ended up “probably either going up someone’s nose or into someone’s arm.”

The problem we face is not that the existing welfare system has broken down. The problem is that the system works too well at what it is designed to do: write checks, with no questions asked about personal behavior. In Illinois, “case workers” have been renamed “income-maintenance specialists.” There are no more home inspections; adult recipients today are merely required to show up at the welfare office once a year to renew their eligibility.

If what happened in Chicago is a tragic incident, the larger tragedy is welfare, which treats defenseless children as economic assets. Politicians lecturing young women about illegitimacy will not have much impact so long as the government subsidizes motherhood.

The Chicago Tribune’s Bob Greene put it well: “Ghastly child-labor practices were outlawed years ago, but today families can put tiny children to work just by giving birth to them--and taking the welfare checks those children bring in by virtue of being alive.”

The result: The welfare state is one of America’s growth industries, up by one-fourth in five years. In Illinois, 1.2 million people live below the poverty line. In their name, the welfare bureaucracy spends $8.9 billion a year. Do the math: 1.2 million people into $8.9 billion comes to $7,400 per person. Now multiply that $7,400 a person times the 19 kids living in that one Chicago apartment, plus their five mothers. The total is almost $178,000. If you thought $54,000 a year was terrible, ask yourself what the bureaucrats were doing with the other $124,000.

Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar, a Republican, rushed to the defense of his bureaucratic empire. Arguing that the whole Keystone case was all the fault of one neglectful social worker, Edgar rejected the idea that anything might be wrong with the way the government conducts “compassion.” Earth to Edgar: The bureaucratic system is a continuous, permanent scandal.

Candidate Clinton had the right idea when he said “work, not welfare.” Now he knows how difficult it is to get anything done in Washington. But if Clinton is willing to lead, the country will follow. We have just been reminded what happens when we do nothing but spend money.