Take Up the Slack in Welfare Reform : Clinton’s ‘phase in’ would defer results for too many years

President Clinton wants to start reforming the welfare system by limiting public assistance to two years. During that interval, poor parents would qualify for schooling, job training, child care, health care and other support. By the deadline, the Clinton plan would require recipients to work. If they couldn’t find jobs, government would provide employment of last resort. This approach has its merits, but they won’t be apparent if it takes decades to apply them to all recipients. But that’s the way welfare reform seems headed in Washington these days.

Getting people off welfare is obviously in the national interest. But current estimates to do that range up to $10 billion over five years. That onerous price tag imposes a difficult political hurdle in Washington’s current deficit-sodden climate.

So the White House now leans toward “phasing in” welfare reform. An incremental approach would reduce the financial burden because it would limit the number of recipients required to make the relatively quick transition from welfare to work. In fact, phasing in changes to the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program, and focusing on younger welfare mothers, is championed by aides to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), who also happens to be the foremost welfare policy expert in Congress. Moynihan’s welfare adviser, Paul Offner, who has experience as a state welfare administrator in the Midwest, argues that government cannot realistically expect to put 5 million poor parents, primarily single mothers, to work that quickly. Finding or creating that many jobs would take time and gobs of money.

Starting with the youngest mothers makes sense because half of all welfare spending is associated with families that started with a teenage mom. Teaching them that welfare is not a viable alternative, requiring them to live at home, insisting that they stay in school and go to work--those demands could change their expectations and send a message to the next generation before they get hooked.

The Clinton Administration’s welfare task force acknowledges the wisdom of Moynihan’s thinking. But what the White house is now proposing would take a very long time to see unfold. The plan under consideration would apply initially to mothers who are 25 or younger. If it took effect next year, it would apply to any recipient who was 30 or younger by the year 2000. But the expansion would then stop for several years to gauge performance and determine any additional costs. That disruption would bog down the reform. It could take at least 30 years to get to every eligible welfare recipient.

Congress, led by Moynihan, may insist on a faster phase-in--speeding up the program after the first five years. Moynihan may insist on protecting poor children by crafting more realistic exemptions for welfare recipients who can’t work or keep a job. Moynihan knows welfare in theory--he was a Harvard professor--and in practice. His mother needed government help temporarily after his father abandoned the family. But welfare is no longer a temporary lifeline. At least 40% of the young women who start on welfare, stay on welfare. Many of their daughters follow their lead. This must change.

President Clinton promises to deliver his actual welfare-reform package to Congress some time soon. Clinton will need help if he is to deliver on his campaign promise to “change welfare as we now know it.” But deliver he and Congress must, to ease the public burden and to help strengthen American families.