White House OKs Job Rules for Welfare Plan

Clinton Administration officials, putting the final touches on the President’s welfare reform plan, have decided that aid recipients who reach a proposed two-year limit on benefits without finding private-sector jobs should be permitted to continue in government-subsidized jobs indefinitely, according to a senior Administration official.

But the subsidized jobs, whose wages would substitute for welfare benefits, would be available only to those who continued to do everything possible to find other employment, according to the official and a source outside the Administration who has seen the final reform plan.

This could mean that even with the radical welfare reform the President is expected to propose to Congress next week, the federal government still might have to support some families as long as their minor children lived at home.

States would be given the option of evaluating whether recipients who have held subsidized jobs for two years had made good-faith efforts to obtain unsubsidized jobs. Those who were found to have failed to apply for open unsubsidized jobs, who failed to cooperate with potential employers or who had turned down job offers would be removed from the program and barred from applying for further subsidized work for six months.

“Anyone who plays by the rules can continue on the program,” the Administration official said, “but it prevents people from just going through the motions” and staying on the dole.

Whether there would be a limit on the number of subsidized work slots for welfare recipients was one of the trickiest policy decisions that the architects of the Administration’s reform plan had to make.

They wanted to make sure that there was a clear end to welfare and yet not take away the safety net for families who need it. It was the last significant policy decision after more than a year of intensive work by Administration officials on the proposal, which is designed to fulfill Clinton’s campaign promise to “end welfare as we know it.”

Under the plan, welfare recipients would receive education, training, job placement services, child care and health care benefits to help them get off welfare. After two years, welfare recipients would be required to work. If no unsubsidized job were available, the state would provide jobs for as long as two years so that recipients could earn their benefits.

Recipients who refused jobs would be subject to severe sanctions. They would be ineligible for another subsidized work slot for six months and would find themselves with no cash assistance.

Because of financial and administrative restrictions, the Administration decided to apply the new welfare rules only to people born after 1971.

One reason the officials had such a difficult time making the decision is that no one knows how many people will be unable to find work because of a shortage of jobs.

The only people who should be left in the subsidized work program are those who are unable to work without a “sheltered environment” and those who live in areas where there are no jobs that match their skills.

But there has not been a broad test of how a mandatory program of subsidized jobs would work, and there is no way to estimate how many people would still be without regular jobs after two years on welfare and two years doing subsidized work.

The option allowing states to cut families off if they are found to be making less than a full effort to get work after two years in subsidized jobs is “a safety valve to make sure people play by the rules,” the Administration official said.

Such a sanction is important to the more conservative members of the Administration’s welfare reform task force because they believe it is essential to send a clear message that work is not an option but a requirement.

Other welfare reform plans that have already been introduced in Congress offer other solutions.

In the major House Republican version, states would have the option to cut off recipients completely after three years, whether or not they were trying to get jobs. Under a plan forwarded by centrist and conservative Democrats in the House, the subsidized jobs would end after three years.

The Administration official said both of these solutions are too “arbitrary” and could lead to “unforeseen consequences.”

“We took what was a principled decision,” the official added. “People playing by the rules ought to be rewarded.”