Welfare Reform: The Bottom Line : Lowering costs isn’t all there is to it

Like all the other reforms, the GOP welfare bill contains some good ideas. However, each idea needs to be looked at very carefully.

For instance, the bill--currently in a House subcommittee--would set a time limit on aid, require recipients to go to work and restrict benefits to teen-age mothers, the people most likely to need Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Yes, able-bodied adults should be nudged to get off the dole, but House Republicans would impose these changes without adequate support for poor children. No reform should tear holes in the nation’s desperately needed safety net--or target children.

The House Republicans would de-legislate the current government obligation to help all who qualify for help and would refashion federal welfare programs into block grants for the states. The block-grant approach can make sense, but it’s problematic for welfare: For example, poor families who applied after a state’s funds had run out would get nothing--even if they had been longtime taxpayers before suffering some economic crisis.

The Republicans would also give each state the authority to use the money “in any manner reasonably calculated” to help needy families. What’s reasonable in Mississippi may not be reasonable in California. Why not have at least elemental national standards? Shouldn’t all eligible poor children get at least some support?

Besides, too much flexibility without minimum federal requirements would penalize innovative states like California that provide job training and grant comparatively high benefits. If other states are allowed to do less, California could indeed become a welfare magnet. Moreover, legal immigrants would not qualify at all; that could crush California.

The notion of a time limit is appropriate, but the House GOP bill would disqualify recipients after five years whether or not they had found work. That sink-or-swim rule is scary. A work requirement is important and valid, and many welfare recipients should have no problem finding jobs in boom times, especially if they were motivated by a raised minimum wage that made working more economically attractive than staying on welfare. But what about during recessions? Government job programs are vital. The GOP bill would provide no additional money for work programs like GAIN, California’s successful welfare-to-work effort. Without that money, the GOP approach presents another unfunded mandate, dumping a costly problem on the states.

The emphasis on teen-age mothers is absolutely appropriate. But the GOP would deny welfare benefits forever to a mother for any child born to her when she was a teen-ager. That prohibition could force a pregnant woman to consider abortion. Gov. Pete Wilson has a better idea. He would require a teen-age mother to live with a responsible adult, who would receive and manage the welfare benefits. That way would not deprive babies. That’s the humane, smarter way.