Clinton Isn’t Doing California’s Poor Any Favors

President Clinton said, “I believe we should ship decision-making responsibility and resources from bureaucracies in Washington to communities, to states and, where we can, directly to individuals.” When he makes statements like that about welfare reform, does he seriously expect us to believe him any more?

Since his campaign pledge in 1992 to end welfare, the president has blocked every serious reform effort presented. Last year, he vetoed important congressional block grant legislation, for which he had earlier indicated support, which would have given state and local governments more flexibility and control over reform efforts. And last week before a Senate panel, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala announced that the president will reject the National Governors Assn.’s bipartisan plan to salvage welfare reform this year.

The president’s words of reform offer up hope, but his actions betray us at our most desperate hour.

California, like so many states, is hurting. Our social fabric is being ripped apart by federal welfare programs that discourage work, deprive citizens of self-respect and dignity, create long-term intergenerational dependency and compromise the well-being of our children. After $5.4 trillion spent over the last 30 years for social welfare, we now realize that the federal government’s failed “war on poverty” has actually been a war on the values of its own citizens.

We must replace the welfare system in California immediately, before we lose another generation of poor children. Unfortunately, the Clinton administration is standing in our way.

In July 1994, California passed common-sense “family cap” welfare reform legislation to end the perverse practice of increasing payments to welfare recipients who have additional children. This practice usurps the role of husbands and drives men away from their families. But officials at the federal Department of Health and Human Services have denied the necessary federal waiver that would allow California to implement its law.

Our citizens are being held hostage by the federal welfare system, and there is nothing we can do about it.

How can we possibly move Californians into the work force when federal welfare programs pay them the equivalent of $11.59 an hour not to work? That’s 270% more than they can earn with a full-time, minimum-wage job. And how can we discourage teenage girls from getting pregnant and dropping out of school when Washington tells them that for as long as they don’t work, don’t get married and don’t live at home, the government will provide them with free money, free food and a free apartment?

We must take matters into our own hands. California will soon pass the most sweeping welfare reform legislation in the nation’s history. The plan will replace the current welfare system with temporary assistance that focuses on reuniting broken families and moving the able-bodied back into jobs.

The plan also removes disincentives to marriage, work and self-responsibility by establishing flat grants, no higher than minimum wage, that do not increase according to family size. After all, it is unfair to tax low-income working mothers whose wages are not based on family size and use the money to subsidize welfare recipients who choose to have more children. Fairness and self-reliance will be the cornerstones of California’s new welfare system.

But without federal approval, these reforms cannot be implemented.

The president says that states must be given more flexibility to do the things they want to without seeking waivers. But by blocking reform efforts in Washington, the president has proved again that he cannot be trusted.

California must be allowed to implement its welfare reform measures without seeking waivers.

We will fight destructive federal welfare programs all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary, until our citizens and families can once again set their own course for opportunity.