Pringle on Welfare Policy

Re “Clinton Isn’t Doing California’s Poor Any Favors,” by Curt Pringle, Commentary, March 4: Assembly Speaker Pringle (R-Garden Grove) claims welfare recipients receive $11.59 per hour. Nonsense. California’s AFDC grant is $607 per month for a family of three (the typical welfare family), or less than $4 per hour. Pursuant to a new Clinton administration waiver, it will soon drop to $594. Even when food stamps are counted, Pringle more than doubles the real value of aid by including benefits such as housing subsidies available to fewer than one in 10 families, and counting the value of health care, as if a family could eat or pay rent with its Medi-Cal benefits.

Also wrong is Pringle’s notion that a “family cap” policy, which denies newborn children welfare benefits if their parents are on aid, is the key to welfare reform. Virtually every responsible study finds no significant connection between AFDC grants and birthrates.

Even without a family cap, California is operating numerous welfare reform projects, all authorized by federal waivers. The Clinton administration last year approved California’s “wedfare” waiver, eliminating the “marriage penalty” on certain welfare benefits. California is also operating--under federal waivers--the Cal Learn program, which uses a system of financial rewards and penalties to encourage teens to stay in school, get good grades and graduate.

Similarly, Pringle is dead wrong when he claims reforms that encourage work are being blocked by the federal waiver process. California encourages work among welfare recipients via a series of waivers allowing more generous treatment of earnings, suspending the “100-hour rule,” which limited work, and allowing working recipients to accumulate more savings without losing aid.

CLARE PASTORE

Western Center on Law

and Poverty, Los Angeles