Assembly Votes to Keep Welfare Curbs

In a nasty debate filled with references to welfare mothers and sexism, the Assembly on Thursday approved Gov. Pete Wilson’s legislation to deny automatic cost-of-living and other increases to welfare recipients.

On one of the hottest issues to erupt on the lower-house floor this year, Republicans finally won the fight to hold down benefits for about 3.7 million Californians on a 41-30 vote, the bare majority required.

All Republicans but one and Reform Party member Dominic Cortese of San Jose voted yes, while Democrats and Republican Assemblyman Brian Setencich of Fresno voted no. The measure goes next to the Democratic-controlled Senate, where its prospects are considered doubtful.

One lawmaker who sent tensions on the floor rocketing was Assemblyman Bernie Richter (R-Chico), who launched a broad-based attack against what he called “the destructive and failing welfare system.”

“Thoughtless, reckless child-bearing is rewarded with a government check” that serves to “usurp the male role” in the family, he said.

At that, cries of “Sexism!” rose from the Democratic side of the aisle, and as Richter continued condemning the “oozing misery of welfare that is destroying America,” Democrats interrupted four times, demanding that Richter stop reading from a prepared text, an Assembly rule violation.

Republican Speaker Curt Pringle, however, allowed Richter to continue, saying he was only using notes. At one point, Assemblyman John Burton (D-San Francisco) walked to Richter’s side and peered over his shoulder, checking Richter’s reading material, until Richter asked him to back off.

Democrats sought to dramatize the harm caused to the state’s needy and place blame at the GOP’s door.

“Don’t think for a minute that you can hide the fact that you are saying to the blind, disabled and aged that you are not cutting their benefits,” said Assemblywoman Jackie Speier (D-Burlingame). “You are doing precisely that by not allowing for an automatic cost-of-living increase” that lets benefits keep pace with inflation.

Enactment of the welfare bill, by Assemblyman Tom Bordonaro (R-Paso Robles), would mean that cuts in benefits and a freeze on cost-of-living increases would remain in place rather than be removed July 1 as called for in present law. The cuts were made in 1991 to help state government balance its budget, but the benefits had been scheduled to return to previous levels or thereabouts.

Democrats on Thursday proposed a flurry of amendments, calling for lessening the impact of continued cuts and for sharing the pain with the rich. But Republicans easily defeated each attempt.

Bordonaro said he was offering his bill “to avert a budget train wreck . . . by eliminating autopilot spending on social welfare programs, while maintaining the commitment to providing adequate assistance to the most vulnerable and disadvantaged Californians.”

Failure to act, he said, would leave an $800-million hole in the governor’s proposed 1996-97 budget and would mean added costs of $1.2 billion a year thereafter.

A recent Republican amendment softens the blow on the aged, blind and disabled by postponing a decision on cuts for them. If not changed during upcoming state budget negotiations, the amendment would restore cut benefits at the first of next year. Cost-of-living increases, however, would remain suspended for all aid categories.

Currently, a welfare mother of two receives a $607 cash grant plus food stamps. Aged and disabled recipients get an average of $626 a month plus food stamps. The blind receive extra stipends, and more for those using guide dogs.

The benefit differences debated in the Bordonaro bill range from $30 to about $100 a month, depending on the program and family size, but the long-term impact would be greater because of the cost-of-living freeze.

Repeating a Democratic refrain, Assemblyman Tom Bates (D-Berkeley), noted that under the 1991 crisis budgeting, the wealthy were asked to sacrifice too, in the form of a tax increase which has now been eliminated.

“That’s the dichotomy,” Bates said. “If you’re wealthy and powerful, you’re taken care of. If you’re aged, blind and disabled, you don’t get helped, or you get helped less.”

GOP strategists had prevented the Republican bill from coming to a vote in recent days, fearful that not all 41 Republicans members could be counted on. On Thursday they prevailed, but only with the vote of Cortese, the chamber’s one Reform Party member. Cortese is a former Democrat who has been treated with kindness by the GOP ever since he switched.

In arguing for holding down welfare grants, Assemblyman Keith Olberg (R-Victorville) and other Republicans have cited a study purporting to show that welfare benefits in California are so high that they far exceed income from a minimum-wage job.

Again on Thursday, Olberg cited the study, conducted by the libertarian Cato Institute of Washington. The study concludes that a California welfare mother of two young children is provided cash and benefits worth $20,687 a year.

The Cato conclusions are widely disputed by Democrats and by another Washington think tank, the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which puts the three-member welfare family’s income at less than $10,000 a year in California.

The Cato group, critics noted, adds up every conceivable benefit and assigns the total to every recipient, including, for example, public housing even though it is available to only 9% of California welfare families.

A spokeswoman for the Cato Institute said that while its conclusions are “controversial,” they still pertain accurately to the most welfare-dependent families.