Almost Twins: Clinton and Dole Tackle Welfare

White House rivals Bill Clinton and Bob Dole are beginning to sound a lot alike on welfare.

Both heap praise on Wisconsin’s proposed reforms, which would eliminate the national Aid to Families with Dependent Children safety net and require poor parents to work in return for their benefits. Both support a time limit on how long poor families can receive assistance. Both want teenage mothers on welfare to stay in school and live with their parents or other responsible adults until they get their high school diplomas. Both want absent parents to pay child support.

That’s a lot of common ground. It could easily form the basis of a bipartisan welfare deal in Washington. But a deal is not likely this year, not while presidential ambitions reign supreme.

Candidate Clinton, sounding more like a Republican than a Democrat, stole the thunder of candidate Dole, who had scheduled a major welfare address in Wisconsin on Tuesday. Forewarned, Clinton used his Saturday radio address to embrace the Wisconsin plan himself, an unlikely decision for a Democrat because the Wisconsin plan, adopted late last month, was crafted by conservative Republican Tommy G. Thompson. Clinton’s political stroke upstaged Dole, who was left with little to propose on Tuesday but a measure allowing states to mandate drug tests for welfare recipients.

Nevertheless, the political battle makes welfare Topic A again, and this time the battle will be over innovative experiments by state governments. But first the political drama must be played out in Washington. The Ping-Pong game is to resume today when Republicans introduce a new welfare bill in Congress. The conservative salvo is expected to endorse changes that would free states from federal welfare dictates and revamp Medicaid, the government health program for poor Americans. This blend will probably arrive DOA at the White House, if it gets that far.

Meanwhile, the White House is expected to parade its welfare experts, including Harvard professor Mary Jo Bane, who is scheduled to testify before a House hearing on reform. Bane has some constructive ideas, which will be wasted if they are reduced to ammunition in a political war.

While Clinton, Dole and others posture for political advantage, the task of changing welfare, of developing and testing new ideas, has been left to states like Wisconsin, California, Ohio and New Jersey.

The Wisconsin jobs program, for instance, would require all welfare recipients with children 12 weeks old or older to perform some kind of work. Working parents would get health care and child care subsidies, although they would have to pay for part of the services from their own earnings. The idea is interesting. A demonstration project--a prudent federal requirement--should determine whether this approach could put all welfare recipients in a job without providing work training like California’s successful GAIN program. The evaluation also should factor in Wisconsin’s enviably low unemployment rate, which eases the task of finding a job, and the state’s commitment to subsidize work for welfare recipients who cannot find jobs, which generates an expense that many states could not afford.

The important element of this election year’s welfare battles is that most governors, including California’s Pete Wilson, are trying new approaches while Washington continues its endless debate.

Wisconsin’s welfare revolution should be evaluated on whether it can put people to work without hurting their children, not on the basis of how it scores in presidential campaigns.