A Time of Decision Nears With Welfare Changeover

Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature will soon begin to hash out who will get welfare and who won’t now that Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which does not guarantee benefits to all who qualify, has officially replaced the longtime program Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

The first round of the welfare battle is expected in January when Wilson unveils his budget. If history is instructive, the governor can be expected to propose another series of cuts on top of the state reductions allowed under the new welfare law, which, for example, as of Jan. 1 will provide only $565 a month for a single mother and two children who live in an urban area. While many Democrats can be expected to be unreceptive to additional cuts, a Legislature controlled by Democratic moderates may be inclined to compromise with the Republican governor. It’s a different and higher-stakes game now: State government is facing an unprecedented and enormous task.

Welfare law has always properly prohibited benefits for illegal immigrants. Under reform, states are now allowed to determine whether poor legal immigrants should be able to receive benefits. Most of the legal residents who need welfare assistance have played by the rules before falling on hard times due to unemployment, divorce, illness or some other crisis. These families should not be dropped from the aid rolls.

The new federal welfare law encourages states to place poor children who cannot live with their parents with their grandparents instead, rather than put them in foster care. In California, more than 750,000 grandparents are legal guardians of grandchildren whose parents are dead, addicted to drugs or otherwise unable to care for their sons and daughters. Poor grandparents should be rewarded for taking on a responsibility that would otherwise fall to the state and county and swell the already huge foster care population. Washington’s new law requires grandparents of all ages to meet the new work requirements for benefits and the limit of five years on welfare in a lifetime. That mandate will impose a severe hardship on grandparents who are older but not old enough to qualify for Social Security benefits. Sacramento should mandate an individual review of these cases and provide reasonable exemptions. Washington allows exemptions for up to 20% of a state’s welfare population. The competition for exemptions will be tough. Poor parents raising disabled children should be ruled qualified. So should some functionally illiterate recipients.

California’s successful workfare program, GAIN, can be counted on to help many make the transition from welfare check to paycheck. The program works, and it ultimately saves the state money. But the training is expensive and the state cannot afford to place every recipient in GAIN. It also takes time, especially for uneducated recipients with no work history.

Most of the best-educated welfare recipients probably will find jobs, but their children may not be better off than before. A majority of California’s poor families include parents who work full-time or part-time, according to a Children’s Now report released last week. At least 1.5 million children of working parents do not have adequate nutrition, health insurance or decent and affordable housing. Their ranks may swell when welfare recipients increase the competition for entry-level jobs.

Moving nearly 1 million California recipients off welfare in the next five years will challenge both the public and private sectors. Washington should reward firms willing to take the risk of hiring recent welfare recipients. That typically means some form of government incentive. Problem is, one recent study showed that employers are less likely to hire job seekers who come with tax credits or other government incentives: Employers shy away from hiring people who they assume don’t have good work habits--or any work habits at all.

Thus Washington and Sacramento must put their best minds to work on how to turn former welfare recipients into attractive job seekers. That takes the issue back to training, inescapably expensive. That’s what thoughtful experts mean when they say true welfare reform is costlier than none. But if reform is done right, all Americans will benefit--and taxpayers won’t still be footing a big welfare bill 30 years from now.