Cuts in Welfare Payments Take Effect This Week

Ushering in a new era of welfare austerity, nearly 900,000 of the poorest families in California this week will receive aid checks reflecting cuts of up to 9.6%.

The cuts in benefits were approved by the Legislature and Gov. Pete Wilson in August 1995, but the way was not cleared for them to go into effect until President Clinton signed a far-reaching reform measure that gives states new independence to design their own welfare systems.

Officials in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties said the latest welfare checks will be mailed Monday and should reach recipients by the first of the year.

“[The cuts] are designed to make welfare less attractive and to make employment more attractive,” said Wilson’s press secretary Sean Walsh.

In Los Angeles, the cuts affect 267,753 families, or a total of 853,859 recipients, most of whom are children. For an average family of three, the maximum monthly cash benefit will be reduced by 4.9%, from $594 to $565. The cut, however, will make the family eligible for a slight increase in food stamps, the government-issued coupons that can be exchanged at grocery stores for groceries.

Advocates for the poor predicted that few of the recipients will be able to find jobs and the cuts will only further threaten their ability to provide food and shelter for children.

“In very real terms this is asking people to take that percent off what they take home,” said Bob Erlenbusch, executive director of the Los Angeles Coalition to End Homelessness, “and for low-income women who are already paying 50%, 60%, 70% of their benefits for rent that $30 could make the difference between being at risk of being homeless and being homeless.”

The Jan. 1 reduction in government benefits for poor parents and children is only a precursor of what is to come for welfare recipients throughout California as state and local governments begin to implement the new federal legislation in the coming year.

Wilson is expected to recommend more cuts in early January when he presents his proposals to the Legislature for structuring California’s welfare system. At the same time, other reductions mandated by the federal law and earlier state laws will begin to go into effect.

Beginning in March, county welfare agencies will start enforcing a requirement that unmarried teenage mothers attend school and live with their own parents or in an adult-supervised setting to get welfare.

That same month, a state law approved in 1992 will begin limiting the amount of cash benefits that can be received by welfare families who move to California. For 12 months, those families must be paid benefits at the rate set by the state they left.

Even with the latest cuts, only six states pay higher welfare benefits to families than California. Wilson has long contended that California’s higher benefits have been a magnet for welfare recipients from other states.

In April, county welfare officials will begin recertifying food stamp recipients to determine which legal immigrants should be cut from the rolls. Under the federal law, noncitizens are no longer entitled to food stamps unless they have had 10 years of employment in the United States, are veterans or are recent refugees who have been in the country fewer than five years.

Then, starting in August, children who are born while their mothers are on welfare will no longer be eligible for assistance.

Like the cut in family benefits, many of the new welfare provisions were adopted by the Legislature in previous years but could not be implemented without federal approval.

When the welfare law was signed by Clinton on Aug. 22, the federal approvals were no longer necessary. The new provisions eliminated Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC), a federal, state and locally funded program. In its place, the federal government provided a block grant to states and allowed them great flexibility to design their own programs.

In California, it permitted the state to inaugurate a new system of regional rates, which would allow recipients in counties with higher costs of living to receive greater benefits than those in lower-cost rural areas. Officials in many rural counties had been complaining that welfare recipients were flocking to their cities and towns because the lower cost of living allowed them to stretch the dollars further.

“The big ticket item for people on aid is rent,” said Sen. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), the author of the regional rates legislation, “and there were some people living in some regions where the rent was $325 a month and others in other regions where it was $880 a month and yet people were getting the same grant.”

Under the state’s new system, the reductions for those living in urban counties will be 4.9%, while allocations for recipients living in more rural counties will drop by 9.56%.

The 4.9% cut affects recipients in 17 counties--Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, San Diego, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Monterey, Napa, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano and Sonoma.

The 9.56% cut, which reduces the monthly cash benefit for typical families from $594 to $538, affects recipients in the remaining counties, including San Bernardino, Riverside, Kern, Imperial, Fresno and Sacramento.

Coinciding with the cuts, however, was an announcement from the Wilson administration that it would propose the continuation of welfare benefits for some 366,109 immigrant families. The new federal legislation had left it to the states to decide whether legal immigrant families already on welfare would continue to receive benefits.

“We’re not penalizing those who came into the country the right way and immigrated here legally,” said Walsh. “We certainly would love to go after their sponsors and get them to live up to their responsibilities, but that doesn’t seem to be possible.”

The administration is also leaning toward continuing nursing home benefits for about 200 elderly immigrants and allowing illegal immigrants to participate in a federally financed program that provides nutritious food to women and children.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Benefit Cuts

On Jan. 1 cash benefits for welfare families will be substantially reduced.

Impact

Families throughout California will see a 4.9% cut in their monthly cash grant. Families living in rural areas where the cost of living is lower will have their benefits cut an additional 4.9%. For a typical family of three--a mother and two children--the maximum monthly cash benefit will drop from $594 to $565. In rural areas, the drop will be from $594 to $538.

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Number of People Affected in Southern California:

Los Angeles: 853,859

Orange: 114,444

Riverside: 99,332

San Bernardino: 188,854

Ventura: 28,828

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A Steady Decline

Since 1991 the cash benefit paid to families on welfare has dropped sharply. In January 1991 the typical family--a mother and two children--receiving assistance under the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, collected a monthly cash benefit of $694. By January 1997 families receiving aid under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, the successor to AFDC, will be getting a maximum grant of $565. In rural areas, they will receive $538.

Source: California Department of Social Services