After Rhetoric, Welfare Reform Work Begins

After months of talk, the actual work of rewriting the state’s welfare law began in earnest this past week as Democrats in the Legislature voted down the first idea they considered--Gov. Pete Wilson’s.

Now they have to find a plan they like more.

Democratic leaders from both houses admit that they have no idea how they will do that. They also admit to growing pressure to come up with something.

Wilson turned his legislative loss into a political road show, seeking to score points in the media by painting Democrats as being “hellbent on preserving the status quo.” Some Democratic groups such as labor and urban activists are also beginning to clamor for more direction from party leaders.

Among Democrats, “the frustration is just reaching a boiling point,” said one Democratic staffer. “Politically, we are getting our butts kicked. I have a great deal of faith in our policy, but we are not communicating a message.”

Among Republicans, divisions have not surfaced yet--largely because the spotlight has been on the majority Democrats and, for the moment, the GOP is behind Wilson’s plan.

The increasingly rancorous welfare debate has the potential of moving the Legislature perilously close to gridlock in the coming weeks. Avoiding that is, for now, the acute challenge facing the Democrats’ two legislative leaders--Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) and Assembly Speaker Cruz Bustamante (D-Fresno).

Democratic leaders face a number of problems in reaching a consensus. Attitudes on welfare vary widely within the Democratic caucus--a group touted for its record ethnic diversity and, because of term limits, a record number of new faces.

Party leaders are concerned about conflicting priorities expressed by the Latino and African American caucuses. Latino leaders have pledged to restore benefits for legal immigrants while the top priority in the African American caucus is welfare mothers and children.

Both issues--funding for legal immigrants and welfare mothers--are likely to be part of a Democratic plan. But with a frugal budget and list of expensive ideas, there will be intense competition for money.

“I saw one staff document that had about 40 different substantive issues listed in the welfare reform context,” Lockyer said. “Any one of those would have provoked a major debate if it was heard by itself.”

There are at last four major issues that are expected to divide lawmakers and produce heated debate: How long should recipients be able to receive benefits; how many hours of work or training should be required in return for receiving assistance; should there be any welfare benefits at all for able-bodied single adults; and should the state provide help for legal immigrants?

In addition--beyond questions about eligibility and benefit levels--lawmakers must figure out how to create the hundreds of thousands of jobs that will be needed if welfare recipients are to move into the work force over the next three years. And they must decide how to care for the 1.8 million children living in California’s welfare families.

But the largest issues may not be the most difficult to overcome. As Lockyer saw this week, there are myriad seemingly smaller issues that could prove explosive. One blew up Wednesday.

In a rare action on the Senate floor, all six Democratic women in the Senate refused to support Lockyer on a seemingly unrelated vote that quickly turned into a welfare confrontation.

The issue was Senate confirmation of Anne Bersinger, Wilson’s recent nominee to be deputy chief of the state Social Services Department.

The female senators reacted angrily when Bersinger defended Wilson’s plan to require that mothers receiving welfare return to work 12 weeks after giving birth. The senators want a mother to be able to remain at home until her child is 1 year old.

Bersinger was confirmed on a 25-6 vote only after Lockyer defended the governor’s nominee as an accomplished government executive and warned his Democratic colleagues about the political risk of backing liberal proposals that have little support among taxpayers.

“I must point out that [Democrat] Kathleen Brown lost the last election [for governor]--and that seems to be a relevant consideration,” he said on the Senate floor.

For now, the welfare reform process is headed for a showdown in a specially assigned committee composed of members from both houses and both parties. This past week, however, Republicans became sharply critical of the super committee structure because it is packed with 12 Democrats and six Republicans.

Assembly Republican floor leader Curt Pringle of Garden Grove complained Wednesday that the structure is too lopsided to produce a compromise. “We are concerned that this process will not be able to get a 41-vote majority, let alone 54,” he said.

For the first time, Wilson also expressed his lack of confidence in the legislative process that has been designed for welfare. He predicted that if a welfare plan is passed this year it will come out of negotiations among the so-called Big Five--top leaders from both parties, both houses and the governor.

Even that sort of negotiation could prove difficult, however, if recent events are any guide. On Tuesday, just hours after an Assembly committee voted down key parts of Wilson’s welfare plan, the leadership from both parties gathered in the office of Sen. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) for a catered dinner of roast duck.

The meeting went late into the night. And when participants left for home they had renewed hope for a bipartisan consensus on welfare reform.

But the next day Wilson attacked Democrats in a daylong series of live interviews on more than two dozen radio and television stations around the state.

“What [we] got from this first committee . . . was a complete default on the responsibility which the committee had to deal seriously and realistically with the required reforms,” the governor said.

By that afternoon, political tension had returned. A disappointed Lockyer reportedly told his colleagues he is no longer inclined to give Wilson the benefit of the doubt during negotiations on a welfare bill.

“If we are going to have a political phase of taking potshots at each other, it just simply breaks down what minimal trust exists and wastes time and energy on commentary,” Lockyer said.