WELFARE

The new welfare law permits the states to end or diminish public assistance for millions of able-bodied adults. Its assumption that former recipients can obtain a paying job is dubious, since many lack job skills and work experience. With the private sector not a real option for most forced off welfare, many believe government must create community-service jobs. But they fear a Republican-controlled Congress committed to shrinking government will block any such program. Politics aside, the funds necessary to finance a new job program simply don’t exist.

The problem is not Congress, however, but the president. Congress has authorized an ambitious community-service work program, the structure is already in place and, most important, the money to pay for it has been appropriated. Inexplicably, the Clinton administration has not exercised the authority it has been given nor called upon the funds that have been made available.

Shortly after the 1992 election, Clinton asked Congress to adopt his national service program. Its central idea was loan forgiveness for college-bound youth who performed some volunteer public service. Congress enacted the president’s proposal, but only after amending it to provide similar opportunities for low-income youth not college-bound. Under the amendment, a “youth corps program” could obtain a federal work contract if it is “established by a state or local government or by a nonprofit organization,” offers “meaningful, full-time, productive work” in an “urban or public works or transportation setting” and gives participants “a mix of work experience” and “the opportunity to develop citizenship values and skills through service to their communities and the United States.”

More than 100 such service-corps programs exist nationally, and no state has more or better programs than California. The California Conservation Corps, established in 1975, was the first and remains the largest state program. Conservation-corps programs also abound at the local and regional level in the state. Los Angeles has the largest.

Currently, California’s programs are nonprofit. Many are nearly self-supporting, fulfilling state recycling contracts and relatively small public-service contracts with local government agencies. The proceeds enable local corps to provide participants, many of whom are dropouts, the opportunity to earn a high-school-equivalency diploma. They also help them develop self-respect, personal accountability and an appreciation of the duties, not just the rights, that citizenship entails.

Conservation corps perform an array of valuable community services. For example, the Los Angeles Conservation Corps, based in East Los Angeles and South Central, has removed graffiti, converted vacant lots and alleys into parks, planted more than 10,000 trees in open spaces and neighborhoods, constructed and maintained trails throughout the Santa Monica Conservancy and collected hundreds of tons of recyclable materials.

Congress expressed a desire to harness such energies at the federal level. The National Service Act declares that urban housing, public works and transportation need rehabilitation, reclamation and beautification, and, the law points out, urban youth corps have done this kind of work efficiently.

Large amounts of federal funds are available to pay for such public-service work. For example, in appropriating $150 billion in Highway Trust Funds, to be spent over six years, Congress earmarked $2.8 billion for so-called “transportation enhancement activities,” which include construction of pedestrian and bicycle paths, landscaping, erosion control and restoration of historic buildings. This is but one example of the many federal public-works programs that create jobs through community conservation corps. Contracting out even a small percentage of such work to youth corps programs could facilitate employment of tens of thousands of young adults no longer eligible for public assistance.

The failure of the Clinton administration to implement these provisions of the National Service Act is difficult to understand. It may reflect the view that national and community service should consist primarily of volunteer activities rather than reimbursed public-service work. Yet, these approaches are not mutually exclusive. Volunteerism is simply unrealistic for many jobless people who desire and would benefit from a public-service work experience. The community conservation corps that can provide such an experience are devoted to the same ideal at the heart of AmeriCorps: the development of civic consciousness through public service. The fact that corps members may be modestly paid, at or slightly above the minimum wage, provides no moral or rational basis upon which to exclude them from the national-service program. College-bound “volunteers” who participate in the AmeriCorps program, it should be noted, are also compensated, not just with living allowances but education vouchers and other benefits.

The president has praised his national service program for helping 70,000 young people work their way through college. He wants “to mobilize millions of Americans to serve in thousands of ways.” Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer have urged the president to achieve this goal, and smooth implementation of the new welfare law, through federal work contracts with youth-corps programs, as Congress has authorized under the National Service Act. The president should heed their advice.