State Welfare Negotiations: More Than the Bottom Line

Gov. Pete Wilson’s speedy rejection of the welfare package crafted by Assembly Democrats puts the controversial topic before the so-called Big Five--the governor and the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate and the Assembly. This negotiating squad of last resort needs to hash out philosophical and fiscal differences and fashion a deal by July 18, when the Legislature is scheduled to recess. Rewriting the state welfare law cannot be postponed until next year or even later, as both sides have threatened to do. Such a delay could cost California $187 million in federal money and further damage the remaining welfare safety net.

The Big Five tackle tough issues left at the end of a legislative session, and welfare reform, like the budget, is among the toughest. Even so, achieving consensus is not impossible. Washington did it last summer. Neither side got everything it wanted, but the nation got a federal directive to shift welfare from a lifetime entitlement to temporary assistance, and to a state block grant program that will require states to reduce the welfare rolls. The big question for Sacramento is how such a change is to be accomplished.

The governor prefers tight deadlines for finding jobs. His plan would allow able-bodied new recipients to receive aid for a single year at a stretch before they had to find work, instead of the more realistic two years allowed by federal law and preferred by Democrats in Sacramento. Wilson’s rationale is that the longer a poor parent stays on welfare, the harder it is to get off. But many recipients, even if eager to work, may need more than 12 months to resolve a family crisis, develop marketable skills, find a job or, perhaps most important, secure child care. At least initially, two years is sensible.

Finding affordable and accessible child care, especially for infants, could prove more challenging than finding a job. The Democratic plan recognizes this scarcity and would allow new mothers to stay home for one year. The governor’s plan, modeled after many workplaces, calls for new mothers to go to work 12 weeks after the birth of a child. Infant care, the most expensive form of supervision, is already hard to find and will become scarcer when former welfare recipients begin to compete for spaces in day care. At least until new state subsidies are able to create more child care slots, a 12-week rule could result in chaotic competition for infant care. The negotiators should keep in mind a potential unintended consequence of welfare reform: young children left home alone.

The toughest areas of disagreement include the Democratic plan to pay for community service jobs of last resort, to finance food stamps for disabled or elderly legal immigrants who are scheduled to lose federal benefits and to provide more generous exemptions than the governor can stomach for welfare recipients who fail to go to work. The Democrats may be right in principle but will need to make concessions here for the sake of a deal.

As proposed before the governor’s veto, the Democratic plan would have cost perhaps $1 billion more than Wilson’s plan in the first year but even at that level would cost less than what’s now spent on public assistance. In future years, welfare spending is expected to decline as the welfare population shrinks.

Welfare reform is complicated. No matter whose details prevail, each side will have gotten some of what it wanted. But the final decisions should be determined not just by political imperatives but also by the best interests of the nearly 2 million children who depend on welfare in California. Their lives are about to change. Legislators need to take care that the change is not for the worse.