Ban on Payments for Welfare Mothers’ New Babies Delayed

Gov. Pete Wilson’s long-standing desire to deny higher welfare payments to mothers who give birth while on aid has become one of the first casualties of his prolonged budget impasse with the Legislature.

A new regulation called “the family cap,” prohibiting poor mothers from collecting aid for any child born after they have been on welfare at least 10 months, had been scheduled to go into effect this Friday, but has been postponed indefinitely. California would have been the 20th state to impose such restrictions as part of a nationwide effort by conservatives to discourage out-of-wedlock births.

Corinne Chee, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Social Services, said California counties were hurriedly notified by telephone that they were not to implement the new regulation, even though recipients had received written notices months ago telling them that it would go into effect Aug. 1.

She said officials decided on the postponement when they discovered that the failure of the governor and the Legislature to agree on a state welfare plan meant that the regulation would instead have to be implemented according to federal requirements.

Particularly onerous for the Wilson administration, she said, is one requirement that would force the state to exempt from the restriction all unmarried teenagers who give birth while living at home with welfare families.

“We felt very strongly that we didn’t want to have the teen parents exempted,” Chee said. “The bottom line is, we don’t want to reward irresponsible behavior by teens or anybody else. We felt it sends a real conflicting double message to say adults have to abide by this but teens don’t.”

Officials said the family cap rule would save $14 million the first year and ultimately $63 million a year in California, where 48,000 children are born to welfare mothers annually. They said they hope that the delay will be no longer than a month or two but have no firm timetable for imposing the cap.

The issue of women and girls giving birth while on aid has been one of the most contentious in the welfare debate. Wilson was among the first political figures to contend that welfare encouraged poor women to have more babies--especially out of wedlock--and proposed penalties designed to discourage further childbearing.

If a family was prevented from collecting additional welfare every time another baby was born, he argued, there would be less incentive to have more children.

Now, welfare benefits are tied to the size of a family, and they increase with each birth. In Los Angeles, a mother with two children can collect maximum monthly aid of $565, but if another baby is born that grant rises to $673.

Advocates for the poor said there is little evidence to show that welfare rates have any bearing on a woman’s decision to have children, and that the loss of aid would only plunge poor families into deeper poverty. In March, five months after a similar policy was instituted in Massachusetts, that state reported a slight increase in welfare births, although welfare caseloads declined.

“I don’t know of any woman who would have another baby just to get a larger welfare grant,” said Sister Sheila Walsh, executive director of Jericho, a Sacramento-based advocacy group for the poor. Welfare provides “so little money to live on anyway. If there’s another person in the family, how can families survive? An infant requires lots of expenses. How are they going to cover that?”

But Chee said the loss of aid was intended to encourage poor mothers to engage in better family planning.

California has been at odds with the Clinton administration over teenage mothers and welfare grants for years. In 1994, the Legislature approved a prohibition against additional aid for children conceived and born while their mothers were on welfare. But it never went into effect, in part because it required permission from the federal government, which the Clinton administration would not grant unless the state agreed to the teen exemption.

“We believe the family cap is about parents taking responsibility for decisions they make about having children, and the consequences to the state and taxpayers who have to bear a financial burden for that child,” said Michael Kharfen, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “It’s not to penalize the unfortunate mistakes of children. . . . We come down on the side that for these very young parents this [restriction] would be an undue penalty.”

The state adamantly refused to accept the exemption, however, and for months the two sides were at an impasse.

“Other states did not raise issues with those conditions, as I recall,” Kharfen said. “Or certainly not to the level that California did.”

The state finally reluctantly agreed to the exemption and the approval was granted in August 1996. But by then, the president was poised to sign a far-reaching law that gave states broad authority to design their own welfare programs. California officials then decided to schedule implementation for Aug. 1, 1997, a date they hoped would give them time to have their own welfare plan in effect and to notify recipients of the change.

The decision to postpone that date is not expected to cause a problem for most counties.

In Los Angeles County, Lisa Nunez, division director for the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program, said officials know when welfare mothers have more children and can easily notify them that the effective date of the regulation has been delayed. She estimated that in August about 800 welfare families are expecting babies and would have been affected by the regulation.