Time to Get Tougher

The federal welfare reform law of 1996 allowed states great latitude in crafting welfare reform to suit their own needs and circumstances. But it also mandated states to require welfare recipients to perform work in return for benefits. In many states this was taken seriously. In California it was not.

Oregon’s welfare reform law, for instance, ties welfare benefits to work requirements on a proportional basis--fulfilling all the required work earns full benefits, half earns half, etc. In cases where recipients fulfill none of the requirements, their entire assistance grant can be withheld. In the 36 states that have incorporated this requirement, welfare recipients are finding work and are moving off public assistance in record numbers.

California, on the other hand, has had only a 26% reduction in its welfare caseload since the federal law was passed in 1996, despite a robust economy. The reason is clear: Welfare recipients who fail to work face only modest sanctions. For example, a welfare family with two parents and three children in Los Angeles, whose parents fail to work can expect at worst a reduction in their welfare grant from $829 to $611. Food stamps are unaffected. And even this $218 penalty assumes there was strict oversight by the county welfare agency--an assumption that is often unwarranted.

The federal welfare reform law of 1996 required that, by this time, three out of four of the California’s two-parent welfare families should have the two adult parents, between them, working 35 hours a week. This is far from draconian. Yet almost three years later, California’s welfare system has not met it. It has been suggested by some over the past week that Gov. Gray Davis should petition the Clinton administration to set aside a $7-million penalty imposed against California for not meeting the federal requirement. Instead, the governor should petition the Legislature to toughen the kind of sanctions on two-parent families that have proved successful in other states.