State Deserves Welfare Break

Deadlines drive federal welfare reform, and appropriately so. Time limits carrying the threat of financial penalties against the states give needed urgency to reducing the welfare population. But an unreasonable goal--that 75% of two-parent welfare families get off the rolls in one fiscal year--has combined with California’s special circumstances to produce an impossible burden.

A pending $7-million federal penalty against the state should be waived. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala should give the new governor, Gray Davis, and the Legislature time to approve a corrective plan. She should also waive fiscal penalties as long as California demonstrates steady progress.

Congress has shown its willingness to correct early flaws in the federal welfare reform law by reinstating food stamps for legal immigrants. The White House took the corrections a step further Monday, announcing it will seek $1.3 billion over five years to restore additional benefits to legal immigrants. It added that it would direct $70 million of that to English language instruction.

As a next step, Congress and the Clinton administration could permanently ease California’s burden simply by placing political refugees, from Southeast Asia and elsewhere, in a special category that does not count against a state’s welfare deadlines.

Under federal law, states were required to place 75% of two-parent welfare families in the work force during the last fiscal year and 90% by the end of the current fiscal year. California put only 24% of such couples to work by the first deadline, flunking this test largely because of the sheer numbers of two-parent families on assistance--more than any other state--and because of the huge numbers of immigrants and hard-to-employ political refugees on the rolls.

Two-parent families make up 17.7% of the welfare population in California but only 3.3% in New York. In part this is due to California’s praiseworthy efforts to keep fathers involved with their children, in part to the large presence of refugee families. More than half of welfare couples in California do not speak English. Yet California is committed to welfare reform, as shown by the dramatic 22% drop in the number of single parents on aid since 1993. The state welfare reform, CalWORKS, took effect only last January; it should be given more time.

All the time in the world, however, might not make some welfare recipients employable. Of particular concern in California are illiterate and unskilled Hmong refugees from Laos, many of whom were recruited by the CIA during the Vietnam War. After the U.S. defeat, nearly 200,000 were allowed political refuge in America.

Older refugees and recent immigrants, especially those who speak neither English nor Spanish and have no marketable skills, also pose a challenge for California. The new law expects middle-aged couples--Russians, Vietnamese, Armenians, Iranians, Chinese, Cambodians and many other immigrants--to find work quickly. Those who are able should work, but some may need more time than allowed by federal deadlines to acquire the necessary skills. Latino immigrants generally are more successful in getting work, despite language and education barriers, but even this group is not clearing the high federal hurdle.

Congress no doubt knew when it passed this law that it would be impossible for some states to comply. The problem is the stringency of the deadline, not California’s efforts. Some relief is warranted.