Who Called a Cease-Fire on War Against Welfare?

Proponents of welfare reform must admit that the honeymoon is over. After three years of declining welfare caseloads, budget surpluses and a strong economy, the welfare-to-work programs face a real test.

Welfare reform refers to the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which limits welfare receipt to two consecutive years. After reaching this time limit, parents lose their cash grant but remain eligible for assistance, including child care and transportation subsidies, if they are employed full-time in a job with wages sufficiently low to leave them eligible.

The continuation of benefits, particularly child care, beyond the welfare time limit was crucial to passage of this twice-vetoed bill.

States maintained discretion over how to structure and fund their programs but were offered incentives for lowering caseloads and penalties for failing to meet caseload reduction goals.

Child care has long been recognized as a critical component to the smooth transition from welfare to work. Evaluations of earlier welfare-to-work programs point to the lack of child care subsidies as the key reason reforms failed.

The recent reform had some chance of success because it directly addressed the main barriers to work: lack of affordable child care, transportation and problems with domestic violence, mental health and substance abuse.

California has taken the first major step backward in implementing welfare reform. In response to cuts in Gov. Gray Davis’ budget, the Department of Public Social Services in Los Angeles County has mailed letters to the parents of 3,000 children, informing them that they will lose their child care subsidy at the beginning of the year.

All of the affected families have left welfare for low-wage jobs, just as policymakers had hoped they would. These families represent the success of welfare reform. They are single mothers working, yet earning wages so low that children remain near or below the federal poverty line.

A minimum-wage job in California pays $11,960 annually, and the yearly cost of licensed preschool child care in Los Angeles County is nearly $6,000. It is difficult to imagine how these single mothers will be able to continue to work and not return to welfare once they lose their child care subsidy. Because nearly 40% of the state’s children on welfare live in Los Angeles County, the bulk of the impact of lost child care will be felt here.

Child care is not merely baby-sitting. Publicly subsidized child care offers a chance to expose those children facing the greatest challenges to more opportunity. Cutting child care for poor children is akin to removing funding for their education.

In addition to helping children, money spent on child care improves the self-sufficiency of adults. Child care subsidies significantly encourage school attendance and work among parents.

Affordable child care is a key variable in any serious attempt to move parents from welfare to self-sufficiency. It should not be the first thing on the chopping block when times are tough.