Bush Proposes ‘Ethic of Work’ in Welfare Plan

The Bush administration Tuesday proposed substantially strengthening the work requirements for welfare recipients while permitting poor people to meet them in part through training, drug rehabilitation and other non-work activities.

In addition, the White House would spend $200 million on federal efforts--and encourage $100 million more from the states--to promote marriage, which many conservatives view as a potent antidote to poverty and other social ills.

Declaring that “our work is not done,” Bush announced the recommendations Tuesday as part of a White House effort to make required work even more important in providing cash aid for the poor. The six-year-old experiment in welfare reform will expire this year, and Congress is beginning the first major review of welfare policy since the mid-1990s.

Administration officials on Tuesday described welfare reform as a success, prompting nearly 3 million families to leave the rolls of public aid--an extraordinary reduction that they attributed to new welfare policies rather than to the booming economy of the 1990s. But they emphasized that an array of new policies is needed to finish the job.

“We ended welfare as we’ve known it, yet it is not a post-poverty America,” Bush told a group of neighborhood activists in a Washington church. “Child poverty is still too high. Too many families are strained and fragile and broken. Too many Americans still have not found work and the purpose it brings.”

The president added: “At the heart of all these proposals is a single commitment to return an ethic of work to an important place in all American lives.”

The administration plan calls for 7 in 10 welfare recipients to hold jobs by 2007, up from the current 3 in 10. And those recipients would be required to work 40 hours a week, up from the current 30. During some of these hours, workers could enroll in programs designed to aid their long-term employment prospects.

The White House proposals sparked applause from conservatives and chagrin from liberals, who had not anticipated the tough new proposals for work.

“By increasing standards, we show a greater expectation for those we are trying to help, and as we have seen, people will rise to our expectations of them,” said Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr. (R-Fla.), a champion of the 1996 welfare overhaul.

House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) predicted that a major welfare bill will pass the House this year.

Before Tuesday, the emerging debate had shaped up largely as a reaffirmation of the 1996 welfare reform law, when Congress made far-reaching decisions to end the lifetime entitlement to benefits, to impose stricter work rules and to give states new control over their welfare programs. The administration would continue welfare spending at the current level of about $16.5 billion a year and preserve basic features of the 1996 law.

But Democratic critics and advocates for the poor took issue with White House claims that it would broaden the freedom of states to design their own programs. They urged Congress to index annual welfare spending to inflation. And they called for restoring welfare benefits to noncitizens, which were slashed in 1996.

“We all agree that work must be the central goal of welfare reform,” said Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.). But “I fear the plan just proposed by the White House could actually reduce the states’ discretion to determine what mix of training, work and other activities” would most help each welfare recipient.

Critics also contended that the strict new work requirements would not meet the needs of low-income families if the recession continues. Advocates for the poor argue that welfare recipients must get more marketable skills if they hope to climb beyond the bottom rungs of the job ladder.

“It [the White House plan] is couched in the rhetoric of increasing access to education and training,” said Deepak Bhargava, director of the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support, a coalition of anti-poverty groups. “The reality is that it’s a substantial retrenchment from where we are now.”

The administration plan would eliminate a loophole that had let states skirt work requirements for large numbers of welfare recipients as long as overall caseloads were falling, which they did at spectacular rates in the late 1990s.

Getting rid of that loophole would quickly force states to steer half of their recipients into the work force. Then the administration would require that the 50% go up to 70% by 2007.

At the same time, the administration outlined ways that states could soften the work requirements, substituting such activities as education, training or drug rehabilitation--all of which might be essential for someone to succeed in the workplace.

The administration’s proposal would permit states to place welfare recipients in such full-time programs for three-month stints during any 24-month period. Also, it would allow beneficiaries to spend up to 16 hours per week in such activities, meaning that for many recipients the workweek would be shorter than the required 40 hours. And it would require welfare caseworkers to come up with “individualized plans” for beneficiaries, aimed at helping them achieve “the maximum degree of self-sufficiency.”

“Work is the pathway to independence and self-respect,” Bush said Tuesday. “Many are learning it is more rewarding to be a responsible citizen than a welfare client; it is better to be a breadwinner respected by your family.”

From local welfare offices to state capitals, officials reacted guardedly to the White House proposals.

“It’s going to be very difficult,” Bette Meyer, deputy county administrator for health and human services in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, said of the proposed mandate that 70% of beneficiaries be working. “It may not be realistic.”

In Cleveland, she said, the number of families that receive welfare has fallen from a 1990s peak of 27,000 to just 9,000 today, and about 35% of the adults are in the work force. But getting a significantly larger share of welfare recipients into jobs is not simple, Meyer said, noting that such barriers as an ailing parent or child, the birth of a child, or the recipient’s own health problems often stand in the way.

But Meyer was intrigued by White House provisions that would enable welfare recipients to spend part of the week in programs that would prepare them for the workplace. Half the adult recipients in Cleveland lack high school degrees. “I think--if I understand it--it’s in the right direction,” she said.

Republican Gov. John Engler of Michigan, chairman of the National Governors Assn., called the Bush work requirements “pretty tough” and said states should have more control over what counts as work in calculating the percentage of people participating. “If you give us some flexibility, some of us are ready to tackle it,” he said.

Beyond work rules, Bush administration officials hope a more determined push to support stable families may yield future successes in welfare reform. Bush on Tuesday saluted the “heroic work” of single mothers but insisted that preserving two-parent families “should always be our goal.” To that end, the White House proposed that up to $300 million in public funds be used for experimental projects to learn what sorts of strategies might enable the government to encourage stable families.

The White House also would create incentives for the states to return more of their child support collections to families rather than hold on to the money, a measure that might aid 280,000 families, according to administration officials.

Times staff writer Janet Hook contributed to this report.