Welfare Reform Fantasy

The Bush administration has brainstormed up a proposal for fixing the welfare system that’s so touchy-feely it would make Oprah blush. Why not, his policy wonks wonder, let welfare moms meet part of their work requirement by joining their children in organized activities--say hiking with the local Scout troop, coaching a soccer team or teaching finger painting to squirming Head Start kids?

Tough guys will no doubt scream that this is mollycoddling. We think it reflects a pragmatic realization that the best way to break the multi-generational cycle of dependence is to bolster today’s welfare kids. For such a creative approach to work, however, President Bush must first back away from a bad idea.

Just six years ago the public assistance system was a failure, at least for taxpayers. Then the Clinton administration and Congress rewrote the law, telling welfare recipients--primarily single mothers--that they had a certain amount of time to get a job and off welfare or the government would throw them off. Since then, the number of families who depend on public assistance has plummeted from 5 million to just over 2 million.

Emboldened by this success, Bush is eager to tighten the rules when the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families law comes up for renewal this year. He wants to require states to push seven out of 10 remaining welfare recipients into jobs within five years, a boost from the initial goal of getting three out of 10 employed.

What Bush doesn’t grasp, or is ignoring, is that the drop in welfare rolls to date owed more to a booming economy than a new moral imperative. In fact, his effort to speed up the purge would be overly optimistic even in the best of times.

In the first five years of reform, those who were eager to work or easy to employ quickly got jobs in the robust economy. Some of those remaining on welfare are unmotivated, undependable and largely unemployable. But even a layabout’s child deserves clothing, shelter and attention. That’s why the president should set a more realistic goal of nudging perhaps five out of 10 recipients into jobs by the next deadline and also pay for child care, so that the mothers who do work won’t be scarring their children.

The current Bush proposal, which would require 500,000 more parents to get jobs, ignores child care expense. Child care in California alone could cost an additional $400 million. But until Bush takes care of this fundamental need, he can’t move on to his more innovative ideas. He thinks, for instance, that he can reduce the welfare ranks by giving states as much as $1 million each to teach young people about the benefits of marriage and young men about responsible fatherhood.

Although many studies prove that children who grow up in two-parent homes are less likely to grow up impoverished, we’re not sure that young people will accept the message from government preachers. But marriage is an antidote to poverty, so we encourage Bush to read Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s research from the mid-1960s. What really encourages and strengthens marriages, Moynihan found, are good, steady jobs.

Which brings us back to that dependency cycle, and the standard by which society should judge the success of reform. If society is going to significantly cut welfare costs for future generations, it must encourage welfare parents to work but also make sure that, working or not, they are able to take care of their kids. Bush’s people have some fresh ideas on how to encourage this. They shouldn’t undercut themselves by skimping on child care and Head Start funding or by setting an unrealistic numbers goal.