Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 3, 1993 TAG: 9302030116
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
WELFARE REFORM PROMISED TO GIVE `HAND UP' TO POOR
President Clinton on Tuesday promised to help the nation's governors turn the welfare system into a "hand up, not a handout."The package had few new specifics beyond his campaign promises to "end welfare as we know it."
He said he would appoint a task force to work out the details in consultation with the governors, but outlined four principles to enable welfare recipients "to move from dependence to dignity":
A two-year education and training program that should lead to a job. Aides said the task force would work out whether eligible people who did not find work would immediately lose their benefits. Clinton said those who worked should be guaranteed health care and child care services, the costs of which dissuade many welfare recipients from seeking jobs.
Expanded earned income tax credits to ensure that anyone who works full time can escape poverty. Clinton said the scheme would be less expensive than having the government "pay people to remain idle."
> Tougher enforcement of child support through a national data bank to track "deadbeat parents." He said states should go as far as possible to establish paternity at hospitals during birth, and the IRS should be used to collect payments in seriously delinquent cases. Parents of an estimated 15 million children owe support payments. The money (estimates range from $5 billion to $25 billion) could "go a long way toward cutting the welfare rolls and lifting single parents out of poverty," Clinton said.
Reform experiments at the state level. "My view is that we ought to give you more elbow room to experiment," Clinton told the governors, promising to allow waivers from federal regulation even for experiments with which he did not agree.