ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, August 3, 1996 TAG: 9608050022
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
TAKE A Republican Congress enamored of short-term cost-cutting to fund tax cuts for the affluent. Add a Democratic president consumed by the political calculus of re-election.
What we get is something few until recently would have thought possible: Welfare "reform" that may be even worse than the existing, failed system.
At best, the bill to which Congress and President Clinton agreed this week represents a missed opportunity. The growth of an alienated, depressed, transgenerational underclass, outside the mainstream of working America, has complex sources, of which welfare isn't the most causally important. But welfare reform, the hope had been, could be part of the solution.
The task now is to see to it that the opportunity, if missed for now, has not been lost for good. America cannot afford simply to declare the welfare problem solved and forget about it - leaving perhaps millions of poor children in more miserable circumstances than before, and the underclass bigger and more desperate than ever.
The fundamental flaw in the congressional version of "reform," now joined by Clinton, lies in its mistaken assumption that welfare reform is just another form of budget-cutting.
In the long term, reducing the horrendous economic and social costs of permanent poverty is surely one of the goals of genuine welfare reform. The legislation at hand, however, is a plan heavy on work requirements, eligibility exclusions and time limitations - but woefully light on another, equally necessary element: giving states the resources for health insurance, child care, training, jobs of last resort and the like that make possible the movement from welfare to work.
Some critics charge that the bill will make the lives of millions of impoverished Americans even harsher, and shove 2 million more Americans into poverty. Those estimates may be too high. They don't take into account the likelihood that tightened rules alone will work to push many now on welfare into the workforce.
How many, though, is anybody's guess - and they are likely to be those who are most employable anyway, who would stay on welfare for relatively little time in any event, and for whom reform of the system is least necessary.
Moreover, the bill fails to take into account the impact of recessions on the availability of jobs. National unemployment is relatively low at the moment, but the business cycle has not been repealed. In this era of regional recessions, the change to a block-grant system for distributing federal welfare dollars will tend to squeeze recession-plagued states when they need help the most.
Little is conclusively known, but a few clues are beginning to emerge about what works and what doesn't with welfare reform. About the desirability, for example, of requiring adult, able-bodied welfare recipients to work for benefits even if they're also in enrolled in an educational or job-training program. About the wisdom of actually enforcing time limits for welfare benefits, and not continually extending them because the only alternative is to throw children into the streets. Such policies imply an active governmental role not just in getting people off welfare rolls but also getting them on to payrolls.
The flaws of federal welfare reform may have little impact on states deepest into serious reform. Places like Wisconsin, Michigan and Massachusetts are accustomed to spending their own as well as federal dollars on welfare, and will presumably continue to do so. But reform prospects are now dimmer in states, including Virginia, that are not as far into the job and that are historically tighter with their own dollars in assisting the poor.
America should carefully monitor the real-world impact of federal welfare reform - and stand ready to make alterations if it turns out to be as inadequate as it now seems to be.
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