ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 11, 1996 TAG: 9608130042
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
AMERICA'S POOR may be forgiven if they're feeling victimized these days.
In the past week, the White House and Congress agreed to welfare-reform legislation that, while appropriately trying to replace cash benefits with a jobs program, grossly underfunds the means for helping people shift to self-sufficiency.
In the same week, GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole proposed an economic plan that, on top of its other faults, would shift more resources to the well-off, further swelling the gap between rich and poor.
It's as if the nation were conspiring to vent its frustrations on the most vulnerable members of society.
Welfare, after all, isn't the only entitlement that needs reform. Social Security and Medicare also must be fixed - or else, when baby boomers retire, their children and grandchildren will inherit crippling debts. Of course, Social Security and Medicare don't serve just the unworthy poor. They're for us.
The welfare-reform package does send a needed message - that the benefits should be a second chance, emergency relief, a temporary hand up, and not a way of life. It should shake up a broken system that, for an underclass minority of recipients, has helped sustain dysfunctional, transgenerational dependence.
But the legislation doesn't change the fact that many of the poor lack basic skills and ready access to decent child care, health care and education.
To avoid making the lot of the underclass even more miserable and marginalized than it already is, it's not enough merely to limit the dole and cut the bureaucracy. They have to be replaced with flexible, community-based efforts to help support families and build skills.
Washington's response? Welfare reform will slash $10 billion a year from poverty programs.
Adding insult to injury, Dole's tax-cut proposal would transfer huge sums to people already thriving in our economy: the well-educated, investors, those enjoying big capital gains, et al.
The biggest bonanza would go to households earning more than $100,000 - never mind that America already tolerates greater inequality of wealth than other affluent countries, and has about twice the average percentage of citizens living in poverty.
And when the tax cuts send deficits soar again, making further budget cuts necessary, where do you suppose Congress will look first?
Here's a clue: For all the posturing about entitlement "cuts," Medicare premiums actually fell this year, while Congress increased the amount the elderly can earn without suffering a reduction in Social Security benefits.
And yet, when it came to legislation authorizing vouchers that could be used to buy diapers and other items for children in poverty but removed from the welfare rolls, Congress would have none of that. After all, it has to find savings somewhere.
LENGTH: Medium: 57 linesby CNB