ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 1, 1996 TAG: 9609040029
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: SAM FULWOOD III AND JANE GROSS THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
When President Clinton delivered on his campaign promise to ``end welfare as we know it,'' he also led millions of Americans who depend on federal assistance into a new world that nobody knows.
Few pieces of legislation ever have the sweeping impact of the welfare legislation that Clinton signed. And few stir up as much anxiety.
Not only prototype ``welfare families'' - those headed by young, single mothers - will feel the new law's sting. So will many others, including unemployed middle-aged people, children with disabilities and legal immigrants of many descriptions.
Congressional budget-cutters expect to save taxpayers $55 billion over six years by tearing apart the welter of welfare programs that have accumulated in the 61 years since the enactment of Aid to Families with Dependent Children. The legislation's supporters said its tough-love provisions will make self-respecting and productive citizens out of the millions of Americans trapped by their dependency on the federal dole.
House Budget Committee Chairman John R. Kasich, R-Ohio, a leading defender of the welfare cuts, argued that Americans should work for any public assistance they receive. ``Our welfare bill says at some point ... you have to get off the system and get a job,'' he said.
Many people on the receiving end of the programs, by contrast, are terrified of what the future might hold.
``Listen, I understand they want to save the government money,'' said Thomas Farmer, a 48-year-old unemployed Philadelphia man who stands to lose his food stamp benefits. ``What those guys in Washington don't understand is some of us need help. All I've been doing is trying to find work to support myself. I just can't seem to get nowhere - and now they want to take away food stamps.''
What follows are snapshots of individuals representing categories of Americans whose lives will not be the same in the unchartered territory that awaits them.
Middle-aged unemployed
Sharon McGee scours her Compton, Calif., neighborhood for empty bottles and cans to earn spare change. On weekends, she stages yard sales outside her apartment. She has not worked full time since suffering a breakdown following the death of her mother in 1985.
McGee, 44, who is unmarried and has two adult children, manages to get by, with a little help from Washington. But she is worried that on Oct. 1, she will no longer qualify for the $315 in food stamps she now receives each month. Assessing her options, the former building manager said, half-seriously, that she is contemplating a life of crime.
``I know there's easy money in selling drugs, so that's what I may have to do to eat,'' she said with a sardonic laugh. ``When the police stop me, I'm going to say: `Washington said I had to fend for myself the best way I could.' I'll tell them this is Washington's survival technique.''
The legislation that Clinton signed is not as harsh as the House-passed bill, which would have let the states define eligibility for food stamps. The new law keeps that responsibility in Washington, although it still threatens people such as McGee - adults with no dependent children and no steady jobs.
The legislation's fine print says able-bodied people between the ages of 18 and 50 who have no dependents will qualify for food stamps for only three months of every three years unless they work - or participate in job-training programs - at least 20 hours a week.
The goal is to force people like McGee into self-sufficiency. But because the legislation provides no additional funding for jobs programs, McGee and others like her fear that they are more likely to forgo food than find work.
``This wouldn't be happening in 1991, 1992 or 1993 because the economy wasn't as good and unemployment was high,'' said John Dodds, director of the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, a grass-roots poverty assistance organization. ``People - people who vote - were worried about how they were going to eat.''
McGee worries about that now. She said she has applied, without success, for a host of jobs in which she could use her typing and bookkeeping skills. But since recovering several years ago from severe clinical depression made worse by alcohol abuse and a prescription drug addiction, she said, ``nobody is going to hire me.''
Legal immigrants
Aida Ulloa doesn't speak English.
She is in the United States legally. But she is not a citizen and, at age 74, she is unlikely ever to learn the language well enough to pass the citizenship exam.
That puts her in the class of people who stand to lose the most from welfare reform: legal immigrants. She stands to lose what she calls ``la ayuda'' - the help - a mixture of federal support payments that includes $470 a month in Supplemental Security Income for elderly poor people, $77 a month in food stamps and health insurance under the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Ulloa never had children and has no living family members. She left Cuba shortly after her husband died in 1989 and the Castro government confiscated their home and what remained of his shoe factory.
``I came to America to get away from the Communists,'' she said in a small voice amplified by an interpreter at the Little Havana Activities and Nutrition Center of Dade County (Fla.), a private, nonprofit immigrant-service organization. ``In Cuba, the government took away all that I had. I thought I would do much better here.''
Ariela Rodriguez, who directs the Little Havana center, described Ulloa as ``a typical case, like so very many others we see here.'' She said many of the Cuban immigrants are elderly and single, people who will never learn enough English to become citizens but have nowhere else to go.
To become citizens, immigrants must pay about $100 for the necessary photographs, fingerprinting and paperwork - plus the dreaded citizenship exam. ``The exam is done in English,'' Rodriguez said. ``If you're over 65 and have been here 15 years or more, then it's in Spanish.''
Many fail the test because they do not have the language skills. ``After flunking twice they have to start all over again and pay the fee again,'' Rodriguez said.
Ulloa arrived in the United States on a visitor's visa and was permitted to stay under federal laws protecting Cubans escaping the Castro regime.
She secured a place to stay with a friend of friends from Cuba, and she even found a minimum-wage job at a factory, stitching together slippers. After five years of self-sufficiency, the factory closed and put her out of work.
Unable to find another job, she retired and lived off federal assistance for the poor. She did not qualify for Social Security benefits because she had worked only half of the minimum of 10 years before her forced retirement.
``If I had to do it again, I would,'' she said of her decision to come to Miami. ``I have no regrets. But I do have fears.''
She continues to study English and ``pray for a miracle'' when she takes the citizenship examination.
Disabled children
Eleven years ago, when Sharon Barnhill's newborn son, Neville, was hospitalized with Down syndrome, a doctor offered some grim advice: It would be better for all concerned if Neville died.
It was advice that Barnhill could not accept. But in his 11 years, Neville has already undergone both heart and brain surgery, and he has been confined to a hospital for a host of infectious diseases.
``I have never agreed with that doctor,'' Barnhill said recently, ``but I understand where he was coming from because Neville has virtually lived in a hospital since he was born.''
Barnhill, a single mother who lives in the Chicago suburb of Blue Island, has two younger children, and both of them also have severe health problems. Tiffany, 7, has cerebral palsy and requires therapy and leg braces. Jarel, 3, is autistic and requires frequent hospital stays for a disorder that prevents food from staying in his stomach.
Barnhill never married. The father of Tiffany and Jarel stayed with her and the children for a few years but, Barnhill said, ``he retreated to drugs to cope with all the stress'' of raising a family of disabled children.
She holds down two jobs and earns $30,000 a year - enough for an ordinary family of four to get by but scarcely enough for hers. She gets a little help, in the form of about $2,750 a year to defray some of Neville's and Jarel's medical problems, from the federal SSI program, which was established about 25 years ago to help three categories of poor people: the elderly, the blind and the disabled.
To Barnhill, the SSI program is worth far more than $2,750 a year. Eligibility for SSI also qualifies Neville and Jarel for federally subsidized health insurance under the Medicaid program.
The welfare reform law tightens SSI eligibility for the 900,000 disabled children who do not qualify for benefits. It remains unclear which children will be cut off, according to social workers advising parents in Barnhill's situation.
``We are trying to be careful interpreting what the new law will mean to children with disabilities,'' said Lee Anderson Carty of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, a Washington-based nonprofit advocacy organization. ``We have to wait and see how children receiving SSI payments will be affected.''
It is Barnhill's nightmare that Neville and Jarel may no longer qualify - which would cost her not only $2,750 a year but also the Medicaid benefits.
``If the SSI people called and said that they were keeping their check but that I could continue to get the [medical] assistance, that would be fine with me,'' she said. ``But when the SSI ends, I won't have medical coverage.''
In that case, she said, she will have only one option left.
``Parents like me will have no choice but to put their children in an institution,'' she said in a strong, matter-of-fact voice. ``I'll probably have to decide which one. But that's no choice I'd wish on any parent.''
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