ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 2, 1997 TAG: 9702030115
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: The New York Times
Governors said Saturday that they were deeply divided over whether to seek substantial changes in the new federal welfare law, passed just six months ago at the urging of governors from both parties.
The divisions became evident as the National Governors' Association opened its winter meeting Saturday. Some Republican governors, led by George Pataki of New York and Jim Edgar of Illinois, have joined Democrats in urging Congress to restore some benefits for legal immigrants who will lose assistance under the law.
But other Republican governors disagree. And many have come under pressure from Republican congressional leaders to mute their pleas for more federal money.
Asked whether he wanted changes in the welfare law, Gov. Terry Branstad of Iowa, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, said: ``No, absolutely. No changes.''
Branstad said he realized that some Republican governors wanted changes, but he said, ``Their problems can be dealt with separately, without opening up welfare reform.''
The welfare law, signed by President Clinton in August, ended a 61-year-old federal guarantee of cash assistance for the nation's poorest children. It gave states vast new authority to run their own welfare programs with lump sums of federal money.
Under the law, immigrants generally are ineligible for such federal benefits as food stamps and Supplemental Security Income. Restrictions on such benefits account for more than 40 percent of all the money saved by the law: $24 billion of $55 billion over seven years.
The National Governors' Association strongly supported the overall welfare legislation last year, but neither endorsed nor opposed restrictions on immigrant benefits.
Gov. George Voinovich of Ohio, a Republican who is vice chairman of the national association, said Saturday that he had not known of all the restrictions when the law was passed.
``I am opposed to reopening the law,'' Voinovich said. ``But when you pass a piece of legislation as complicated as welfare reform, there are some aspects of it that you may not have anticipated - for example, the issue of legal immigrants in nursing homes who are receiving Supplemental Security Income. Are we going to throw those people out on the street and wipe our hands?''
The governors said they opposed Clinton's plan to set firm limits on federal Medicaid spending, because they fear that such limits would shift costs to the states.
Voinovich said: ``All of the governors agree that they are opposed, regardless of their political ideology, to Medicaid caps. If the president and Congress put caps on Medicaid, it would devastate our state budgets.''
Yet, the steep decline in welfare caseloads that began nearly three years ago has accelerated, offering states a larger-than-expected financial windfall.
The reduction in caseloads is far greater than what the Clinton administration projected, said Wendell Primus, who resigned in protest last year from the Department of Health and Human Services after overseeing the forecasts.
Under previous federal law, states received additional money for each additional person on welfare. Under the new structure, states get a fixed amount, no matter how many people are in the program. A congressional analysis estimated that states will receive $1.3 billion more this year than they would have under the old rules.
After reaching a record high in March 1994, caseloads have dropped 18percent nationwide, decreasing in every state but Hawaii.
Much of the decline seems driven by the economy's expansion, which has kept the country's unemployment rate below 6 percent for 28 months. But some of it also seems to stem from the aggressive efforts many states have made in the past few years to place welfare recipients in jobs.
Many governors credit their programs for the reduction in caseloads, but researchers are uncertain which force is dominant: good times or tough laws.
Also unclear is whether those leaving the welfare system are mostly moving out of poverty, as many governors say, or whether some are simply slipping deeper into need.
Welfare rolls have fallen more than 40 percent in three states that have been among the most energetic in urging recipients to work: Oregon, Wisconsin and Indiana. And caseloads have declined by more than 25 percent in 16 other states.
What is more, the rate of decline has accelerated. From August to October, caseloads dropped 2.7 percent nationwide, as the number of welfare recipients declined by 338,000. Caseloads dropped 1.5 percent during the same period in 1995.
Almost all of the decline occurred before the law passed last summer. The law imposes a five-year limit on most families' benefits, and it is only now being implemented. But Rep. Clay Shaw, R-Fla., who helped write the law, speculated that the prominence of last year's debate had already prompted people to look for work.
``People are seeing that welfare reform is a certainty and that they had darn well better take responsibility for pulling their lives together,'' he said.
``So many people have been throwing rocks at us and saying we're going to starve kids. And quite simply, they're wrong. The law's working. And it's working right from the beginning.''
But Primus cautioned that some states may be dropping people from the rolls whether they have found work or not. ``Offices can do things to make life more difficult for people seeking aid,'' he said, such as penalizing them for missed appointments even when they lack child care or transportation.
Perhaps the place where welfare policies have had the clearest effect on caseloads is Wisconsin. The state expanded three new programs to Milwaukee in March and saw its caseloads plummet.
One is a ``diversion program,'' which requires applicants to perform 60
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