THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 28, 1994 TAG: 9409280001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines
Waiting for Washington to reform welfare, we suspect, will be like waiting for Godot: eternal promises but no delivery. If any progress is to be made on reducing the human wreckage that is the result of welfare dependency, it is likely to be found by states experimenting on their own to find out what works. The Clinton administration has been cooperative in granting waivers from federal rules to allow such experiments. But Congress is now proving to be the obstacle.
Gov. George Allen, for instance, promised during his campaign a welfare-reform plan, including workfare, that he hoped would cut welfare costs $134 million over five years. The guts of Allen's reforms, however, depend on waivers from the federal government. Virginia is already experimenting with getting 600 welfare recipients off Aid to Families with Dependent Children and into the work force. Under federal waiver, Virginia and several other states are using food-stamp funds to subsidize wages or pay cash to recipients who find jobs.
The House and Senate, however, seem determined to preserve the status quo as far as the $24 billion food-stamp program goes. The House voted last week to limit cash payouts to 3 percent of those on food-stamp rolls and to permit only 25 cash-payout programs nationwide.
That, as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said, is ``counterproductive intrusion.'' In a demonstration of hand-holding, critics said payouts might discourage nutrition among the poor and encourage rent hikes.
The food-stamp program, of course, is already riddled with fraud and abuse. It seems worthwhile to use food-stamp money in an effort to find out if people can be weaned off welfare rather than perpetuate a failed system.
The goal of the Allen plan and others, of course, is to end the cycle of welfare dependency. Success is essential if states and the federal government are ever to lighten the burden of providing basic care for people who, in many instances, are perfectly capable of being helped out of dependency.
Welfare dependency is a national problem that states are best suited to resolve. Workfare might or might not have the effect of getting people off the welfare rolls. But a one-size-fits-all policy dictated from Washington is unlikely to do the trick either. The Clinton administration may or may not be serious about ``ending welfare as we know it,'' but it at least has the right idea in allowing some state-level experimentation. Congress should go along, instead of perpetuating welfare as we have it. by CNB