THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, December 28, 1994 TAG: 9412280007
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
LENGTH: Long : 135 lines
The major legislative proposals derived from the Republicans' Contract With America are:
AFDC payments and housing benefits will be denied unwed mothers under age 18, and may be denied up to age 20 if a state so chooses. Unwed mothers who are 18 may receive AFDC if they live at home.
This provision targets the 70 percent of teen mothers who are unmarried, a group more likely to receive AFDC than separated, divorced or widowed mothers. It targets single-mother households, which are six times likelier than two-parent households to be poor. It targets that 45 percent of new ``families'' which consist of a mother who is an unwed teenage dropout because those families are likeliest to stay poorest longest and the children in them are likeliest to drop out of school, have illegitimate children and become involved in crime.
To receive welfare, an unwed mother must establish paternity (in 1992, 30 percent had not) unless her pregnancy resulted from rape or incest or pursuit of paternity would endanger her life.
It takes two to produce a baby. At best, both assume personal responsibility for baby's upbringing. At least, both assume financial responsibility for baby's upkeep. Yet about a third of unwed mothers have not established paternity. And only 31 percent of single mothers on welfare receive child support or alimony.
Some welfare benefits will continue to mothers who marry.
Marriage is the primary way most single mothers leave welfare for good. Studies show that a father's financial support for his children is even less important than his presence. As New York University's Lawrence Mead put it in The New Dependency Politics, ``What matters for success is not whether your father was rich or poor, but whether you had a father at all.'' To deny a family a father's presence in order to draw, say, health care, is silly.
AFDC payments will not increase to unwed mothers who have additional children while on welfare.
As expressed by the African-American legislator from Camden, N.J., where 70 percent of residents receive public assistance, in sponsoring the first such ``family cap'' law: ``You don't go to a job and tell the person you're going to have a child, and all of a sudden they say, `Well, thank God. I'm going to give you a raise.' . . . We're saying that the same kind of norms, the same kind of values, ought to be in our poverty system.''
In New Jersey, the number of births to women already on welfare has fallen dramatically since this legislation.
States may reduce AFDC payments by up to $75 per month to mothers under 21 who do not complete high school or the equivalent.
Most single mothers who are welfare-dependent lack sufficient basic skills to hold a job, much less a good-paying job. That is particularly true of young mothers. Yet those few programs federal and state that offer voluntary participation in educational programs show a dismal record of completion of the program. Of 169 welfare recipients enrolled in five programs across the state, for instance, only 46 obtained their G.E.D.
States may reduce AFDC payments if a dependent child does not maintain minimum school at-tend-ance.
Insisting that children of welfare recipients achieve the skills basic to gainful employment is essential to breaking the cycle of welfare dependency. In Wisconsin in 1992 and 1993, 97 percent of ``Learnfare'' teens met school attendance re-quire-ments.
AFDC recipients whom states identify as addicted to drugs or alcohol must enroll in a treatment program and participate in random drug testing.
About a third of young mothers on welfare have addictions that affect not only their own but their children's well-being. An element of coercion is crucial in getting addicts to undertake and complete treatment and to avoid relapse.
The federal government will provide block grants with which states may choose programs to reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies; for adoption, which must not discriminate on the basis of race, color or national origin; for orphanages; for residential group homes for unwed mothers; and for other services - excepting abortion or abortion counseling - that the states deem appropriate.
These are choices, not dictates, but the most controversial suggestions is offering orphanages as an option.
Critics of orphanages raise the specter of Dickensian deprivation. That specter need not arise in the 20th/21st century. What arises before and since Dickens' time is the need to provide a stable, safe, nurturing environment for children whose parents cannot or will not do so. Foster care works well for many of the half-million children in it; for many others, however, it is an unending shuffling from pillar to post. America has some well-run orphanages. America, and thousands of its children, could use more.
There is another reason for orphanages: to break the link between simply having children and getting a check.
States will establish work training and education programs for welfare recipients. Training programs must require welfare recipients to work an average of 35 hours a week or 30 hours a week plus five hours of job searching.
Studies show that the training and education programs most effective at preparing welfare recipients for work are those which require them to take immediately whatever job they can get and then supplement their wages and benefits.
Single people who get food stamps must work eight hours a week for those benefits.
Working for food so long as one is able-bodied is basic.
AFDC recipients may be in the welfare-work program for no more than two consecutive years, and states must terminate AFDC payments after a recipient has drawn them for a total of five years.
States are experimenting with various versions of these limits, and will have even more latitude to do so under the GOP proposals. According to the federal Department of Health and Human Resources, more than 50 percent of all single mothers leave the welfare rolls in one year, and 70 percent within two years; but 70 percent eventually return to the rolls. At any one time, 82 percent of recipients are in the midst of spells on welfare that will last five years or more; 65 percent, in spells that last eight years or more. And resort to the exception - having another baby to avoid work or school - is all too common and unconstructive.
Federal spending on AFDC, supplemental income, public-housing programs and mandatory work programs will be capped at the amount spent the year before with an adjustment for inflation plus growth in poverty population.
What states want to spend on their own is up to states. But with the proposed reforms, the cost of welfare to both federal and state taxpayers should decline over time.
Welfare assistance will be denied to non-citizens and illegal immigrants unless they have resided in the United States for five years.
Public assistance, like charity, begins at home.
KEYWORDS: ENTITLEMENT PROGRAM WELFARE SOCIAL SERVICE by CNB