THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 5, 1995 TAG: 9502020016
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Patrick K. Lackey, editorial writer
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
Welfare reform is the hottest subject in Congress right now. Republicans prefer scrapping present welfare programs. Instead, states would receive federal welfare money, along with the message, ``Do with this money whatever you think is best.''
So what is best?
Given that acting out of ignorance is never a good idea, now would be an excellent time for state legislators to learn more about welfare recipients - their hardships and scams, the reasons they are not working.
Most legislators would prefer not to walk a mile in a welfare recipient's shoes. And in our economically segmented society of winners and losers, it seems a safe bet that the majority of legislators are hardly close personal friends with anyone on welfare. Legislator Bob knows a banker, a teacher, a lawyer, a doctor. But Legislator Bob probably has no buddy welfare recipient to ask, ``What would happen if we passed this bill?''
Washington state tried something that sounds helpful. A social worker there matched each of 15 state legislators with a different welfare family. Many of those legislators spent a month trying to live on a welfare recipient's income. One legislator said her children kept asking her, ``How much longer do we have to be poor?'' Some legislators rode buses with welfare recipients and waited in line with them at social-services offices. If nothing else, some legislators learned the importance of mass transportation when you can't afford a car to get to work.
In Norfolk, Bill Thomas, a black conservative and a member of Gov. George Allen's welfare-reform commission, is serving as mentor to a mother of three who has escaped from welfare - she hopes forever.
The number of obstacles to her going to work was staggering. When she took a low-skill, low-wage job, she lost Aid for Dependent Children, health benefits and food stamps. Her subsidized monthly rent was jacked from $38 to $350. It would have been much higher, but Thomas, as her mentor, dickered it down. She gained a $14,000-a-year job and the self-respect that comes from supporting oneself.
Millions of working poor could have warned the woman that the bottom rung of the working world is slippery. Many a money-strapped middle-class citizen could have told her the middle rungs have their perils.
The woman traded security for herself and her three children - cheap housing, health care, and so on - for the shark-infested pool of competition. That's the only way to climb, if you lack rich relatives. The rewards can be astonishing.
Before becoming the woman's mentor, Thomas said, ``I basically thought poor people were worthless.'' He'd had a middle-class upbringing. His wife had an upper-middle-class upbringing. They hadn't known poor people, till their family moved to Park Place for three years to see how much good one family could do. (He saw, and he moved out after random drive-by shootings terrified his son.)
Thomas, a Republican, favors limited government. He is an economist and independent businessman who, before serving as a welfare mentor, favored limits on the time a person could receive benefits. He now believes that most people on welfare want to work, if they can find a way, and that some kind of government safety net will be required during the transition from welfare to work.
The present welfare system, he said, traps people in it. Escape routes are needed.
Thomas said he will propose to the governor that key legislators involved with welfare reform serve as mentors for welfare recipients.
Suzanne Puryear, director of the Norfolk Division of Social Services, said she would eagerly pair up local legislators with welfare families. ``Welfare recipients are not the bad guys, the enemy,'' Puryear said. ``They are citizens. And although there are folks who, regardless of our best efforts, probably are beating the system, the majority of people, I believe, don't want to be there. They want to work.'' She has seen welfare recipients cry with joy upon learning they've gotten jobs.
Last spring, Norfolk tried to set up a mentoring program between citizens and welfare recipients. The first start proved false, partly because a key employee left, but Puryear said her department will try again.
It is a fact of life that the poor and the non-poor don't know each other anymore. The majority of Americans live in suburbia - and they didn't move there for the economic variety. If a family lives in a $100,000 house, odds are its neighbors do too. Meanwhile, poor people live next door to poor people. The last time we looked, no poor people were serving in the legislature, and certainly not in Congress. The upper economic rungs are well represented: The U.S. Senate has been called a millionaires' club.
To the people who make the laws, the welfare system and the people trapped in it are a myth-shrouded mystery in the distance.
The best way to fix welfare is to act from knowledge - not to become a bleeding-heart liberal but to see clearly what needs to be done. by CNB