THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 27, 1995 TAG: 9505260009
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the cornerstone of America's anti-poverty program, was born during the Great Depression to provide benefits to needy women and children without forcing mothers to work.
Over the decades welfare, for many, became a way of life that entrapped children and their children. In 1962, then-President John F. Kennedy, in a welfare message, urged that poverty be fought with larger welfare payments and a heavy emphasis on vocational training to enable people to get off welfare.
Ever since, politicians have talked about shortening the welfare rolls by putting people to work. Today, several Republican governors, including George Allen, are competing for the claim to have enacted, as Allen put it, ``the toughest welfare reform legislation in the nation.''
Not necessarily the most effective, mind you - the toughest.
Because several states got a head start on Virginia at being tough on welfare recipients, Govenor Allen has had difficulty obtaining national recognition for the toughness of the Virginia welfare program that takes effect July 1 in two parts of the state. But he's trying. He went on the ``Donahue'' show and appeared with House Speaker Newt Gingrich at a press conference in Washington. Recently he faxed about 20 national news organizations an advisory that he was available for interviews on welfare.
Del. Jay W. DeBoer, D-Petersburg, compared the governor to a small child at the back of a classroom waving his hand and shouting, ``Me! Me!''
The governor's attempts to obtain national publicity were not helped this week when a Washington Post story on Allen's welfare plan said, ``internal documents prepared by his administration showed that the program would put to work barely half as many people as predicted publicly.''
The records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, projected that 26,000 welfare recipients actually would go to work by 1999, compared with the 49,000 to 74,000 that Allen aides predicted.
Clearly current welfare programs haven't worked well enough, and usually the only ladder out of welfare is a job for the adult in the family.
A few facts are worth keeping in mind:
Three of four welfare recipients are children. The number of American children living in poverty increased from 5 million to 6 million from 1987 to 1992, a 20 percent rise, according to a report this year by Columbia University's National Center for Children in Poverty.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, all the spending programs for the needy - AFDC, Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, food stamps and other nutrition programs - have accounted for less than 7 percent of federal spending sine 1964.
The good news is that different states, including Virginia, are trying different approaches to getting people off welfare. Some might succeed. Oregon's plan shows promise. That state is taking money now spent to provide food stamps and cash welfare benefits and using it to offer employers temporary subsidies to hire welfare recipients into newly created jobs. The three keys to welfare reform are jobs, jobs and jobs.
KEYWORDS: WELFARE SOCIAL SERVICES by CNB