THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 26, 1996 TAG: 9605230027
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS
LENGTH: 69 lines
Give Bill Clinton credit for chutzpah.
Three days before Bob Dole was scheduled to make a major welfare address in Wisconsin, Clinton calmly pre-empted his presidential rival. In his weekly radio show, the president embraced that state's GOP-driven reform plan as ``one of the boldest yet attempted in America.'' If Congress would send him a similar plan for national welfare reform, he would sign it, Clinton said.
No matter that Clinton has vetoed two congressional attempts at national welfare reform. In a single stroke, he put himself in league with the welfare tough-niks. The Wisconsin plan demands work of almost everyone, and sets a five-year lifetime limit on public assistance.
With typical, something-for-everyone largess, the president offered this description: ``A new vision of welfare based on work, that protects children and does right by working people and their families.'' That is certainly everyone's goal. It is less than certainly achievable.
While Republicans fume that Clinton is stealing their thunder, the larger issue for most Americans is this: What exactly has the president endorsed?
The Wisconsin plan is stricter than Virginia's landmark welfare reform in several ways, similar in others and more generous in yet others.
Among the key differences:
Aid to Families With Dependent Children, the major cash welfare program, is abolished under the Wisconsin plan. Almost everyone, even women with 3-month-old infants and some disabled, are expected to work for the money they receive. Jobs range from private-sector hirings to community-service posts created by government to sheltered workshop slots for the impaired.
Under the Virginia plan, most welfare recipients are expected to work for public assistance, but the list of exemptions is longer.
In Wisconsin, there's a five-year lifetime limit on aid. In Virginia, recipients can collect for no more than two years in any five-year period.
On the more-generous side, the Wisconsin plan extends help with child care and health care not just to former AFDC recipients, but to working-poor families for a small fee. This is a costly idea.
Virginia will help welfare moms with child care, transportation and health care. Some such benefits can continue for a while after AFDC ends. But a broad spectrum of the working poor aren't affected.
Is the Wisconsin plan transferable to Virginia and other states? Here are a few caveats:
Wisconsin has an unusually low unemployment rate of about 3.7 percent. Putting everyone to work will demand a lot of jobs. The fewer of them that have to be created in the public sector, the better.
Second, Wisconsin's progressive political tradition means that it's a service-rich state. Community organizations and job-training programs are in place to ease the transition off welfare. Other states may offer less help.
And third, Wisconsin politicians aren't trying to save money, at least initially, with welfare reform. They've agreed to up their investment by 13 percent in the early years to pay for the child care and health plans. Other states may not want to spend the money.
Ultimately, the bottom line on the Wisconsin plan and the Virginia plan is the same: No one knows for sure what happens to women - and more important, their children - when the benefits end.
It's the piece of welfare reform you haven't heard either Bill Clinton or Bob Dole talking about. That's because the answer is likely to be painful, and the American public has a limited tolerance for pain.
The truth of the matter, probably, is that the changes will help some people get their lives in order and will be too high a hurdle for others to scale. It's folly to talk about ending a way of life for thousands of women without planning for their children when that occurs. That means talking orphanages, foster homes, child-support services.
Tough love may be just what the mom needs.
But it won't put formula in the baby's mouth. MEMO: Ms. Edds is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB