Fixing Welfare

• Share

The criticisms are such timeworn staples of conservative oratory that by now anyone who reads about welfare can reel them off from memory. The system is a monstrous mess: it breaks up families, traps the poor in degrading idleness and breeds a self-perpetuating cycle of illegitimacy, poverty and government dependency. It must be changed by training or even forcing people who get public assistance to become productive members of society. Move them off the welfare rolls and onto payrolls.

So what is new about welfare reform? Three things: 1) such rhetoric now resounds across the political spectrum, from Ronald Reagan to Daniel Patrick Moynihan to Ted Kennedy, and reflects an emerging consensus that embraces just about every politician who speaks on the issue; 2) states from California through Illinois to New Jersey are experimenting with overhauls of their welfare systems, focused on work requirements, and the Federal Government is talking about giving their efforts a formal blessing; 3) as a result, and at long last, something worthwhile might actually be done. Pondering the diverse sources and remarkably similar conclusions of a clutch of recent proposals, Senator Moynihan, a New York Democrat and lifelong student of the welfare system, finds in them a social analogue to a "rare alignment of the sun, the moon and the earth that causes all manner of natural wonders."

Not that anyone expects the creaky 50-year-old system of providing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and other welfare services to be + transformed overnight. The problems of training and finding jobs for welfare recipients -- teenage girls who drop out of school to have illegitimate children, to take the most stark example -- are immense. In the long run, money could be saved if a significant number of long-term welfare recipients could be placed in unsubsidized jobs and more absent fathers could be required to contribute to the support of children they have abandoned. But there is a problem: the additional billions it would initially cost to train and supervise welfare clients who are required to work, to supply day care for their children, and eventually to provide government jobs for those who cannot find employment in the private economy.

Nonetheless, the momentum for welfare reform is building rapidly. Since late November, welfare overhauls have been advocated by four high-level bodies: the American Public Welfare Association, a coalition of welfare administrators; the Project on the Welfare of Families, a group led by moderates of both parties; a task force appointed by New York Governor Mario Cuomo; and a working group of the White House Domestic Policy Council. The National Governors' Association has scheduled a vote Feb. 24 on a welfare reform plan, featuring work, training or study obligations for recipients, including mothers of children age 3 or more; approval is expected. In his budget message last week, Republican Governor Thomas Kean of New Jersey proposed a plan that would require all able-bodied welfare recipients, except mothers of children age 2 or younger, to take jobs, return to school or enroll in training programs.