How to Get America Off the Dole

THE INITIAL WHITE HOUSE REACtion to the Los Angeles riots was to blame them on the "failed" Democratic poverty programs of the '60s and '70s. That claim by Marlin Fitzwater was pilloried so mercilessly that President Bush had to backpedal away from his own spokesman. But Fitzwater's comments did not come out of a vacuum. Bush has made public assistance -- specifically welfare -- a constant target of his campaign rhetoric. He compared the dole to a "narcotic" in his State of the Union message and regularly peppers his speeches with vows to "change welfare and make the able-bodied work."

This line is not surprising coming from a political heir of Ronald Reagan, who voiced his contempt for public assistance with apocryphal stories of "welfare queens" driving Cadillacs. What is surprising is how many Democrats and liberals are sounding the same themes. Presumptive nominee Bill Clinton insists that "those on welfare move into the workplace" within two years. New Jersey Governor Jim Florio denounces the current welfare system as "morally bankrupt." Many state governments, meanwhile, are slashing benefits and throwing thousands off the rolls. "America has moved from a war on poverty to a war on the poor," says Yale University professor Theodore Marmor, co-author of America's Misunderstood Welfare State.

What's going on here? Has America's traditional compassion for the downtrodden worn thin? Is the country that paid billions to liberate a wealthy oil sheikdom on the other side of the globe suddenly unwilling to feed hungry kids at home?

Not exactly. Americans have always been willing to help the genuinely needy. But there is growing resistance to the notion of giving money unconditionally to able-bodied adults -- and an insistence on mutual obligation as the only fair basis for public aid. "There's a deep-running stream in American life," says Marmor, "that comes out a fundamental belief in individual responsibility, in the concept that you earn your own way."

Welfare has never been popular in the U.S. The word itself has become a politically charged term, one that often conjures up racial stereotypes. When participants in a TIME/CNN poll conducted by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman were asked if the government was spending too much on the "poor," only 17% said yes; asked if too much was being spent on "welfare," 32% said yes. Yet the same poll showed strong support for positive, rather than punitive, reforms. Ninety-three percent said the main goal of such efforts should be to make people self-sufficient; only 3% cited cost cutting as the aim.

The Los Angeles riots have cast a spotlight on the problems of poverty and urban decay. But long before that explosion, the recession put welfare high on the political agenda by swelling public-assistance rolls with legions of unemployed workers. Around 4.7 million households, or 13.6 million individuals, are receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the main cash-assistance program. That's an increase of 24% in the past two years. The number of food-stamp recipients shot up from 20.9 million in October 1990 to 24.2 million a year later. The total cost of these two programs alone is more than $40 billion a year.