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year, Congress must reauthorize the welfare reforms that President
Clinton so reluctantly signed in 1996. Disaffected liberals are
using this as an opportunity for a dramatic overhaul of that dramatic
overhaul, while conservatives hope to push for tougher reforms on
top of those tough reforms. President Bush's national victory lap
with Sen. Ted Kennedy to celebrate their collaboration on education
reform prompted nervous conservatives to wonder whether there will
be a similar duet extolling bipartisan welfare reform.
"It's
not yet clear how compassionate conservatism differs from [Ted]
Kennedy liberalism on welfare issues," says Robert Rector of
the Heritage Foundation. Rector points to the increases that Bush
proposed in his first budget for a host of social-welfare programs,
including after-school day care, Head Start, and the Senior Corps.
In recent days, the White House has been trumpeting similar increases
in this year's budget proposal. Among what the Washington
Post called "nuggets of good news" are an increase
of $364 million for the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program
and a $73 million expansion of the Job Corps. Rector's beef is that
these spending increases aren't accompanied by any conservative
reforms. "The reason so many mothers and children are in need
of food assistance is that over a million children a year are born
out of wedlock," he says. And the federal Job Corps program
doesn't appear to meet the Bush standard of investing in programs
with successful track records: One study frequently cited by conservative
critics found that the Job Corps program boosted its participants'
wages by 60 cents an hour — at a cost of $20,000 a head.
What the Bush
administration should be doing is trumpeting the compassionate results
of the GOP-designed welfare reform, which was based on the conviction
that destructive federal welfare policies discouraged work and subsidized
illegitimacy. In 1996, Congress replaced the failed entitlement
program of Aid to Families with Dependent Children with a new fixed-grant
program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Work requirements
were imposed, along with a lifetime limit of five years' assistance.
Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund,
predicted that the changes would "impoverish millions of American
children" and "leave a moral blot on [Clinton's] presidency."
Then-Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan called it "the most brutal
act of social policy we have known since Reconstruction" —
but the 1996 reforms have in fact dramatically improved the lives
of poor children.
Since 1996,
welfare rolls have been reduced by over 50 percent. There are 4.2
million fewer people in poverty, including 2.3 million fewer children.
The poverty rate for black children is at the lowest point in history,
as is the poverty rate for single mothers. According to the Department
of Agriculture, there are 2 million fewer hungry children today
than in 1996, and, after steadily increasing for a generation, the
illegitimate-birth rate hasn't risen in the past five years.
In the coming
round of reform, conservatives are determined to build on the success
of the 1996 reforms with more of the same. Robert Rector argues
that current federal work requirements should be strengthened so
that all able-bodied recipients are being trained, working, looking
for work, or performing community service. The conservatives on
the House Republican Study Committee would like to see the work
requirements that now apply to cash assistance extended to food
stamps and public housing. And conservative reformers point out
that a key goal of the 1996 reform, reducing illegitimacy and boosting
marriage, has been virtually ignored by the states, which are responsible
for administering welfare programs. The data show that states have
spent $1,000 subsidizing single parents for every $1 promoting marriage.
Congressional
liberals are equally determined to move reform in the opposite direction.
This past year, when Democratic congressman Charles Rangel of New
York argued that an eight-hour-a-month community-service
requirement for public-housing tenants should be repealed, the Republican
House complied. Rangel wrongly asserted that the Bush administration
didn't object, but his amendment was supported by the GOP
housing-appropriations subcommittee. The modest requirement, initially
proposed by President Clinton, exempted the elderly, the disabled,
the employed, and those involved in school, training, or welfare-reform
activities. Still, Rangel objected to "the indignity of putting
this type of burden on poor folks in public housing."
According to
Bush administration sources, there are no current plans to attempt
to restore the two-hours-a-week work requirement, which dismays
conservatives. Critics see a similarly disappointing retreat on
work requirements in the administration's proposal to restore food-stamp
eligibility for non-citizens. At an estimated cost of $2.1 billion
over the next ten years, Bush proposes to reduce the period before
legal immigrants are eligible for food stamps from the ten years
prescribed in the 1996 reform to five years. Cecilia Muñoz
of La Raza praised the liberalization because, she said, "it
is unreasonable for somebody who works hard and is laid off to have
no access to food for his family." Many conservatives would
agree, but the Bush proposal also eliminates the requirement that
immigrants must have worked for some period before qualifying for
this federal benefit.
An administration official explains that the five-year eligibility
period for food stamps brings that program in accord with the TANF
requirements, and addresses the concern that children who are themselves
eligible citizens haven't been receiving this nutritional benefit.
In marked contrast
to their problems on the issue of education, Republicans have traditionally
enjoyed a political advantage on welfare reform. And polling expert
Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute says she was
struck by voters' strong views about reform in a 1999 Los Angeles
Times poll: When voters were asked how a presidential candidate's
views on a range of issues would affect their support, voters responded
most negatively to a candidate who opposed welfare reform.
While conservatives
hope to persuade the administration to press for additional reforms
that encourage work and emphasize the importance of marriage, building
on the impressive results of the 1996 law, Hill Democrats want to
replicate Charlie Rangel's success. Connecticut senator Christopher
Dodd's "Leave No Child Behind" bill, cosponsored by Sens.
Kennedy, Clinton, and Wellstone, waters down the 1996 law's work
requirements and time limits and includes 32 additional "acts"
that increase Washington's responsibility for the well-being of
kids.
"Republican
members have been reelected on their record of eliminating deficits
and reforming welfare," says a top GOP aide who dreads losing
both issues. He continues: "Without a clear conservative vision,
the administration will wind up compromising from the status quo."
Teddy Kennedy, welfare reformer?
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