The State of Welfare
An old and tricky question resurfaces.

January 29, 2002 9:00 a.m.

his 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?