Welfare Reform

The Kensington Welfare Rights Union, an organization of poor people whose families are being devastated by welfare reform, is encouraged by the recent focus on welfare reform by the Daily News. But "Success in Welfareland" (June 2) tells only part of the story. Welfare reform is not and will not be a success in Kensington or anywhere else in the city. People have said welfare recipients are "in denial" about welfare cuts. The entire city is in denial about the growing crisis of hunger and homelessness.

If in 10 years' time we find children sleeping on grates, picked up in the morning frozen, and ask why are they here . . . will anyone remember how it began? It begins now, predicted Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan, D-N.Y., as he surveyed the state of the legislation ludicrously termed welfare reform. It begins if the U.S. Senate this week votes to renege on the nation's responsibility to protect millions of poor children - a responsibility it has legally acknowledged for 60 years.

President Reagan and congressional leaders have hailed the new welfare "reform" law as an important moment in the history of social welfare. That's just not true. Although the law does introduce some positive changes, it falls far short of its goals: It will not significantly reduce the number of families on the welfare rolls, nor will it offer much help to the millions of Americans living in poverty. The current welfare reform measures are focused almost exclusively on the public assistance program for poor children and their caretakers - Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)

Republicans this week and Democrats soon enough will take credit for "ending welfare as we know it. " But the nation won't know what is ending, much less what is created, unless this so-called new era is monitored adequately from day one. Even while the federal government was making all the rules and defining a national safety net, the successes and failures of previous welfare policy have been widely disputed. Most of the welfare debate has been directed by myth and TV sound-bite anecdote.

Welfare reform is at stage center in America today. And, on that stage, Wisconsin's Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson is a star. As chairman-elect of the National Governor's Association, he is certain to see his initiatives copied or, at least, seriously studied. After all, his state has reduced its caseload in Aid to Families With Dependent Children by 24 percent since 1987. Thompson began state-initiated welfare reform in 1987, long before such efforts became fashionable. Not only have the apparent consequences been dramatic, but Thompson has demonstrated that welfare reform is a winning political issue.

It was afternoon, and President Clinton had already helicoptered off to a Christmas shopping stint in New York City. But one of his big initiatives was on the table at Monday's entitlements summit: welfare reform. Today co-host Katie Couric was moderating the 2:30 p.m. panel discussion at Bryn Mawr College. Around her was a cast of heavy hitters, among them former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, former Rep. Thomas J. Downey of New York and Patricia Ireland, the president of the National Organization for Women.

Are you better off now than you were three years ago? If you were on welfare then, your answer may well be "No. " President Clinton announced Tuesday that the number of Americans receiving government aid had fallen dramatically since the enactment of welfare-reform legislation in 1996 and that millions of former recipients had found jobs. In Pennsylvania, welfare rolls dropped 49.26 percent to 312,364 recipients, the government said. In New Jersey, there was a 47.66 percent decline to 175,223 recipients.

One recent morning, I joined the social policy observers, service providers, activists and government and philanthropic leaders who gathered at a Friends meeting house for a United Way-sponsored forum on welfare reform. Later that day, I met at the Union League with the city's powerful to examine that same pressing issue. Both gatherings reinforced my view that our community is lagging in its efforts to move 70,000 Philadelphia parents from welfare to work by the spring of 1999.

President Clinton said yesterday that welfare reform was at the top of his legislative agenda for this year, followed by tax and spending cuts. "They're my 'must list,' " he said in his weekly radio address. Clinton said he wanted to preserve these programs from the legislative scramble sure to occur when Congress reconvenes and Republicans press their own agenda. The Senate is scheduled to return April 24; the House a week later. He said the House welfare-reform bill approved March 24 was too weak on helping people move from welfare to work.

When President Clinton proposed a welfare-reform plan earlier this year that set a two-year limit on benefits for many recipients, some called it punitive. But in congressional campaigns, Democrats and Republicans declared the welfare system almost as big a public menace as crime. They promised fed-up voters they would put recipients to work - or stop them from living off taxpayers. With Republicans now setting the agenda and tone of Congress, welfare reform is likely to move much further right.

In the decade after President Clinton signed the 1996 welfare-reform law, the story line was set: With welfare rolls down by two-thirds, it was a great, bipartisan success. And those who had warned of the dangers of a weakened safety net on the lives and health of poor children had been indulging in apocalyptic fear-mongering. Many low-income single moms did indeed find work in the early years following welfare reform, which also coincided with a roaring economy and an increase in supports like the earned-income-tax Ccedit.

The primary campaign has intensified a justified concern about inequality in America. Even poor Americans consider relatively high inequality acceptable if they have a decent opportunity to improve their condition. But because they may work fewer hours and at stagnant wages, their gains are very limited. Among the poor, surprisingly, never-married mothers have gained the most in recent decades. Their story shows the best way to reduce poverty and inequality: encouraging individuals to work more and supplementing their earnings with tax credits, child-care subsidies, and other benefits.

JUST WHEN the Republican primaries couldn't get any more interesting, the candidates upped the ante by approaching the third rail of race. In the most recent wave of debates and stump speeches, two Republican contenders have made extremely controversial comments regarding blacks and poverty. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum told a group of supporters that he didn't want to "make black people's lives better giving them other people's money. " Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was quoted telling a New Hampshire crowd that "the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.

Jim Gerlach, a four-term Republican congressman from the western Philadelphia suburbs, will give up his seat in the U.S. House next year to join the 2010 race for governor. "I have been on the front lines for years fighting for smaller government and greater efficiency in Harrisburg and Washington," Ger-lach said in a news release announcing his candidacy. "Our next governor must employ those values, put them to work in Harrisburg and make Pennsylvania a competitive place to do business, so we can create jobs and put families back to work.

"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir. " "Are there no prisons?" Ebenezer Scrooge's response in Charles Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol doesn't exemplify America's approach to poverty.

Poor American families with children now have higher average incomes, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than they did 14 years ago. What's more, they are earning a higher percentage of their incomes through work, not government aid. A recent report from the Congressional Budget Office said the average annual income of families with children in the lowest quintile (fifth) of income distribution grew 35 percent between 1991 and 2005. That is the second-largest percentage increase of any quintile.

After nearly 30 years on the New Jersey political scene, State Sen. Wayne Bryant had climbed his way to the top. Yesterday, the Camden County Democrat took the fall of a lifetime. Bryant, once one of the most powerful lawmakers in the state, the man who drew national headlines for his work in welfare reform and went on to become the go-to guy on the state budget, was reduced to a much humbler role: The latest in a long line of politicians busted for alleged corruption by U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie.

After nearly 30 years on the New Jersey political scene, State Sen. Wayne Bryant had climbed his way to the top. Yesterday, the Camden County Democrat took the fall of a lifetime. Bryant, once one of the most powerful lawmakers in the state, the man who drew national headlines for his work in welfare reform and went on to become the go-to guy on the state budget, was reduced to a much humbler role: The latest in a long line of politicians busted for alleged corruption by U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie.

TEN YEARS ago today, President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, commonly known as welfare reform. The law required states to place a large fraction of welfare clients into jobs and put a time limit on how long a person can receive cash assistance. At the time, I worried about the harsh effects on poor people and said so in an op-ed for the Washington Post headlined "Welfare Dustbowl. " I figured that the combination of work requirements and time limits would drive poor people from places with few jobs to places with more jobs, like the 1930s dust storms that drove people from Oklahoma to California.