USA TODAY International Edition
Welfare reform remains model of bipartisanship
Twenty years ago, a Democrat- ic president and a Republican Congress replaced a welfare system that fostered dependence with one that encouraged work. The reform was wildly successful for a few years and has struggled since then. But as a model of bipartisan cooperation, it deserves continued support.
The controversial plan to “end welfare as we know it,” enacted by a re- election- conscious President Clinton and the GOP- led Congress, did away with six decades of guaranteed federal aid for the poor.
Modeled on state pilot programs, the law prodded welfare recipients into the workplace with a series of carrots and sticks: Get a job, and you got help with child care, job training, transportation. Wait, and you risked sanctions and time limits. It worked, at least for a while. First, the law increased employment rates for single women, particularly mothers who had never married. That tough- love approach proved just the incentive many needed to escape the cycle of poverty perpetuated by the former Aid to Families with Dependent Children program.
Second, the government provided needed supports for those making the life- changing transition from welfare to work: tax breaks, child care subsidies, food stamps and, in many states, ex- panded Medicaid eligibility.
That combination of jobs and targeted government assistance reduced poverty rates. Thousands of poor children did not wind up sleeping on grates, as Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously forewarned.
That’s not to say the law is without problems. By turning a federal program into a block grant to states, it locked in a funding level that has lost a third of its value to inflation. Many states that were given flexibility to experiment with welfare funds are spending the money on unrelated activities rather than benefits, job training and child care.
Furthermore, many single parents could not make it in the workplace and ran afoul of the law’s harsh penalties. That has led many into “deep poverty,” defined as barely more than $ 12,000 for a family of four, not including tax credits and non- cash benefits.
The lesson is clear. The law succeeded during the strong economy of the late 1990s, and for physically able and mentally stable adults who just needed a helping hand entering the workforce. During hard times and for tougher cases? Not so much.
Democrats and Republicans ought to be able to agree on what’s working and what’s not, and to make necessary adjustments.
The most important part of welfare reform wasn’t benefits or block grants; it was work. The focus going forward should be to make those jobs pay, with sufficient investments in training, transportation, child care, health care and nutrition assistance.
Alas, it’s 2016, not 1996, and compromise is considered a dirty word in Washington.
If only the White House and Congress could find a middle ground on something — anything — they could minimize the partisan brawls that pass for policy debates in the capital and behave more like the mature adults they wanted welfare recipients to be a generation ago.