First, President Franklin Roosevelt gave us the New Deal. Then President Lyndon Johnson created the Great Society.
Now the 104th Congress, with President Clinton in tow, is about to unleash the Big Experiment.
It’s difficult to exaggerate the historic proportion of the changes in store for tens of millions of people receiving welfare checks, food stamps, disability benefits and other social services under the sweeping welfare bill passed by Congress last week.
For the last 60 years, the nation’s social safety net has been secured by a fundamental guarantee: If you are needy and eligible, the federal government will help you.
But under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, which Clinton is expected to sign soon, that basic principle will be erased next July 1.
Because of perceived abuses, it will be replaced by a rule that says welfare will be a temporary hand up rather than a way of life, and that hand will only be extended to those willing to live by certain strictures, especially those requiring teenagers to stay in school and adults to go to work.
Whether the new regime works hinges on how states respond, and whether they use their new powers to dismantle the welfare system or create thoughtful, workable new approaches.
After years of complaining about federal mandates and red tape, state officials will be plopped in the driver’s seat to design welfare-to-work programs and set most of the rules, without having to ask Washington’s permission.
The federal framework assembled through the years to provide some fairness in the welfare system will be abolished and replaced with 50 different frameworks, each reflecting local preferences and priorities.
Are the states up to the task? History suggests some won’t be.
For example, the last time Congress tried to fix the welfare system, passing the Family Support Act of 1988, states were called on to use their creativity in setting up more effective job training programs. The federal government pledged to match whatever new funds states ponied up for the effort.
“A small number of states did innovative things and tried to be creative,” said Rebecca Blank, director of the Northwestern University/University of Chicago Poverty Research Center. “They tended to be the larger states with more effective governments.”
Then, a recession squeezed state budgets hard. “All states wound up implementing minimal programs,” Blank said.
Arguing that the 1988 act didn’t go far enough, governors sought to get more control over their welfare systems by asking the government for waivers from federal rules.
As a result, experiments are under way in some 43 states, including Illinois, which are testing the effect of work requirements, time limits, and other approaches. Because it’s too early to judge the results, Congress is allowing state officials to continue such programs and expand them if they wish.
Unlike the waivers, the welfare bill will also permit them to reduce spending on welfare services by as much as 25 percent. Under the new federal block grants that will fund cash aid for poor families and work programs, Washington no longer will automatically increase support when welfare rolls increase, as they do during a recession.
For the next six years, federal contributions will be frozen at current levels, $16.4 billion annually.
As it is, critics say, cash benefits haven’t kept pace with inflation. New restrictions on federal funds and the ability to withdraw state money is likely to encourage a race to the bottom in which states sharply cut assistance to the needy.
“In a budget crisis, who are states going to cut first?” said Christopher Jencks, an expert on poverty and public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. “Welfare moms are a likely target, just as they have been in Washington. They’re the most politically vulnerable.”
Most social scientists warn that getting recipients into jobs and out of poverty will cost more money in the near term, not less. Most recipients have low skills and need training to obtain even minimum-wage jobs. Many will also need help overcoming multiple obstacles such as substance abuse, domestic violence, family health problems, mental illness and poor self-esteem.
Two other elements necessary for helping single parents stay in the work force, affordable child care and health coverage, are expensive and out of reach for many low-paid workers.
It remains to be seen whether state and federal resources will provide enough affordable day care slots. Recipients who go to work will be entitled to only one year of Medicaid coverage.
States are expected to rely heavily on private-sector agencies to meet the need for training and other support services. Their resources, however, are already strained.
“Because of the (new welfare) time limits, the pressure on community-based service organizations like ours will be enormous,” said Jody Raphael, a social worker at Chicago Commons, a social service agency.
The grim job market for low-skilled workers is another factor states will have to overcome in transforming passive, caseworker bureaucracies into energetic job-finding agencies.
A Chicago Urban League study predicted that when welfare reform takes effect, there will be six applicants in Chicago for every entry-level opening.
Recipients “will look for jobs, and they won’t find anything,” said James Lewis, the league’s vice president for research.
“A lot of people will be forced into extended family situations. In other cases, people will end up going without resources and have nowhere to turn. Some people will make it. But there’ll be an awful lot of human misery.”
