Preserving Welfare As We Know It

State legislative leaders have spared no hyperbole to announce enactment of “landmark welfare reform” that “ends welfare as we know it.” A bipartisan chorus has proclaimed a new era of “strict time limits” and “tough work requirements” for able-bodied welfare recipients.

In fact, California’s new welfare law is a giant step backward from the reforms enacted last year by Congress, shattering federal time limits, undermining federal work requirements and making California one of the few states in the country to preserve “welfare as we know it.” In a national era of welfare reform, California has become an anachronistic island of resistance, like Cuba after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Under the federal reforms, welfare recipients have a strict lifetime cumulative limit of five years, starting in November 1996, after which their grants are cut off (although food stamps, medical care and housing subsidies continue). California’s new law allows a recipient’s grant to continue indefinitely at a slightly reduced rate ($109 per month for a family of three), all at state-only expense. California also resets the federal clock to next January, adding 14 months to the federal maximum for current recipients, also at state-only expense.

Federal law requires that welfare recipients who are receiving welfare benefits must work at least 20 hours per week, and California’s “reformers” brag that they have increased that minimum to 32 hours. But there’s a difference. Under federal law, benefits must be reduced for every hour a recipient fails to work, a requirement called “earn your pay.” California will now offer an entitlement grant that cannot be reduced on an hourly basis.

If a recipient refuses to work at all, a county has the “option” to embark on an exhaustive process of binding arbitration, administrative hearings and multilevel appeals to impose “sanctions.” At the end of this cost-prohibitive procedural labyrinth, the only “sanction” that can be imposed is the same $109-per-month reduction in benefits. For a mother with two children, the difference between working 32 hours and not working at all amounts to 85 cents per hour. Most workers would be inclined to quit their jobs if guaranteed 80% of their working wages indefinitely. This is precisely the proposition offered to welfare recipients if they choose not to work.

Supporters of these gaping loopholes insist that they will “help the children” of parents who choose not to work. Unfortunately, the benefits do not go to the children; they go to the same parents who have refused to make even a minimal effort to support those children. Jason Turner, who helped design the successful work requirements in Wisconsin, said this permits the parent to avoid taking responsibility for providing for her family through work. “Instead, after five years, she will continue to receive almost all her welfare benefits, all her food stamps and all other federal benefits such as medical and housing,” he said. “We have found in Wisconsin that parents respond quickly to support their families once there is no welfare alternative.”

As Democratic Mayor John Norquist of Milwaukee put it recently: “Most people have underestimated the abilities of welfare recipients to work and care for their families.” When Wisconsin set higher expectations for the able-bodied poor, families rose to the occasion. Wisconsin has reduced its caseload by more than 60% since the welfare reforms first were enacted, and its unemployment rate has remained one of the lowest in the country.

California’s “tough new welfare reform” actually will cost $223 million more than the current system. By violating the federal mandate for “earn your pay” grant structures, it is so far out of compliance that it risks federal sanctions of at least $30 million.

While other states have used the federal reforms as a starting point and built upon them, California’s new law eviscerates the federal reforms and maintains the old welfare system with a few relatively minor adjustments and rhetorical flourishes. As other states impose meaningful work requirements and time limits, the disparity will attract the nation’s chronic welfare abusers to California, pushing costs even beyond the increases enacted in this legislation.

And speaking of children, it perpetuates a system of dependency, condemning yet another generation of Californians to idleness, poverty and delinquency.