
          Welfare Reform: States Race to the Bottom
          
            
              StaffStaff
            
          
          Vol. 18, No. 1, 1996 pp. 1-2
          
          With the election season looming, and both Clinton and the Congress
positioning on the welfare reform debate, agreement on a welfare
reform package is now considered unlikely this year. But the real
action is already taking place in the states.
          President Clinton vetoed the exceptionally callous welfare reform
legislation supplied by Congress in January. But unless the election
reverses the heartless mood in Washington, control over programs like
Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) will be handed over to
the states through block grants. This fundamental shift in government
policy will be devastating for the more than thirteen million
Americans who receive aid, 8.8 million of whom are children.
          Absent federal action, states are already racing each other to
pass regressive measures--restricting benefits and limiting
eligibility. Although in many cases the state reforms are less
restrictive than the vetoed federal bill, more than forty states have
instituted time limits, work requirements, and family caps. Waivers,
now in place in more than thirty-five state, allow states to avoid
compliance with existing federal regulations.
          In some instances, states have sought waivers to implement
favorable changes, lifting thresholds on the value of a car of home
owned by the applicant, for example. Child care assistance for working
parents, a necessity to bridge the transition from welfare to work, has
been included in state legislation. But , when available, child care
is routinely underfunded, covering far fewer families than need
aid. An effective program willcost more, not less, as
noted in the Texas article below.
          Federal block grants, with drastic funding cuts, will open the way
to undermine monthly benefit levels, already at rock bottom. State
governors are supporting the move to block grants, agreeing to roughly
25 percent reductions in welfare spending in exchange for greater
control over shrinking resources. While military budgets are largely
untouched, at more than 54 percent of budget outlays, the welfare
reform proposals, which are liable to be resurrected in some
form, these opinion pieces were distributed under the umbrella of the
American Forum, a national clearinghouse for editorial opinion,
organized in twelve Southern states, which provides views of state
experts on major public issues. Copyrighted by the respective state
forums, they are edited slightly to be as up to date as possible, and
reprinted there with permission.
        