The New Welfare System’s Flaws Should Not Be Ignored

To the Editor:

In his October 19 Opinion column (“Revised Welfare System Calls for New Approach by Grant Makers”), Leslie Lenkowsky gets one thing right: The Aid to Families with Dependent Children program was deeply flawed. Ask any poor mother trying to scrape by on a paltry grant, and you’d hear the same thing. I’m hard-pressed to think of any “liberals” who meet his description of smug satisfaction with “welfare as we know it.”

And Mr. Lenkowsky posits other assumptions that bear scrutiny.

It doesn’t take a genius to reduce welfare caseloads. All you have to do is prevent people from getting on by telling them to go seek help somewhere else, and shuffle them off as quickly as possible through sanctions, time limits, and other means. And unfortunately, that is what the federal welfare law has allowed states to do. It does take real commitment and resources to reduce poverty.

While caseloads have fallen by half, the poverty gap has not declined, and the poorest families are actually worse off now than they were before welfare “reform” passed. Certainly, one-half to two-thirds of people leaving welfare report earnings, but at levels that leave them impoverished while their ability to hold on to a job is always at risk if a car breaks down or a child gets sick.

They join millions of other struggling low-wage workers who were never on welfare, and whose condition curiously does not pique Mr. Lenkowsky’s concern.

There is also the matter of those who left welfare and don’t report earnings — the “disappeared” — about whom there has been a conspicuous silence from every quarter, though some evidence suggests significant hardship.

Mr. Lenkowsky does have a lot to say about individual responsibility. Have states taken responsibility for helping mothers find jobs and for giving them aid such as childcare or transportation?

This is an important question, since the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grant relies on states to design and implement programs with lots of room for innovation and few strings attached.

While poor families have had to navigate a maze of inconsistent and often arbitrary rules or face the partial or complete loss of benefits, most states have been dropping families who leave welfare from food stamps and Medicaid for years. Often states are doing that in violation of federal law and despite national finger-wagging, and they have faced no comparable sanctions.

The underenrollment in these programs — which Mr. Lenkowsky would presumably agree are important to helping people hold a job — is due to a culture of lawlessness and intimidation that should be a national scandal. Perhaps we need a national time limit on bad state behavior?

A few states have gone further to thumb their noses at Congress by diverting Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds to pay for other programs or for tax cuts. Not enough states have used the flexibility afforded by Temporary Assistance funds to increase the incomes of low-wage workers, invest in their skills, or provide intensive help to those remaining on welfare.

One might well ask the welfare critics: If you’ve succeeded in getting the “undeserving” poor off the system, what could the justification for abysmally low grant levels possibly be now? All of this argues for a much stronger set of federal strings in the next round of the welfare debate, especially standards that hold states accountable for reducing poverty and providing support.

Finally, Mr. Lenkowsky makes an odd criticism of foundations for being out of step with public opinion. One might argue that a critical role that foundations play in our democracy is ensuring that unpopular viewpoints get a fair hearing, which they certainly had not in the welfare debate over the last few years.

It would be hard to disagree with Mr. Lenkowsky’s argument that some foundations have been ineffectual, though that mostly reflects the lack of support for advocacy and organizing strategies that aim to bring the voices of low-income and allied constituencies into the public debate.

Indeed, if the conservative foundations had followed Mr. Lenkowsky’s advice to heed the polls and focus groups, one doubts that the far-out ideas that have now become conventional wisdom would have ever gotten foundation support.

Mr. Lenkowsky is right to crisply pose the question as one of values and beliefs about the “causes and cures of poverty.” Is it government’s role to provide a safety net for families in crisis, and to support families trying to balance the competing demands of work and family life? Is there a standard of decency in the treatment of each other to which we should collectively aspire? Are there good reasons for people at certain times in their lives to choose not to work for a wage because of family responsibilities or crises, personal hardship, or a bad economy? Should public policy correct some of the failures of the market — particularly for low-wage workers who earn insufficient income and are often without health insurance?

We need a vigorous and passionate debate about these issues, one that includes the people most affected by them as subjects rather than objects of policymaking. Foundations have a critical role in ensuring that we do not once again have a monologue on social policy posing as a debate.

Deepak Bhargava
Director, National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support
Washington