Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 8, 1994 TAG: 9412230102
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-18 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Sure, went the administration's no-parole argument, keeping violent criminals in prison longer is expensive for a while. But because ex-prisoners tend to commit so many crimes, keeping them locked up longer in the first place will over time save money by cutting crime.
OK, genuine welfare reform - as opposed to simply cutting welfare spending, which in after-inflation dollars has been going on for 20 years in Virginia anyway, with no discernibly positive effect - is also expensive in the near term. The mid- to long-term potential, however, is an end to welfare dependence as a lifestyle, and a reduction in the number of children doomed by circumstance of birth and upbringing to lives of nonproductive poverty.
In Virginia, Aid to Families with Dependent Children provides meager monthly stipends to nonworking parents of dependent children. Full benefits are available only to single parents (usually mothers); one good part of Allen's proposals is to end this marriage penalty.
The intent of AFDC is to provide the very poorest of families with enough resources to ensure that such children are at least minimally fed and clothed. The tragedy is that, for some, the system seems to entrap recipients in dependent poverty rather than help them emerge from it. That's why welfare reform, including the proposed two-year cap, is needed.
The dilemma is that get-tough policies alone can make life even worse for the children. And even if mothers get jobs as a result of such policies, it can make life worse for the kids. Low-end jobs, the kind apt to be available to a welfare mother, don't pay enough to enable their holders to enjoy such "luxuries" as medical insurance, day care and dependable transportation.
Allen's proposals, unveiled this week in an application for a Virginia waiver from federal guidelines, are not entirely without merit. But on the whole, they seem a way to get Virginia's poorest to subsidize tax cuts for the most affluent. They also implicitly treat welfare reform less as a means of promoting employment than as a way to save money by witholding it from freeloaders, at best a short-term economy.
The governor figures on saving $80 million over five years by requiring able-bodied recipients to work up to 32 hours a week and by terminating a family's full benefits after two years. That sounds so good.
But without the companion items that cost money in the short run - day-care provisions, health insurance, education or job training, some kind of employment guarantee, public transportation - the restrictions either will have to be loosened again, or the lot of welfare children will get worse yet. And if in some situations orphanages are an answer ... well, what Newt & Co. haven't seemed to figure out is that orphanages, too, would be more expensive than welfare.
The same kind of long-term cost-benefit calculations that Allen was eager to apply, at least in theory, to sentencing reform ought to be applied to welfare reform. The governor's idea may be to cut costs, but that could buy trouble for Virginia, not to mention more suffering for the poor.
by CNB