THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 28, 1995 TAG: 9502280013
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
Workfare is a hot political issue, and politicians who don't get tough on the subject risk getting burned by an electorate fed up with welfare dependency. Even Virginia Democrats and Republicans ultimately agreed on that.
The result is reform that falls short of Governor Allen's original ``Welfare to Work'' proposals. Happily, it far surpasses the Democrats' initial inclination to add enough exceptions to the work-or-training requirements that maybe 9,000 welfare recipients - out of 75,000 in the state - would go to work within three years. Workfare it wasn't.
It's to Allen's credit that he refused to accept it as such, and to some Democrats' credit, primarily Lt. Gov. Don Beyer's, that the final Virginia Independence Plan needn't be another ballyhooed reform that benefits legislators and bureaucrats more than welfare recipients.
At the state level as at the national level, the philosophical debate that underlies welfare reform isn't settled. The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus voted en bloc against the compromise reform as ``punitive,'' and no wonder: Of AFDC recipients in Virginia, 65 percent are black.
But the welfare debate is - increasingly, fortunately and factually - less philosophical and racial than socio-economic. There is growing agreement among liberals and conservatives of every race and ethnicity that the current system's emphasis on entitlement breeds illegitimacy, dependency, poverty, crime, illiteracy, unemployment, resentment, despair. Lack of client accountability erodes the work ethic, and the social compact.
It's not asking too much of society that it feed, shelter, educate, doctor children whose parents can't or won't support them. It is too much to ask that society continue a welfare system which penalizes parents who work and-or marry, which encourages unwed parenthood, which prescribes only ever more financial support for the uneducated and unemployed parent from wage-earning, often parenting taxpayers.
Reform includes other remedies: Generally, a two-year limit on AFDC and a third year of health, transportation and child-care assistance. Work at or toward a job, private or public, within 90 days of receiving benefits. Establishment of paternity for that 67 percent of AFDC clients who have children without marriage. No additional benefits for more children born while a mother is on AFDC. A link between AFDC and school attendance. Emergency cash grants to families that need help over one hump, not dependence on the dole.
Virginia's reform of course bears some resemblance to the GOP Contract With America and draws similar criticism, mainly: What about the children of welfare mothers who can't or don't end the two years prepared to support their children? Policy-makers have like time to plan for those children. Supplementing their wages, providing group homes for young parents and children, foster care, even orphanages should all be options.
But for meaningful reform, a current option must end: raising children on a welfare check. Allen pushed reform. The Assembly finally passed some. Good. by CNB