By Amy Goldstein
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON – President Bush Tuesday set forth his vision for the “next steps of welfare reform,” trying to appeal to Congress through a proposal that blends a focus on work and marriage with some flexibility for the governors who run the nation’s welfare system.
Central aspects of Bush’s proposal were challenged immediately by House and Senate Democrats, who questioned whether it would give poor people enough opportunity to prepare for jobs or enough help with child care once they are employed.
Key Democrats also said the plan would create what they called “an unfunded mandate” by compelling states to dramatically enlarge their job programs without extra financial help from the federal government.
Despite such criticism, the reaction to the White House’s plan from both political parties was markedly more muted than the fierce ideological arguments surrounding a 1996 law, due to expire in the fall, that transformed welfare.
The 1996 law replaced a system of unlimited monthly welfare checks with a new program run by individual states with federal grants that gives poor families temporary cash assistance while navigating them into jobs. With both parties claiming that those controversial changes have been relatively successful, the debate this year essentially involves how to tinker with them.
Bush struck that theme as he issued his proposal at a church, which he said exemplified the compassionate help community groups can offer the poor. He called the first welfare changes “good and sound and compassionate public policy,” and said his proposal represents “the next actions we must take to build a more just and generous nation.”
“We ended welfare as we’ve known it, yet it is not a post-poverty America,” Bush said.
Specifically, the White House plan calls for the government to give states the same block grants they have received for the last six years – $16.5 billion a year. In this way, analysts said, the administration is seeking a middle ground between Democrats who believe the grants should keep pace with inflation and conservatives, who want to cut them because welfare caseloads are only half as large as they used to be.
In keeping with conservative thinking, Bush’s proposal would promote “healthy marriages” by subsidizing experiments in five or six states that want to provide classes, counseling and other help for couples.
The White House’s welfare document says “the administration plan commits up to $300 million per year” for such programs – the amount that conservative policy analysts have been recommending – but the plan’s details make clear that one-third of that amount would have to be paid by the states.
The proposal also urges Congress to require substantially more welfare recipients to get jobs and to work longer hours. It would raise the percentage of welfare clients who must hold jobs from 50 percent to 70 percent and increase their workweek from 30 hours to 40.
And in a change with far-reaching consequences, the plan would phase out within three years a feature of the welfare reform law that has enabled most states to largely sidestep work requirements by giving them credit for each person they moved off the welfare rolls.
Administration officials said their plan simultaneously gave states more freedom by allowing them to count 16 hours per week – instead of the current 10 hours – as “work,” even if people are using that time for school, treatment for drug addictions, or other preparations that would equip them to work.
But Democrats denounced that reasoning. In particular, they singled out a subtle but significant change Bush is advocating that would halt states’ ability to count vocational training as work.
“I think what he’s done is taken away flexibility from states,” said Rep. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., sponsor of the Democratic welfare bill in the House.
Cardin said Bush also limited states’ discretion by proposing to continue a ban, created as part of the 1996 law, on welfare assistance for most legal immigrants. The move infuriated immigration advocates, who had been buoyed by Bush’s announcement a few weeks ago that he wanted to restore immigrants’ eligibility for federal nutrition subsidies.
“Whatever goodwill the administration may have built up with food stamps has been undercut by this slap in the face. … We are hopping mad,” said Cecelia Munoz, vice president for policy of the National Council of La Raza.
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