Between the Lines Q&A: A weekly column featuring progressive viewpoints on national and international issues under-reported in mainstream media
Poor Families Likely to Lose as Congress Debates Reauthorization of Welfare Reform Act Interview with Debbie Weinstein of the Children's Defense Fund conducted by Melinda Tuhus The 1996 federal welfare reform law ended 60 years of "welfare as we knew it." It created a five-year lifetime limit on support to poor families and gave the states a lot of leeway to design programs and establish income levels. Five years after the legislation was signed into law by President Clinton, the number of people on welfare in the U.S. has dropped by half. Advocates for the poor say the law has pushed women on welfare into low-wage, dead-end jobs, many without adequate day care for their young children or health care. And while supporters of the law claim the 50 percent drop in caseloads is proof that reform is working, critics counter that these statistics prove only that the law is effective at cutting people from the welfare rolls. The welfare reform law, set to expire on Sept. 30, was scheduled for reauthorization this year, but President Bush signed a stop-gap measure to continue funding through Dec. 30. Meanwhile, the House has passed a bill that requires women on welfare to work a minimum of 40 hours a week to receive benefits while providing minimal child care and negligible funds for education and training. The Senate is working on its own less severe version, which mandates a 30-hour a week work requirement, counts education toward work hours and provides more funds for child care. Between The Lines' Melinda Tuhus spoke with Debbie Weinstein, director of the Family Income division with the Children's Defense Fund, about the critical issues facing poor families and changes to welfare legislation her group is advocating. Debbie Weinstein: Right now, under current law, parents with children are expected to work 30 hours a week and if they have a child under six, 20 hours a week. I should say states have the flexibility to require more. All this is saying is that if that's all that's required, it will count towards the federal work participation rates. States have to meet these rates. If they don't, they'll lose federal dollars. So that's current law and the new proposal that passed in the House would raise the hours of work participation to 40 hours, without an exception for parents with very small children. Now many people say, "I work 40 hours a week, that's full time, why shouldn't they?" We're not talking about a real job where people leave welfare -- that's what we all want. This is filling out the clock with activities that will add up to 40 hours. What that means is in order for states to meet those requirements, they're going to have to come up with make-work or workfare type activities where people aren't in real jobs -- those make-work activities do not tend to result in people getting placed in real jobs and they cost a fair amount of money to implement. Between The Lines: Is there still the five-year lifetime limit (for welfare benefits) that's going to be in place? Is that going to change at all? Debbie Weinstein: It doesn't change, it's part of the current law. Nothing would be changing it in any of the proposals that are now before Congress. Between The Lines: The statistics show that nationally there's about 50 percent fewer women with children on welfare than there was in 1996, when this law was first passed. People are using that to call welfare reform a success. But I know there's at least anecdotal information out there that a lot of those people are still struggling desperately. They may be off welfare, but they're still poor. Do you have any data to show what's happened to those people? Debbie Weinstein: We do know some things, quite a lot at this point. You're certainly right. The caseload was cut in half since the welfare law was passed in 1996. We know that about two-thirds to three-quarters of the families that left welfare worked at least at some point. But we also know that very frequently their jobs were unstable and they didn't all that often work full-time, year round. We know that earnings were low and actually, about half of the families that left welfare had family incomes that were below poverty, even though they left (welfare) and went to work. Between The Lines: You said that Children's Defense Fund thinks the Senate version is certainly better than the House version. But are there things in a perfect world that CDF would like to see in any kind of welfare reform legislation that we haven't already talked about? Debbie Weinstein: What we need to see in welfare legislation that really helps families is to learn from what's happened and encourage those policies that help raise family income. We know that when programs supplement low wages with cash, we know that helps children. There's data that shows it. They do better in school, they have fewer mental health problems, and parents' work is more stable when that happens. We know that when people get more education and training, combined with good job placement services, they can earn more and have more stable jobs. So those kinds of work supports are what families need. We know they need more child care because people can't be expected to leave young children in unsafe, insecure surroundings where their children are not helped to develop. But now only one out of seven eligible families -- low-income families -- are getting the child care that they're eligible for, because there's not enough funding for it. We need to help immigrants who are here legally become eligible again for these services. They lost their eligibility in 1996. Those are some of the things that would make real improvements that would help families get jobs and stay in them. Contact the Fund by calling (202) 628-8787 or visit their Web site at: http://www.childrensdefense.org Melinda Tuhus is a producer with Between The Lines. This interview excerpt was featured on the award-winning, syndicated weekly radio newsmagazine, Between The Lines (http://www.btlonline.org), for the week ending Nov. 1, 2002
