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TOPICS COVERED:
Read an Online NewsHour backgrounder on this year's welfare reform.
A team of NewsHour correspondents reports on the impact new welfare law in Wisconsin, New York and California on the day it went into effect.
Three members of Congress discuss the politics between the new welfare reform bill passed this year.
Two state legislators and two national Welfare experts debate the merits of the Wisconsin Works, or W-2, welfare reform program, often held up as a model for national welfare reform.
Browse the Online NewsHour's welfare coverage.Like it or not, welfare reform has arrived. This summer, President Clinton signed a bill passed by a Republican-controlled Congress that ends the 61-year-old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program.
Now it's up to the states to create new welfare programs, and their first deadline is Oct. 1, the beginning of the 1997 fiscal year. By then state legislatures must pass a bevy of legislation if they are to receive the entire amount of federal money available for welfare programs, including laws that make it tougher for fathers to avoid paying child-support, end public assistance to legal immigrants, and limit assistance to a five-year period.
While a small numbers of states -- like Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida -- already have work-to-welfare programs in place, a large portion, including California and New York, have no such plans. States have until July 1 to submit welfare reform plans to the federal government, who will be send $16.3 billion annually to the states in the form of block grants. Compounding the difficulties were the facts that many state legislators have their eyes on the fall elections and that only a few state legislatures were in session when Clinton signed the welfare bill in August.
Nonetheless, the onus is on the states to create welfare reform, and they have many options, including the one of turning welfare over to a private company. State officials must craft plans that provide work but also services, such as child care and transportation, that help recipients overcome barriers that have kept them from becoming self-sufficient.
WORK REQUIREMENTS
By July 1, 1997 a quarter of each states' welfare recipients must be either doing some type of "work" or be off the welfare roll. By Oct. 1, 2002, the portion in work programs or off welfare must be half. Single parents will initially be required to work 20 hours a week, and two-parents families will have to work 35 hours. Mothers of children under age 1 are excluded from work requirements.
The question state legislators must ask when are: what can be considered "work," and what is the best way to get jobs for often-times unskilled welfare recipients?
Wisconsin created a mixture of unsubsidized, private-sector jobs, trial jobs in the private sector that are subsidized with state funds, community service jobs and skills training programs when drafting the trend-setting Wisconsin Works, or W-2, welfare program. A pilot version of the W-2 program in two Wisconsin counties reduced the number of welfare recipients by 44 percent, though is unknown how many people who left welfare in those counties actually found work.
State officials believe the target of getting 25 percent of current recipients either into jobs or off the welfare rolls doable, but mainly due to a decrease in the number of people on welfare -- nationwide, welfare rolls are already down 9 percent from last year.
Some worry that the new programs will just push people off public assistance and not into self-sustaining employment, especially since welfare recipients are more-often-then-not. For example, only a tenth of the 122,700 people who were involved in a New York City "workfare" program actually found full employment. Two-thirds, though, of those involved did leave the welfare rolls, the New York Times reported, and it is unknown were those people went.
There's even the question of how to define "work." Some states count job training and skills development as "work" that may not comply with the federal definition of "work" activities.
CHILD CARE
While the federal reform bill does provide the states with $14 billion for child care over the next six years, how child care will be provided for children whose parents must now work for their benefits is unclear. An absence of affordable day-care has been a factor preventing welfare recipients from working.
For example, Wisconsin, in its W-2 program, has increased spending for child care by 300 percent. That may not be enough, though, according to Claudia Wayne and Marcy Whitebook of the National Center for the Early Childhood Work Force. Writing in the Christian Science Monitor, the two said the need for child care may raise 1700 percent.
Proponents of welfare reform respond to that criticism say savings from reduced welfare rolls will free up money for additional child care. Furthermore, some welfare recipients will be allowed to care for other recipients' children and have it count as "work," thus creating expanded child care options for welfare recipients. However, some question the quality of this type of care and wonder if it will undermine fully-licensed day care centers.
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