August 4, 1996

Historic Welfare Bill Creates Clinton-Gingrich Ticket

WELFARE REFORM

"Welfare as we know it" has been reformed -- sort of -- and the Clinton-Gingrich ticket is off and running to the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November.

The president gets to claim fulfillment of a campaign promise, and the House speaker dodges a silver bullet.

It was the third and last chance for Clinton -- the train was about the leave the station without him. Gingrich had been so thoroughly demonized as "extreme" it is alleged that his dog bit him when he came home nights.

Now, both men are cast loose from their political negatives. Other major party candidates are left to fend for themselves. GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole and House minority leader Dick Gephardt are in shock. Dole had still another Republican issue stolen from him by Clinton. Gephardt saw the cornerstone of Democratic liberalism crumbled by Mr. Newt.

The Republican Congress adopted the welfare measure with help from many Democrats, and the Democratic president announced he would sign it. The welfare bill was short on specifics. Nonetheless, it was long on principle -- namely that 60 years of debilitating dependency on government has shifted toward personal responsibility.

Under the new law, the federal government will continue to share the cost of welfare with the states but in reduced amount -- $56 billion less over the next six years. However, the rules for qualification and administration will be written at state capitals, not at Washington, D.C.

The federal shortfall is expected to be covered by savings resulting from elimination of waste, fraud and abuse inherent in the present free-wheeling welfare system.

"The bill goes right to the heart and soul of our nation and its values," says Rep. John Kasich of Ohio, chairman of the House Budget Committee.

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Dem., N.Y., who had long ago pushed for reform, summed up the problem for liberals:

"For years, whenever critics said, correctly, that the welfare system was doing more harm than good, and suggested it be rethought, its defenders screamed 'racism' and 'slavefare.' They did that until there was no public support left at all."

Principal change of the welfare overhaul is the requirement that able-bodied recipients work -- in public service if not in the private sector. Participation is limited to five years over the recipients' lifetime. This can be extended two years for hardship cases.

Contrary to liberal propaganda, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) continues -- the largest welfare cost -- but under state instead of federal control.

The states are allowed to "experiment" with various methods of weaning lay-abouts off welfare. A useful model is the Florida system adopted in 1992 which limits welfare benefits to two years during which recipients must attend work training classes. It reported that 70 percent of those in the state program move off welfare on schedule.

Hopefully, one of the 50 states will discover a magic system to coax teenagers with hyperactive hormones into marriage, parents into the workforce, kids into school and gang members into church.

The odds are long, but something has to be done differently. The socialized system of the last 60 years is an unmitigated disaster. We created a permanent underclass of helpless people. National bankruptcy, and anarchy was the only legacy we could expect.

Radical liberals, threatened with the possibility of having to get real jobs, unlimbered their big guns against the GOP plan -- starving, abused, and dying children.

Heretofore, Americans were transfixed with this weepy barrage. Reason turned to mush.

Consequently, under the pressure of compassion, we encouraged our youth to drop out of school, seek no-fault sex, duck marriage, produce doomed children without legal rights, avoid work, and prey on the rest of us for playthings.

So frozen in place were we about little children, immigrants discovered we would support them also if they sneaked into the United States with their children.

Middle class, working Americans -- who pay 90 percent of all taxes -- finally began to wonder.

If they were compassionate for children they did not know, aren't their progenitors more so? And wouldn't the mothers, at least, be motivated to get any kind of jobs to succor them -- or stay in their own country among friends and family?

If welfare was not a viable alternative, wouldn't immoral girls insist on a marriage license and a working husband before risking pregnancies?

If none of the above, then wouldn't it be better that children be placed in a "resident care facility" -- read that "orphanage" if you wish? This would be a compassionate alternative to abusing children and allowing them to run loose in the streets, as is the case too often now.

And, let us be blunt, a society has the right to impose tube tying on irresponsible, unwed, non-working mothers who want society to take care of them. The 30 percent of hopelessly dependent men and women -- and their offspring -- should be gathered into old fashion "poor farms" where compassionate attendants can look after them. Throwing money at indignities so they will squeeze into urban ghettos is cruel -- and unfair to neighbors striving to improve their status.

The time has come to replace the present welfare system -- which is a great deal less than compassionate -- with workfare and charity.

PARTING SHOTS

Cliff says:

"Those who go looking for trouble will surely find it."

* * *

Clinton lost his cool at a rose garden press conference this week when asked if he was going to "keep his word" about signing a congressional bill paying the legal expenses of White House travel office personnel he wrongfully accused of mismanagement.

The president declared he had never made such a commitment, and his press secretary made a mistake last January in announcing he would sign.

This must be the first time Clinton has blamed a living person.

By Lindsey Williams, columnist for Sun Coast Media Group newspapers