Bishop: Welfare law fails moral tests

"The President has made his decision. Let us hope that it is for the best. I continue to hope for the best, even if I fear the worst."

Those words of New York's Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- made in response to Congress' recent passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 and President Clinton's decision to sign it -- capture well my sentiments regarding this major federal initiative that has been adopted to overhaul our nation's welfare system.

As I have made clear on many occasions, both in this column and in testimony before the State Legislature, the current welfare system is broken and badly in need of fixing. It too often fosters dependency instead of self-sufficiency and perpetuates a cycle of generational poverty. Echoing the statement of the Administrative Committee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops on welfare reform, I believe strongly that "the status quo is unacceptable" and that "genuine welfare reform is a moral imperative and an urgent national priority."

Reform or repeal?

My greatest fear, however, is that the welfare bill that was adopted by the Congress and signed by the President is not reform but repeal; a hasty and ill-conceived effort in the midst of a presidential election campaign to fulfill Mr. Clinton's promise "to end welfare as we know it."

The bill fails to meet the criteria for reform that our nation's bishops called for in March 1995: "We strongly support genuine welfare reform which strengthens families, encourages productive work and protects vulnerable children....We are not defenders of the welfare status quo, which sometimes relies on bureaucratic approaches, discourages work and breaks up families.

"However, we oppose the abandonment of the government's necessary role in helping families overcome poverty and meet their children's basic needs....Top-down reform with rigid national standards cannot meet the needs of a population as diverse as poor families. However, simply shifting responsibility without adequate resources, standards and accountability could leave America's poor children worse off."

Caution ignored

It seems to me that the caution we bishops called for in reforming welfare has been ignored in the bill that ends the 61-year federal guarantee of cash assistance for poor children and gives to the states vast new authority to run their own welfare programs with lump sums of federal money known as block grants.

In giving the states more autonomy in administering welfare grants, however, the federal government's funding of these block grants will be reduced by $60 billion over the next six years, throwing an additional 1.1 million children into poverty.

The new measure also requires adult recipients to find work within two years, establishes a five-year lifetime limit on benefits, eliminates support for 300,000 disabled children, cuts food stamps by 25 percent and curtails aid to legal immigrants who have broken no laws.

This law, then, is totally adverse to our Catholic moral traditions that demand dignity for poor children, the elderly, the disabled and immigrants.

What jobs?

It is particularly distressing that the bill fails to take into account something that we Americans should be most concerned about as we celebrate our national Labor Day holiday, namely: Where are the jobs which will put these welfare recipients to work? and what happens to the children of parents who remain unemployed or under-employed when the individual states, no longer bound by a federal law, cannot or will not take care of them?

Addressing that critical concern, New York State Comptroller H. Carl McCall labeled this new bill a "flawed product" because we simply do not have enough jobs to transfer people from welfare to workfare. He points out, for example, that New York State's present system of child care, job training and job creation policies and programs are inadequate to meet the workfare requirements that the new legislation demands.

His concern is reinforced by the Greater Upstate Law Project, which notes that with 800,000 adult New Yorkers currently unemployed and another 667,000 on public assistance, more than a million people will be competing for jobs in New York State. Yet, our state's Department of Labor has predicted that only 250,000 new jobs will be created in the immediate future. The lack of job opportunities is not simply a New York State problem, as studies show that there are five to ten applicants for every available entry-level job across the country.

Voyage into unknown

In other words, while there is consensus that the best way out of the cycle of welfare dependency is work, before we can take assistance away from vulnerable children, we must make sure that jobs are reasonably available for their parents.

The problem with the new "welfare plan" is that it does not provide such reasonable assurance. Indeed, it is no plan at all but a voyage into the unknown; social engineering gone haywire.

As Senator Moynihan rightly notes, "We are putting people at risk with absolutely no evidence that this radical idea has even the slightest chance of success."

What is needed

While the prospects for success appear bleak, there still remains the chance to develop the type of genuine reform that the bishops of our country and other advocates for the poor envision. Not surprisingly, however, the solution will cost more money rather than less, at least in the short term.

It will require that we as a society develop work programs, daycare services and job training that will enable single mothers on Aid to Families of Dependent Children and adults on Home Relief to make the transition from welfare to work. We cannot insist upon work requirements, and then fail to provide the money and economic policies needed to create jobs and affordable day care for working parents.

To accomplish that task will not be easy. Consequently, we in the Church must be strong advocates for putting the pieces of authentic reform into place. For example, the federal law will give New York State much more latitude in designing and implementing its welfare program. There will be much activity in the 1997 State Legislative session to determine what options New York State will implement, and in what ways less federal dollars and state welfare funds will be spent.

We must carefully monitor and accurately assess the impact of that legislative process, and work to ensure that the federal reforms and our state's response to them do not throw more New York families and innocent children into poverty.

Least among us

If what is developed does not address constructively the needs of "the least among us," then we must insist that our elected officials find appropriate remedies to restore the safety net of adequate food, clothing and shelter for 35 million of our fellow citizens -- 15 million of them children -- who fall below the poverty level.

Pope John Paul II repeatedly calls the members of our Church to evidence "a preferential option for the poor." Our careful monitoring of the new welfare legislation and our willingness to demand the rectification of the type of deleterious consequences many experts predict it will produce are tangible and concrete ways in which we can fulfill our Holy Father's urgent exhortation.

(08-29-96)

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