The strong economy obviously helps, but it’s not a complete explanation. In the 60-year history of welfare, through many fat economic times, the largest previous caseload drop was 250,000 in a single year. And it’s not as if folks are getting routinely booted off the rolls. Only Florida and Wisconsin are doing that now. In other states, the time limits haven’t kicked in yet. So what accounts for the change? No one knows for sure. Of course, the threat of a cutoff has a way of concentrating the mind. The most important change, as Clinton domestic-policy chief Bruce Reed puts it, is in expectations. These days, when poor mothers go into state agencies to apply for welfare, they find themselves facing bureaucracies that are structured around work, not merely writing checks. Even the American Public Welfare Association, the advocacy group for case workers, is taking the word ““welfare’’ out of its name.
All the good news is tempered by the knowledge that the hardest part lies ahead. Those who could get jobs on their own have, by now, largely done so. From here on, the government and the private sector will have to be especially innovative. The government’s role probably won’t be in actually providing jobs; ““workfare’’ hasn’t proven a good avenue into permanent work, and the Clinton administration (thanks to union pressure) is making it increasingly impractical with loads of federal rules.
Instead, the action is in government support for stepped-up private-sector efforts. A new Coopers & Lybrand survey of the fastest-growing small companies shows 60 percent of employers would be willing to hire welfare recipients (26 percent already have). Some employers may be responding to what Clinton in St. Louis last week called their ““moral obligation’’ to help, a duty that applies especially to those who bellyached about the old system. But most managers aren’t saints; they just need warm bodies for entry-level jobs. The only way companies will get them is if there is state-supported child care, transportation and help for employers with what might be called ““the alarm-clock problem’’–basic work skills.
I went to St. Louis in advance of the president last week to listen in as nearly 300 local employers gathered in small groups for private discussions about hiring welfare recipients. ““To go from cynical to skeptical–that would be tremendous movement,’’ says Eli Segal, who is spearheading Clinton’s new Welfare to Work Partnership, which initially targeted St. Louis, a once depressed city now experiencing a 24-year low in unemployment. The partnership (1-888-USA-JOB1) is asking companies there and elsewhere to hire applicants off welfare.
Dennis Drummond of Jefferson Smurfit Corp., a paper-products company, came over the border from Illinois to tell other executives about his experiences in hiring 17 welfare recipients. ““The first thing you learn is they come in late. They’ve often never owned an alarm clock,’’ he explained, echoing familiar frustrations. ““You’re ready to fire them. They don’t know where the bathroom is. But we didn’t know where it was when we were new either. If you work with them, give them a “buddy’ at the start, they often turn into outstanding employees.''
Keith Guller, an oxygen-equipment manufacturer in St. Louis, told me he can’t get anyone to answer his help-wanted ads for low-wage work. So he’s turned to ““job intermediaries’’ that help screen, train and place the unemployed. Clinton spoke at one such St. Louis program called Mid-Tec. ““If they go through Mid-Tec, the odds are better they’ll be good,’’ Guller says. They learn technical skills–plus how to behave in a job. These nonprofit intermediaries, sprouting everywhere, may turn out to be the hot charities of the late ’90s. They are essential to welfare reform.
Also essential are state officials with their heads screwed on right. Missouri has a transportation-assistance program and guaranteed child care to anyone who meets the income threshold. It’s also ““seamless’’ (the new buzzword in policy circles), which means that the child-care state money goes directly to the day-care centers instead of to the worker. So is the program in Illinois, which has nearly doubled the money for child care in one year. Ohio, on the other hand, is actually cutting child-care funding, which is idiotic if you expect poor mothers to actually work.
How far can all of this go? Under Michigan’s Project Zero, every single one of the 413 welfare families in Ottawa County near Grand Rapids is now off the dole. The results aren’t the same in Detroit, but the signs are encouraging there, too. Yes, the hard-core welfare recipients shall always be with us, beset by personal demons. Yes, homelessness and visits to food banks are rising a bit in areas with the toughest new laws. But if the economy holds up and the private sector does its part, we’re on the threshold of the greatest social-policy achievement in a generation.
