Welfare improvements win state more money

Sunday, 5 December 1999
http://www.azstarnet.com/public/dnews/082-8833.html

Wire and staff reports
Arizona is one of 27 states that will share $200 million in bonus money for improving their welfare programs, under a plan announced by President Clinton in his weekly radio address yesterday.
Arizona placed in the top 10 in two of four categories for welfare bonuses based on data from fiscal 1998.
The state ranked second in the job success category, based on the number of recipients who keep a job from one quarter to the next. Ten states in this category will share $50 million.
Arizona will also earn a share of $30 million awarded for job improvement success, where Arizona ranked eighth, tied with Michigan.
Each winner's share of the $200 million is determined by the size of the state's annual welfare appropriation from Washington. The amount to be given to each winning state was not available yesterday.
The president further refined what it means to succeed in welfare reform, saying next year's contest also will reward states that get medical benefits and food stamps to low-income families. He said states will be rewarded, too, when more children live in two-parent families.
Clinton again trumpeted tumbling welfare rolls, announcing the number of people collecting monthly checks is now less than half that of 1994. About 6.9 million people - about 2.5 million families - collected aid in June.
The welfare bonus contest, created by the 1996 welfare overhaul, rewards states that move the most welfare recipients into jobs, whether or not they leave the system's rolls. States also are rewarded when clients kept jobs for at least three months and receive higher wages.
``Most of the people who get jobs are keeping them. They're getting raises and paying taxes, and teaching their children to honor the dignity of work,'' Clinton said.
The money is added to other welfare funds and is subject to the same restrictions. None of the bonus money can be used to cut taxes or build stadiums, for instance, but it can pay for child care or vans to take people to jobs.
Indiana was No. 1 in placing the most people into jobs. Minnesota had the most people keep jobs and increase earnings, called ``job success.'' Washington state had the most improvement in job placement from 1997 to 1998. Florida showed the most improvement in job success.
State reports show that nationally, 1.3 million people on welfare went to work in 1998, with 80 percent still working three months later.
On average, quarterly wages increased from $2,088 to $2,571, still short of the poverty line but more than they were getting from welfare. These families also are eligible for the earned income tax credit that helps millions of working families move out of poverty.
Backers of the new welfare rules, which require recipients to work and limit the time people can collect assistance, have pointed to falling welfare rolls as proof of the new law's success. Opponents fear many of the people leaving welfare may be slipping through the cracks and getting nothing.
The contest rules were the administration's attempt to define success as moving into jobs and succeeding in them. Many states with large caseload declines did not win the bonus.
Of the 20 states with the biggest caseload declines in 1998, just nine were bonus winners. Some of the states with large declines over the past several years, such as Wisconsin, failed to win.
That may be partly because some of these states already had large drops in earlier years, meaning the population being measured in 1998 was disproportionately disadvantaged.
Also, states such as Wisconsin brag that their programs try to help families avoid welfare in the first place, meaning those most likely to work were not in the pool to begin with.
``State efforts to provide more help for working families or reduce poverty aren't very well reflected by the available numbers,'' said Mark Greenberg of the liberal Center for Law and Social Policy, which advises states on their welfare programs.
But Greenberg welcomed new categories meant to seek out millions of low-income families and children who are eligible for but are not enrolled in the food stamp system, Medicaid or the new Children's Health Insurance Program.
While federal law encourages states to move people off cash welfare, these programs are to support families at work, often in low-wage jobs.
Clinton also is responding to conservatives who argue that marriage provides the stability and income that children need. Next year states will be rewarded if they increase the portion of low-income children living in married-couple households.
``The old welfare system actually weakened families, by discouraging couples from marrying or living with their children. We want to change that,'' Clinton said. ``So starting next year there will also be bonuses for states that do the most to get poor children into two-parent homes, where we know they have the best chance of breaking the cycle of poverty.''
Arizona Daily Star reporter Thomas Stauffer contributed to this story.


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