美国国家公共电台 NPR 20 Years Since Welfare's Overhaul, Results Are Mixed

20 Years Since Welfare's Overhaul, Results Are Mixed

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Twenty years ago today, President Bill Clinton signed legislation to end welfare as we know it. And that is exactly what happened. Benefits were limited, and poor families were encouraged to find jobs. But the results have been mixed. Some people found work, but others are struggling more than ever.

Today, the number of families on welfare is much lower than it used to be, even though deep poverty is on the rise. NPR correspondent Pam Fessler covers these issues and joins us in the studio.

Good morning.

PAM FESSLER, BYLINE: Good morning.

GREENE: So is there a way to say whether welfare reform was a success or a failure? Or - it sounds like it might be just complicated.

FESSLER: Exactly. Those who were able to get steady work - for the most part, they are better off. They not only have some income - even low income - but they also get what's called an earned income tax credit, which has really helped a lot of people out of poverty. The problem is that there's also this large group of people at the bottom, and they haven't been able, for one reason or another, to get or keep jobs. And they're worse off. And that part of the reason is because there is now a five-year, lifetime limit on getting welfare benefits. And in some states, it's even lower, as low as one year. So when a family hits that limit, their benefits are cut off.

GREENE: Didn't we always hear that one of the keys to this reform was that states had a lot of flexibility to respond to the concerns of their residents? Has that helped?

FESSLER: In some ways, it's helped. But it's also hurt. States get block grants, and there, now, have a lot of control over how they spend this money. The result is welfare is very different depending on where you live. Some states have much lower benefits. I recently went to Louisiana where, today, only 4 percent of the poor families in the state get welfare. That's 6,000 families in the entire state.

FESSLER: Where you going, baby?

FESSLER: And David, that voice you're hearing now, that's Natasha Williams. And you'd think that she would be one of those who would be getting welfare. She's a 31-year-old single mother with a 12-year-old boy. She's constantly struggling. Her last job as a part-time security guard ended in July. And when I met her, she was in her New Orleans apartment watching a friend's baby in exchange for food.

NATASHA WILLIAMS: You know, instead of paying me the cash for watching the kid, she just bought me some stuff.

GREENE: Pam, she's babysitting and getting paid for it in food.

FESSLER: That's right. And she's also getting help with her rent from a non-profit. Last year, she was homeless. She had an accident. She lost another job and was evicted. So every night, she told me, she drove her car to Lake Pontchartrain.

WILLIAMS: And I'd just go around it and, like I said, park some where it was real, real dark. You know, just relax and - well, try to relax and just fall asleep.

FESSLER: So the obvious question is, if things are so bad, why doesn't she get welfare, now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF. Williams says it's because it's just not worth it. The benefits are extremely low, $188 a month. And to get them, she says she'd have to take time off from her current job search to go to a program to find out how to get a job. And until last month, she was working, even while homeless. She just didn't earn enough to live on.

WILLIAMS: Why look for a job if I already have a job? Why can't I just get a little help? It didn't really make sense to me.

DANIELLE MOLETT: All this is your school supplies right here.

FESSLER: It also doesn't make sense to Danielle Molett. She's 22 and lives nearby in a shelter with her three children, ages 4, 3 and 2. Molett does get welfare and appreciates the extra cash. But this month, it barely covered the school supplies she had to buy for her kids.

MOLETT: Crayons, markers, pencils, headphones, notebooks, notebook paper.

FESSLER: And she still has to get diapers, hygiene products and other necessities she can't buy with food stamps. But to qualify for the aid, Molett says she has to pack up her children, get on a bus and travel to two appointments a week and look for a job. The state gives her some money for transportation and childcare, but not enough to cover her costs.

MOLETT: It's too much. They asking for too much.

FESSLER: Marketa Garner Walters is sympathetic.

MARKETA GARNER WALTERS: We're not the most accessible or user-friendly.

FESSLER: She's the new secretary of Louisiana's department of family and children's services.

GARNER WALTERS: We have to figure out how to meet our clients where they are and how to make the help that we are giving them more accessible and readily available.

FESSLER: Walters says one problem is, over the years, welfare spending in the state has been slashed. The law that Bill Clinton signed allowed states to use federal TANF funds for things other than welfare. And when state budgets were stressed after the Great Recession, that's exactly what many of them did.

GARNER WALTERS: So we now use TANF money to pay for things that are not traditional TANF expenditures.

FESSLER: Like early childhood education and other programs that used to be funded by the state. Jan Moller of the Louisiana Budget Project says welfare became something of a slush fund. The result is that, today, Louisiana uses only 8 percent of its welfare money on cash benefits for the poor and only 1 percent on programs to help them find jobs, one reason that benefits are so low.

JAN MOLLER: I think there is a perception among the tax-paying public that a lot of their dollars are being used to let people sit at home and not work. And the reality is that simply isn't true in Louisiana. It wasn't very true 20 years ago, and it's certainly not true today.

FESSLER: Secretary Walters says the state's now trying to replenish the program. But Moller's not optimistic it can find the funds. Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution who helped write the welfare reform bill as a GOP congressional aide now thinks giving states so much flexibility was a big mistake. But he says the law did accomplish a lot, such as helping millions of low-income women into the workforce. And with the help of food stamps and tax credits, their poverty rates have gone down.

RON HASKINS: More of them, now, are really committed to work. They like to work. They say they like to work. They don't have great jobs - we all know that - but their families are better off economically. So to that extent, the reforms have worked well.

FESSLER: Still, he admits that many families have been left behind. Often, they're headed by single mothers who work part-time jobs and get little or no help from the fathers. They face multiple hurdles, like unstable housing, poor education and debt, people like Natasha Williams, who says she sometimes gets overwhelmed trying to support herself and her son.

WILLIAMS: You know, I have to go sit outside in the car and cry or, you know, wait for him to go to sleep and go in the bathroom and just cry my eyes out because I can't let him see me like that 'cause that's going to just mess him up.

GREENE: Listening there to my colleague Pam Fessler reporting on welfare reform 20 years later. And that voice of that mother, Pam, just sticks with me. I mean, talking about her boy who is going to grow up in poverty - that has to have long-term consequences.

FESSLER: That's right. That's the big concern, whether the cycle can be broken. This afternoon on All Things Considered, we're going to look at how welfare works in another state Oregon. That state has a benefit that's much higher, among the highest in the country. And they also have a special program to help people get and retain jobs.

GREENE: OK. Pam, thanks a lot.

FESSLER: Thank you.