Clinton promises welfare task-force
PRESIDENT Bill Clinton yesterday promised to name a task-force within the next 10 days to reform the US social safety net of welfare programmes. He told the National Governors' Association that he was committed to 'ending welfare as we know it' with measures to finance expanded job training for the unemployed, matched by a requirement that people must do some kind of work for their welfare cheque. The president said he would focus on better implementation of the Family Support Act, a 1988 welfare reform based on the work of an NGA task-force which he, as governor of Arkansas, co-chaired. 'The bill that is on the books will work, given the right economy and the right support systems,' Mr Clinton said. Advocates of welfare reform had been discouraged about the new administration's intentions, fearing that the centrist Democratic emphasis on requiring welfare recipients to work or enroll for training might fall prey to left-wing advocacy groups concentrating on greater funding of existing programmes. These suspicions were enhanced when Ms Donna Shalala, new secretary of health and human services, last month devoted only one sentence to welfare reform in a five-page statement of goals. With the onset of the recession, state revenues have been constrained while the number of welfare recipients has grown by 30 per cent. As a result, few states have been able to implement in full the act's requirement that welfare recipients take part in some form of education or training. Mr Clinton promised yesterday his reforms would be based on the principle that 'welfare should be a second chance, not a way of life'. There must be 'a certain time beyond which people don't draw a cheque for doing nothing,' he said. But at the same time people must be helped out of the welfare trap by providing them with continued health coverage, child care, and expanded earned income tax credits when they took jobs. Many states have already embarked on far-reaching welfare reform programmes, such as Michigan's 21-point plan to strengthen families or New Jersey's family development programme. Mr Clinton said he would let states experiment with such programmes, even when he disagreed with them.
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