Poll: Most Want To Change Welfare Program

Most Americans favor converting welfare into a work program even for single mothers and half are willing to pay more taxes to make sure jobs are available, according to an Associated Press poll.

Support for cutting off welfare benefits to non-working single mothers after two years rose to 65 percent, up from 47 percent in an AP poll less than three years ago. Those who think benefits should continue as long as the woman has children to support fell from 32 percent to 20 percent.

The June 5-9 poll found broad support for welfare changes being pioneered in some states, notably Wisconsin, but whose prospects as national policy have been tangled in election-year politics.

In the current welfare system, a mother’s benefits increase with additional children, an approach favored by only a third of Americans. Fifty percent think benefits should stay the same even if more children arrive, and 10 percent would actually decrease benefits, punishing a welfare mother for having more babies.

Younger adults, those most involved in childrearing, are the biggest supporters of increasing benefits to match family size. But they also are more likely than their elders to favor a different way of curbing welfare, with time limits.

Most Americans, 69 percent, favor a lifetime limit of five years on welfare payments to people who are able to work. The biggest backing comes from Republicans, at 83 percent, but majority support also exists among Democrats and just about every other group identified in the poll, including blacks and people with family incomes below $15,000.

The poll is based on a random national sample of 1,008 adults interviewed by ICR Survey Research Group of Media, Pa., part of AUS Consultants. Results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Respondents split about evenly when asked how to pay for weaning people from welfare: 48 percent favored an increase in their own taxes to pay for job programs to put welfare recipients to work, but 49 percent were opposed and the rest unsure.

That level of support for a tax increase is remarkable at a time when President Clinton and Bob Dole are talking instead about tax cuts.

While Clinton and Dole are running against “big government,” most of those polled say the government must provide programs to help low-income parents on welfare find or keep jobs. Support is highest for job training, at 76 percent; tax breaks to businesses that create jobs in poor neighborhoods, 71 percent; and child care, 67 percent.

Government-created jobs in community service are less popular but still have majority backing at 53 percent.

The trade-offs involved in pulling off a national overhaul of welfare are expected to be a major topic in coming weeks on Capitol Hill and in the presidential campaign. Clinton promised in 1992 “to end welfare as we know it” but has since vetoed two Republican attempts as too harsh.

Clinton, Dole and congressional Republicans all endorse a Wisconsin plan that would require welfare recipients to work. There would be a two-year limit, or five-year lifetime limit, for receiving benefits. But the state would help pay for training, child care, health care, transportation and job placement.

At the heart of the conflict between Clinton and the Republicans are the challenges of finding the money for such help and controlling how it is spent. The president particularly objects to a GOP proposal to link welfare and Medicaid to give the states more authority over the health care system.