Surprise House Concession Revives Welfare Talks

Welfare reform sputtered back to life Tuesday when House Republicans suddenly agreed to accept a Senate plan to lift driver and business licenses of parents who are badly behind on child-support payments.

There still are some big differences dividing the conservative House and the more moderate Senate, including how long people should be allowed to draw welfare checks and whether grants should go up if new children are born to welfare families.

But after the surprise concession on license suspensions, chief Senate negotiator Kevin Quigley, D-Lake Stevens, said welfare reform is back on track.

A number of senators had said the provision was crucial to support of the bill, balancing the harshness against welfare mothers with a crackdown on errant fathers.

At one point, House members had said including the provision might well scuttle the whole bill.

“I’d say our odds of getting a bill are now 90 percent or higher,” a delighted Quigley said after a negotiating session.

House Republicans were rather nonchalant in presenting the new development. Caucus Chairman Todd Mielke, R-Spokane, said House Republicans are now inclined to give the suspension idea a try, despite some reservations about potential heavyhandedness by enforcement agents.

Republicans have heard from constituents that they want a way to crack down on “deadbeat” parents who cost taxpayers money by forcing the former spouse and children to go on welfare by not keeping current with their support obligation, he and chief House negotiator Suzette Cooke, R-Kent, said in interviews.

“This is huge movement on our parts,” Cooke said. “We would have liked to have held the issue back (for study), but it’s hard to fight the public sentiment that people who don’t pay their child support are a real schmuck and we ought to go get ‘em.”

The state estimates that non-custodial parents are $1.4 billion in arrears and that $844 million is owed to people who are currently drawing welfare.

The plan would be to threaten suspension of driving and business licenses for people who fall further than six months in arrears. The House compromise, which is to be presented today, would require that support agents first try to garnish the absent parent’s wages before threatening the suspensions.

“Instead of a six-month process, we might be looking at nine months,” Mielke said.

But the prime sponsor of the license legislation, Senate President Pro Tem Lorraine Wojahn, D-Tacoma, said the garnishment proviso is unacceptable.

“That just gets it into the court system and some people will lose their jobs because employers don’t like people who get garnished,” she said in an interview. She said she won’t celebrate until the original Senate language is passed into law.

The threat of losing a license, rather than actually losing it, is the secret of success that a number of states are reporting, she said.

“We need it hanging over their heads,” she said.