Clinton On Right Path For Welfare
We applaud President Clinton’s announcement that he will sign a landmark bill ending the current welfare entitlement and shifting control of the program’s details from the federal government to the states.
Like the farm bill enacted earlier this year, the welfare reform bill represents a fundamental change in course - a shift toward faith in individual initiative and a shift away from federal subsidies and regulation.
The wailing over Clinton’s decision signals the death of an argument most Americans no longer believe - the argument that the imperial city on the Potomac knows best, innovates best, serves best. Americans no longer buy it when advocates of big government pretend that money spent on its bureaucracies is one and the same with money spent on needy people and other worthy causes the bureaucracy supposedly serves.
Welfare has been a social disaster; on that, even most Democrats agree. It is time to quit quibbling and create a better expression of our compassionate duty to the down and out.
Until this week, Clinton had played the hypocrite, waving his campaign promise to “end welfare as we know it” but vetoing reform bills and refusing even to allow the implementation of state reforms he claimed to admire, such as Gov. Tommy Thompson’s widely praised “Wisconsin Works” program.
The reform Congress adopted isn’t perfect. It’s just a first step. It leaves large questions. States will answer many of them as they accept the opportunity to replace the old “gimme” ethic with Wisconsin-style inducements for work and community service.
Congress has more to do as reform proceeds. As welfare recipients look for means to self-sufficiency, Congress should get to work on incentives for business investments and small entrepreneurs in inner cities. As social assistance moves closer to the local level where needs are understood best, Congress should consider proposals to supercharge local charities. GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole, for example, favors an income tax credit for donations to private charities engaged primarily in direct service to the poor. The charitable sector can address spiritual, personal and lifestyle needs of the poor, as well as their economic woes.
Critics fret that aid recipients won’t be able to find the jobs, child care and vocational training they will need. That assumes complete incompetence on the part of recipients and complete inaction on the part of states and communities in which they live. We are beginning a new era in which we all will have to act more like members of a caring, constructive community - and less like passive addicts of the federal dole.
, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster For the editorial board