Dairy State Milks Workfare Concept
Watch Wisconsin.
Wisconsin is ready to end welfare. Not just “welfare as we know it.” Welfare.
Under legislation signed by Gov. Tommy Thompson, Wisconsin Works will offer the needy help in getting a job, including a wage subsidy to encourage employers to take a chance on an unskilled worker. Those who can’t get a job in the private sector will get a public-sector job.
Most workfare programs have lots of exemptions, which means only a small percentage of recipients actually participate. Wisconsin Works, also known as W-2, has very few.
New mothers will go to work when the baby is 12 weeks old; the state will help pay for child care.
Alcoholics and addicts will work and/or attend rehabilitation clinics.
The disabled will be asked to do as much work as they can handle.
Workers will have five years to move into unsubsidized private-sector jobs; they will retain health and child-care benefits as long as they need them.
Most workfare plans offer years of education or job training before asking aid applicants to take a job. W-2 will offer job training in addition to work, not as an alternative. Work comes first.
That reflects the lesson of workfare experiments, including California’s: Requiring welfare recipients to attend classes didn’t boost work hours or earnings, or reduce welfare dependency, in comparison to a control group. Additional schooling doesn’t seem to pay off for those who’ve done poorly in school and don’t see the connection between classwork and paid work.
While W-2 demands more of people currently on welfare, it gives more to the working poor, who’d get health and child-care benefits now targeted at welfare families.
The goal is to make working - even at a low-wage job - a better deal than welfare.
Wisconsin Works requires federal waivers, and is likely to get them. It will be hard for President Clinton to derail an experiment that meshes so well with American values.
Americans’ number one complaint about welfare is that it undermines the work ethic, according to a recent study by Public Agenda called “The Values We Live By: What Americans Want from Welfare Reform.”
By more than four to one, the public said the worst thing about welfare is that “it encourages people to adopt the wrong lifestyle and values,” not that “it costs too much in tax money.”
Even people on welfare hated the system, and said it encourages dependency (67 percent) and makes welfare more lucrative than work (71 percent). Some 92 percent of welfare recipients agreed that “Welfare mothers will gain self-respect by working and their children will learn the importance of work.”
W-2 supports another deeply held value. It encourages non-custodial parents to pay child support. Currently, any child support collected goes to the state to defray welfare costs; it helps the taxpayers but not the payer’s children. Under W-2, most child support will go to the child’s family.
Wisconsin is prepared to spend more for a few years, in the hopes that costs will drop as welfare recipients build work skills and experience.
Several rural counties that piloted work-for-welfare saw a big drop in welfare rolls. In Fond du Lac, the caseload fell 40 percent in a year.
Of course, what worked in bucolic Fond du Lac may not work in urban Milwaukee, where most of the state’s welfare recipients live. Milwaukee will be the real test of W-2.
The state estimates that two-thirds of welfare recipients will get private-sector jobs, but that’s a guess. Nobody knows for sure how many community-service jobs will have to be created.
Critics say child-care aid will not be adequate. Others wonder if Wisconsin Works will work if the economy turns down and the very low unemployment rate starts to rise.
Most important: Will values change?
It’s impossible to know whether young couples will make different decisions about sex, birth control, abortion or adoption when they know they’ll be flipping burgers to support the baby instead of cashing a welfare check.
But it will be interesting to find out.
On Wisconsin.
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