Weighing In on Welfare

By Michael Anft

As Congress prepares to revise the landmark 1996 welfare legislation, nonprofit groups are vowing to take a stronger hand in shaping the federal government's major antipoverty program than they did five years ago.

Armed with some $100-million in foundation-financed research on the effects of the welfare changes -- widely considered the biggest social experiment in the United States in 60 years -- a vast and diverse collection of nonprofit groups say they are ready to let Congress know what is working and what's not.

Congress has until October 2002 to extend the law now in place or change it. Lawmakers expect to begin working on it in earnest in February, just as many welfare recipients lose their benefits permanently because of the law's five-year lifetime limit on how long most people can receive government aid.

Already, however, nonprofit coalitions representing a variety of causes have started to weigh in. Among the ideas getting attention during hearings Congress has already held on the legislation: expanding welfare services for legal immigrants, who lost most benefits under the 1996 legislation but have seen a return of some government aid since then; providing people who recently left welfare with increased access to food stamps, child care, and other government help; and intensifying efforts to encourage the poor to marry to avoid the problems single parents face in earning enough money to support their children.

While much of the debate is expected to follow partisan and ideological lines, groups representing diverse viewpoints seem to be coming to a tacit agreement on what to encourage lawmakers to do: maintain the federal government's current level of welfare spending, but earmark a greater percentage of the money for job training under the new bill.

Beyond these general points are many differences of opinion. Michael Laracy, a senior associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, in Baltimore, says the debate will boil down to whether the focus of legislation should be on eliminating dependency on government aid or on reducing poverty.

"Welfare reform has been successful at turning dependent poor families into working poor families," Mr. Laracy says. "A liberal sees that glass as half-empty; a conservative, as half-full."

Emphasizing Work

The sweeping refashioning of welfare replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, which awarded benefits to anyone who met certain requirements, with a plan requiring that those on welfare work. States must have at least half of their residents on welfare working 30 hours per week, under federal guidelines.

Under the new program, called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the burden of administering many welfare programs shifted to states. Using federal block grants -- totaling around $60-billion over the law's first four years -- and their own funds, states spend welfare dollars in myriad ways, including paying for job-skills training, education programs, and child care, and supporting those who haven't yet found jobs.

The 1996 law imposed time limits on welfare aid for the first time in history, but it said that states could exempt 20 percent of welfare recipients from that rule -- providing a way to help the most disadvantaged and troubled welfare recipients.

Since the law took effect, welfare rolls have been reduced by more than 50 percent. Slightly fewer than 5.8 million Americans were on welfare as of June 2000, nearly 7 million fewer than in 1996. The percentage of Americans on welfare was at its lowest point since 1967.

Success stories abound, such as that of Jancelynn McCombs, a 25-year-old mother of two who left welfare for a job as a switchboard operator at the National Institutes of Health that pays $12 an hour.

Ms. McCombs says that not only is she financially better off than she was during the two years she spent on welfare but she also has a more positive outlook. "I feel more confident about myself," she says. The job is "helping me become independent from my mother. I can think about going back to college now."

But some advocates say that experiences such as Ms. McCombs's are the exception rather than the rule. Many believe that a strong national economy accounts for much of the decline in the welfare rolls, not the changes in the welfare system itself. They also say the real test won't come for several years, since many recipients have not yet reached time limits.

When the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, as it is officially known, was being debated in 1996, many charities and foundations worried that nonprofit groups would be flooded with welfare recipients who were forced off the rolls before they were ready to meet the law's work requirements.

That hasn't happened, although some emergency-service providers report a marked increase in requests for supplemental help for such things as rent or food from those formerly on the rolls who now have jobs. Catholic Charities U.S.A.'s annual survey of its affiliates shows an increase of about 20 percent annually since 1996 in the number of working poor seeking help from soup kitchens and charity programs.

The flurry of welfare-related activity in the nonprofit world today stands in stark contrast to the relative quiet that marked the period before the 1996 law was passed.

"There were quite a few organizations that were unhappy with what existed" before the 1996 welfare law was passed, says Mr. Laracy of the Casey Foundation. But "in 1996, when it came time to weigh in on reform, both the foundations and the advocates were very naïve about what to do. We weren't ready."

As a result, only a handful of politically well-connected groups and think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation, the Christian Coalition, and the Family Research Council, actually helped shape the bill, says Mr. Laracy.

Another important player in the 1996 debate was the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, in Milwaukee, which paid for a 1992 study that helped shape Wisconsin's welfare-to-work program. That program became a model for policymakers in Washington when they drafted the 1996 law.

But for most other foundations, "welfare was always on the back burner," says Sheila Zedlewski, director of the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute, a Washington nonprofit think tank. "For years, we couldn't get any research money."

By contrast, the Urban Institute's welfare-research program is now flush, receiving $34-million in cash -- largely from foundations -- since passage of the 1996 law.

Foundations that have made recent grants for welfare-related research include the Ford, Charles Stewart Mott, and David and Lucile Packard Foundations.

The Joyce Foundation, in Chicago, has doled out $8-million to help evaluate welfare changes, and has spent part of the $37-million it has earmarked since 1997 for its employment programs to support advocacy groups for the poor in the Midwest.

Joyce officials say getting solid research findings will be essential to making welfare advocacy efforts effective. One of its grants -- to Midwest Partners, a consortium of human-services groups and advocates for the poor from six states in the Great Lakes region -- is paying to pull together welfare research in the Midwest. Mary O'Connell, foundation spokeswoman, says the report, due out this fall, is designed to give the consortium "an idea of what Midwestern states can contribute to the national debate, and how they can most effectively do it."

Beyond research, foundations hope their grants for welfare-related services will help point to areas where an increase in spending could make big differences. The McKnight Foundation, in Minnesota, for example, has made $27-million in grants to 22 nonprofit-state partnerships since 1997 to provide services designed to complement welfare programs.

"We thought it was important to fill in the gaps in welfare so people could go beyond what the state was offering," says Nancy Latimer, senior program officer at the foundation. Grants include a program to help former recipients in rural areas buy cars, as well as efforts to expand child care to cover evening hours and to create personal and professional mentor programs. Other programs work with employers to help them hire people who have "barriers to work," such as mental or physical disabilities.

Some believe that much has been spent by foundations on studies designed to measure the welfare law's perceived shortcomings. However, many studies completed so far document what seem like successes: lower poverty rates, higher wages for single mothers, and a drop in government spending in programs for the poor since the 1996 law went into effect.

"Foundations put up a lot of money to find that welfare reform was terrible," says Douglas Besharov, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "They haven't found that."

But some advocates for the poor say that research shows that many people are financially worse off working than they were receiving welfare. An Urban Institute survey found that while about two-thirds of former recipients now work, they make a median wage of $6.61 an hour, not enough to move them over the poverty line.

Deepak Bhargava, director of the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support, a coalition formed last year of 1,000 antipoverty, labor, and welfare-rights groups in 40 states, says studies show that "the poorest 10 percent of single-mother–headed households are doing much worse" than they were five years ago.

But a Brookings Institution scholar, Ron Haskins, says he is skeptical about the findings of many foundation studies, particularly those that rely on self-reporting. "You have to seriously question the methodology in their research," he says.

Mr. Haskins, a Republican who helped shape the original legislation as a staff member on the House Ways and Means Committee, plans to lobby for more liberal rules for delivering food stamps to former welfare recipients who have found work. "I really want those working mothers to get those benefits," he says. "They need them."

The 1996 welfare law, with its emphasis on work instead of education and training, "got us so far," says Mr. Haskins. "Now, we have to find ways to get people making $12 or $14 or $16 an hour. We need to get going on that, maybe by earmarking $100-million per year to training initiatives."

Other advocates plan to push Congress to do more to ensure that the working poor have access to Medicaid, education programs, and child care.

A key issue for some charities will be trying to expand the services available to immigrants. A study by the National Immigration Law Center found that 1.3 million children who are U.S. citizens lost benefits because their parents were dropped from welfare rolls. Supplemental programs have been added in some states, "but very few of them cover all of the programs that existed before 1996," says Susan Drake, the group's executive director.

Many charities have ideas about how to spend the $8-billion surplus states hold in welfare funds. In addition to expanding food stamps and other aid programs, some advocates plan to seek more money for pro-marriage programs, as well as more money for training and social programs provided by faith-based nonprofit organizations.

Many other nonprofit groups have also begun working the halls of Congress to try to win over lawmakers to their causes.

The Alliance for Children and Families, a Milwaukee group that represents more than 360 human-services groups nationwide, has been passing out issue briefs and making presentations to legislative aides. The organization hopes to personalize the Congressional debate by presenting lawmakers with the stories of dozens of welfare recipients, many of which were published earlier this year in a book entitled Faces of Change.

Mr. Bhargava says that in September his group plans a "show of support" for increased spending on government aid that will feature welfare recipients and former recipients. "Now that people are working we need to help raise them up from poverty," he says. "We've got people mobilized."

The Casey Foundation, meanwhile, has worked since 1998 with three think tanks representing a range of ideologies to organize monthly luncheons for Capitol Hill staff members designed to foster understanding of welfare issues. And the foundation's Mr. Laracy has helped put together a report for welfare advocates on lobbying strategies.

Public opinion surveys financed by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation show that the public has a better perception of the poor than it has in the recent past -- something that bolsters advocates as they make plans to effect changes in welfare laws. Mr. Bhargava says the environment is far better than five years ago for requesting changes in policies that affect the poor, and that his group is working now to "develop a common language for the debate."

Cecelia Muñoz, vice president for policy at the National Council of La Raza, understands the need for a common approach. Recalling her group's ineffective lobbying on Capitol Hill five years ago, she says, "Boy, did we get clobbered."

Despite the efforts of her group and others, legal immigrants were denied benefits, although subsequent legislation restored the welfare rights of those who arrived in the United States before 1996, and also reinstated some Medicaid and food-stamp benefits.

Key to Ms. Muñoz's strategy this time is building a broad coalition of organizations. The council has already done much of the legwork. "In 1996, we had five groups involved in our fight," she says. Now, she can point to a team of 40 groups, including organizations dedicated to poverty and family issues, such as Families U.S.A. and the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

The National Council of La Raza has "a stronger analytical sense of what needs to be done now," says Ms. Muñoz. The next challenge, she says, is persuading foundations of the need to support such broad coalition work: "The question is: Will we have the money?"

While it is unclear how much foundations will continue to spend on welfare research and advocacy, many observers say the money already spent ensures that nonprofit groups will play an influential role in next year's welfare revisions.

Advocates say that, having learned the lessons of 1996, they may face a completely different challenge in 2002. Says Ms. Zedlewski of the Urban Institute: "Now, I worry there may be too many people at the table."