Welfare reform sanctions too harsh

When Republicans swept the 1994 elections, gaining majorities in both houses of Congress, they set their sights on several policy areas, not the least of which was reforming welfare. With the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, signed into law by President William Clinton on August 22, 1996, they succeeded in ending the nation's 61-year-old federal guarantee of cash assistance. \nThe legislation scrapped the old federal welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), and instituted in its place a reformed version, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). The goal of the Republican-led reform movement was to replace what many saw as a permanent system of cash handouts to single mothers with a program that would encourage both work and the formation and maintenance of two-parent homes. A little over five years later, welfare rolls are down and the number of two-parent households is up. But while reform has moved people into work, it has not always lifted them from poverty.\nIn 1995, the State of Indiana began implementing changes to its welfare program. Key changes included an end to funding additional children born to a mother already receiving assistance, limits of two years of assistance, requirements that children attend school regularly, and cash subsidies to employers to hire welfare recipients, according to the Indiana Coalition on Housing and Homeless Issues. \nBy 1997, "more than half of the 14,428 cases closed in Indiana in a three-month period resulted from sanctions, not from people taking jobs," Michael B. Katz writes in his 2001 book, "The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State." "State officials saw in the high sanction rates proof of the new welfare law's effectiveness." \nIndeed, welfare reform's proponents across the country measured "success" in the numbers of welfare recipients on a state's rolls before and after reforms were implemented.\nThe assumption in Indiana's TANF system is that pushing single parents into work of some kind, even low-wage jobs without benefits, will make them self-sufficient and, in turn, contributors to society as a whole, rather than a financial drain on it. Reformers say a swift kick in the butt will give recipients the necessary incentive to move into the workplace.\nBut there are many barriers to work for recipients, according to an Urban Institute study: language, children on Supplemental Security Income, education levels, physical and mental disabilities, young children requiring continual care and poor or non-existent work histories.\nSome scholars also argue many recipients are already in "the workplace."\nTaking care of children, they say, is a job in itself. To reformers, there is a clear division of work into "productive" work done outside the home and the "unproductive"work done in the home. The goal is to move mothers into marketable jobs outside the home. Reformers place little value on the work necessary to raise a family, which is especially difficult for these single mothers. Stereotypes of women on welfare lead us to believe they simply sit in front of the television all day, engaging in no worthwhile activity. \n More and more poor Hoosiers, and Americans, are being left behind by a system unable to help them, even temporarily, during such tough financial times. Katz writes that much of American welfare reform is propelling society toward "a future of increased inequality and decreased security as individuals compete for success in an open market with ever fewer protections against misfortune, power, and greed."\nWith Indiana's new budget crunch impacting almost every area of state spending, Governor Frank O'Bannon and legislators must not forget the importance of providing sufficient funding to Indiana's needy families. If we intend for welfare reform truly to work, we must allocate sufficient resources to that effort, especially in poor economic times.