California welfare bill worse than federal law

by Marilyn Bechtel

This article was reprinted from the January 18,1997 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

Elected officials and people's movement leaders charged this week that ultra-right Republican Gov. Pete Wilson's welfare proposals will only worsen the plight of homeless, hungry and desperate Californians. If enacted by the legislature, Wilson's welfare program would exceed even the draconian federal welfare bill.

After January 1998, new applicants could receive benefits for just a year at a time (federal limit: two years). Single parents would have to work 32 hours a week to keep some benefits (federal requirement: 20 hours). Parents would be dropped for not immunizing children, not making sure children are in school, or failing to identify their children's father.

Counties could also stop providing "general assistance" - the last resort for those not qualifying for other aid programs. At the same time, the governor proposed a 10 percent tax cut for banks and businesses.

"The problem with the whole welfare reform program is that it doesn't create jobs," Tom Rankin, president of the California Labor Federation, told the World. Wilson's proposals do not deal with the problems of people on welfare, "which largely are problems of the failed economy, the lack of jobs and child care," he added.

Since it is already evident that the private sector is not going to provide the needed jobs, Rankin said, "in the end there needs to be a public works program ... financed by taking away the tax breaks the corporations have enjoyed for the last several decades."

County officials sharply criticized Wilson's proposals. In Los Angeles County - home to more than half the state's 150,000 general assistance recipients - four of the five county supervisors declared they would continue providing some cash aid to poor adults.

Calling Wilson's plan "counterproductive and unrealistic political rhetoric," L.A. Board of Supervisors chair Zev Yaroslavsky told the Los Angeles Times, "it is a mistake to believe that problems of poverty and indigence ... will disappear just because of a change in the state code."

"I don't think we can abdicate our responsibility for being the provider of last resort for our poorest citizens," said William G. Steiner, chair of the Board of Supervisors in traditionally right-wing Orange County.

"Even conservative residents who believe that people ought to pull themselves up by their bootstraps don't feel comfortable about elderly people pushing around shopping carts and kids sleeping in parks," he added.

The federal welfare bill was already going to have a "devastating effect" on county residents, Keith Carson, president of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, told the World. "We were incensed" by the state proposals, he said, "because ... it seems the changes were more political than budget-wise or humanistic."

(That view was confirmed by state Finance Director Craig Brown's observation last week that California's block grant is "higher than our caseload requires, in that respect we're profiting ..." Brown said at least part of the $560 million welfare savings expected over 18 months would help finance other programs.)

Carson said the supervisors are nonetheless discussing how to meet federal and state guidelines so the county won't lose the meager resources remaining. "I think we're still spending too much money on defense," he added, "spending too much on building more facilities that warehouse people in the criminal justice system, instead of spending more of that money on child care, education, housing and food for people."

"There is no question this is going to push thousands of families into a deeper level of poverty and homelessness," Malika Saada Saar, executive director of the San Francisco- based Family Rights and Dignity, told the World. Part of the solution to the problem, she said, is restoring the entitlement status of benefits.

Public works jobs at union wages provided by the federal government is the basic solution to the welfare crisis," said Art Rodriguez, coordinator of the Los Angeles based Labor Coalition For Public Works Jobs which has led the fight for passage of the emergency $250 billion public works jobs bill which will be reintroduced into the Congress by Cong. Matthew Martinez next month.

Living wage jobs rebuilding our nation's infrastructure would prevent millions of welfare families from homelessness and hunger which will result from the Wilson plan and the Welfare Reform Act," emphasized Rodriguez. He called for the state legislature to reject the Wilson proposal and instead to demand the Congress pass the Martinez Jobs Bill as an immediate solution to California's crisis.

Citing double digit unemployment in poor working class Los Angeles neighborhoods, Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, said over radio station KPFA that she is "appalled" at Wilson's failure to mention jobs in his State of the State message. "We would have to create tens of thousands of jobs this year, that give a livable income," she said.

"Workers and their allies struggled for decades to win the principle that the government is responsible for the people's well being," the Southern and Northern California Districts of the Communist Party USA said in a statement. "At a time when giant businesses are receiving ever more massive infusions of corporate welfare, it is a travesty of justice for the government to deny people their very right to live. Government must assure the American people the right to a union job or a living income."