Copyright 2001 The Christian Science Publishing Society Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA)
January 12, 2001, Friday
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 11
LENGTH:
750 words
HEADLINE: Tommy Thompson's golden
opportunity
BYLINE: Demetra Smith Nightingale
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY: Gov. Tommy Thompson, President-elect Bush's
nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), earned national notice
for pioneering welfare reform in Wisconsin.
As governor, Mr. Thompson championed comprehensive support for families
leaving welfare, successfully marshalling Democrats and Republicans alike
to back reforms. As HHS secretary, he can provide the needed leadership so that
the next stage of welfare reform expands that support to all low-income
working families. His golden opportunity is close at hand.
Innovative programs in Wisconsin and elsewhere
helped lay the groundwork for the federal welfare- reform law in 1996,
which limits welfare checks to five years and requires recipients to work
or prepare for work. One result of welfare reform is that, nationwide,
the welfare rolls have been cut in half, with some states experiencing
even greater declines; Wisconsin's welfare caseload has dropped by 85
percent.
The next phase of reform may not be as
easy. Already the caseload decline appears to be slowing compared with the
mid-1990s. The easiest-to-employ found jobs first. But even those who succeeded
usually wound up in short-term, low-wage positions without health insurance.
The 1996 law is up for reauthorization in 2002,
providing an opportunity to take the next step in welfare reform by
adding real support for those leaving welfare for work and the millions
of other low- income working families struggling to make ends meet.
Recognizing that more than quick caseload reductions
were needed to sustain reform's early successes, many states and several cities,
including Governor Thompson's home state, have already begun to move to the next
stage of welfare reform. Their pathbreaking work is along two lines:
providing effective special services to help families facing the highest
barriers to work - including mental and physical disabilities,
domestic violence, substance abuse, and lack of education - and building more
supports for all working families, not just those leaving welfare.
This next phase of reform may cost more per family
and take more creativity and leadership than simply sponsoring job searches in a
booming economy and subsidizing child care for those who find work.
Treatment services, adult education, family
counseling, and other direct interventions like those that Thompson spearheaded
in Wisconsin don't come cheap. In a less robust economy, it will take stronger
political leadership to encourage businesses to continue to hire welfare
and other poor parents - much less take on those with even fewer skills who have
not yet left the rolls. And, if a full-blown recession materializes, more
aggressive plans will be needed to make the work-not-welfare mantra of
welfare reform stick.
Thompson in his role
as secretary of HHS can do much to ensure that these state and local initiatives
become springboards for broad national efforts to make work the new cornerstone
of the nation's safety net.
Under his leadership,
the administration and Congress could forge bipartisan efforts on at least three
fronts. The first concerns work itself: making sure that more workers can get
unemployment insurance if they lose their jobs and that there are public-sector
jobs of last resort if none are available in the private sector.
Second is expanding the eligibility of all workers
for health coverage and offering greater child-care subsidies for low-income
workers. Third is providing new incentives to encourage businesses to expand in
low-income areas, upgrade workers' skills, and pay low-skilled workers a living
wage.
Governor Thompson
has been there. His leadership in Wisconsin on welfare reform's new
frontier qualifies him to head efforts on the national level to help all
low-income families get and keep an economic foothold. Building on experiences
in Wisconsin and other state "laboratories of change," the nominee for secretary
of HHS can turn work supports into a far better foundation than welfare
checks for the nation's working families.
Demetra Smith Nightingale is the director of the
Welfare and Training Research Program at the Urban Institute in
Washington. The views are those of the author and do not necessarily represent
those of the Urban Institute, its board of trustees, or its sponsors.
(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Publishing
Society