End Welfare

The papers are full of pleas these days. Portraits of the 100 most needy and stories of the 50 most desperate stare up from their pages. There are requests for food, for toys and for money to help families who don't have any.The same newspapers are reporting a different sort of poverty story. They tell us that in Washington, policy-makers are spending the Christmas rush working against a deadline to change a program that doesn't elicit much compassion or, certainly, much taxpayer generosity: welfare.

WASHINGTON -- Ten years have passed since President Bill Clinton signed a tough welfare-reform law. I feared the worst. It feels good to be wrong. The worst has not happened, but the success is mixed. Mr. Clinton signed the law, with Republican support, to fulfill a campaign promise to "end welfare as we know it" and to make welfare "a second chance, not a way of life." The law was not as tough as two Republican-based bills that Mr. Clinton vetoed that would have cut Medicaid, child care and other benefits for those moving from welfare to work.

IN THE MOST PROFOUND decision of his White House tenure, President Clinton will sign a welfare reform measure that largely reflects the highly conservative cast of the Republican-controlled Congress. It positions him to be a centrist "New Democrat" ready to break from his party's New Deal heritage and eager to junk a system that "traps too many people in a cycle of dependence."Politics motivated and intruded on every aspect of Mr. Clinton's decision. It left Republican challenger Robert J. Dole sputtering about an "election-year conversion" and caused exultation among House Republicans who consider their version of welfare reform the crown jewel of their "Contract with America."

CHICAGO - Eight years ago, Congress and Bill Clinton agreed to do something the president had promised to do - "end welfare as we know it." But that was for poor people who had grown too dependent on the dole. When it comes to corporations accustomed to public aid, though, we've carefully preserved welfare as we know it. Corporate welfare - an array of direct subsidies, tax breaks and indirect assistance created for the special benefit of businesses - is one of those things that politicians would rather criticize than abolish.

Forget welfare, let's end povertyThe National Governors' Association has proposed a welfare reform plan with wide bipartisan support that would provide money for child care, give states more freedom and ''end welfare as we know it.''This plan does not sound altogether different from other welfare reform discussions we have been hearing since 1992. It seems the only component of welfare reform that has not been mentioned is working to end poverty as we know it.In Maryland, a family of three (one adult with two minor children)

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton will travel to the heartland today to unveil his long-awaited plan to fix welfare, a vast federal program that started with the best of intentions but that most Americans believe has created huge new social problems.Mr. Clinton's pledge during his 1992 run for the presidency "to end welfare as we know it" was highly popular.But figuring out exactly how to do it has taken some of the administration's most talented domestic policy advisers about 18 months. And the likelihood that welfare reform will pass this year seems slim.

Boston -- So, we are about to ''end welfare as we know it.'' The campaign slogan is going to become public policy. Questions about whether to end welfare are now questions about how to end it.No one will lament the death of this system. It's broke. Mothers on welfare know it. Taxpayers know it. Social workers know it. Analysts know it.A shaky social consensus once supported welfare as a temporary safety net for widowed or deserted mothers and children. Now the same consensus abhors it as a permanent trap.

WASHINGTON -- In his 1992 campaign for the presidency, candidate Bill Clinton took two significant steps to achieve a critical breakthrough with white working-class voters -- the so-called Reagan Democrats, meaning those nominal Democrats who had voted twice for Ronald Reagan and once for George Bush for president.The first Clinton move was the decision to deliberately affront Jesse Jackson in the controversy over rap singer Sister Souljah and thus distinguish himself from his two immediate predecessors as the Democratic nominee for president, Walter F. Mondale and Michael S. Dukakis.

Washington. -- Finally, President Clinton has appointed a task force to develop his famous plan ''to end welfare as we know it, to break the permanent culture of dependence.'' That's the good news.But Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan, D-N.Y., the man in politics who knows the welfare issue best, is not happy. He says that if the Clinton plan embodies the principles that have been ascribed to it, it will be ''a political train wreck waiting to happen.'' That, says Mr. Moynihan, is because ''there is a dirty little secret to it.''The secret is simple: The Clinton plan -- at least based on what has been said about it by the president and others -- will not end welfare as we know it. Not even close.

WASHINGTON -- At moments like this it is difficult to perform the basic rite of democracy, which involves genuflecting reverently in the direction of ''the people.''The people, egged on by supercilious journalism, are irritated nearly to insurrection by what they consider ''childish'' behavior in the current budget impasse. The people should be sent to bed without dessert, there to have read to them not ''Green Eggs and Ham'' but ''The Federalist'' and other works on how the government is supposed to work.

JACKSON, Miss. -- Welfare reform isn't good enough for Mississippi, which intends to settle for nothing less than a revolution. It is taking public assistance money away from mothers and passing it on to employers, who give the women jobs and turn welfare into wages."

MANY PEOPLE believe that the trouble with this country is that its rich are too poor and its poor are too rich.Never mind that the gap between them is the greatest in modern times and growing: It is too small and must be made larger.NBA salaries and CEO stock option plans help make the rich RTC richer. The welfare reform bill passed by Congress will complete the equation.There is tremendous resentment of the poor in this country. It focuses on children of single mothers. Too many have mothers at home tending to them.

IN THE MOST PROFOUND decision of his White House tenure, President Clinton will sign a welfare reform measure that largely reflects the highly conservative cast of the Republican-controlled Congress. It positions him to be a centrist "New Democrat" ready to break from his party's New Deal heritage and eager to junk a system that "traps too many people in a cycle of dependence."Politics motivated and intruded on every aspect of Mr. Clinton's decision. It left Republican challenger Robert J. Dole sputtering about an "election-year conversion" and caused exultation among House Republicans who consider their version of welfare reform the crown jewel of their "Contract with America."

Forget welfare, let's end povertyThe National Governors' Association has proposed a welfare reform plan with wide bipartisan support that would provide money for child care, give states more freedom and ''end welfare as we know it.''This plan does not sound altogether different from other welfare reform discussions we have been hearing since 1992. It seems the only component of welfare reform that has not been mentioned is working to end poverty as we know it.In Maryland, a family of three (one adult with two minor children)

IN HIS State of the Union speech last week, President Clinton repeated his promise to end welfare as we know it. I hope he is successful, because welfare as I know it is a dreadful life for any family.I don't know welfare firsthand. I don't even know it secondhand. My friends and family have managed to keep their heads above water in this shrinking economy, though we all know that we are one corporate downsizing away from disaster.But I live in a city and my children go to school with children whose families are on welfare or who live in subsidized housing.

WASHINGTON -- At moments like this it is difficult to perform the basic rite of democracy, which involves genuflecting reverently in the direction of ''the people.''The people, egged on by supercilious journalism, are irritated nearly to insurrection by what they consider ''childish'' behavior in the current budget impasse. The people should be sent to bed without dessert, there to have read to them not ''Green Eggs and Ham'' but ''The Federalist'' and other works on how the government is supposed to work.

IT WOULD be easy "to end welfare as we know it," as President Clinton promised to. It's primarily just a matter of defining our terms."Welfare" is shorthand for the program known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).The first thing I would do if I were president is to write into the U.S. Code a non-cash definition of "Aid." Henceforth, the poor would get a credit card that entitled them to buy all the things that they needed for their "welfare," which would also be defined in the Code:"the state of faring well or doing well: thriving or successful progress in life"Thus one could buy -- or, rather, acquire -- milk, but not beer, for example.

President Clinton's welfare proposal has drawn fire from left and right alike. Liberals don't like many of its punitive aspects and especially resent the fact that the administration is funding much of the cost of the reforms by squeezing other social programs, shifting the burden of misery. Conservatives dismiss the plan by saying it fails to fulfill the president's promise "to end welfare as we know it."The program is complex and ambitious, and unless the economy grows briskly, enough private sector jobs for welfare recipients will simply not exist.

Democrats make the claim that poor people are not the only feeders at the government trough. They are right. What they don't say is that the Democrats, who held power for 40 years, were equal opportunity Santa Clauses, giving taxpayer money to every special interest group that asked for it.The battle now being waged by Rep. John Kasich, R-Ohio, Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich., Rep. Dick Chrysler, R-Mich., and others will determine whether the Republican Party is truly the party of smaller government or not. They are trying to defund ''corporate welfare,'' the web of tax breaks, incentives and subsidies threaded throughout the federal budget that benefits corporations at taxpayers' expense.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities was described incorrectly in an article yesterday as a "labor-backed advocacy group." In fact, the center, which receives little assistance from labor, describes itself as a liberal research group.The Sun regrets the error.WASHINGTON -- Reversing 60 years of social policy, the Republican-led Senate voted overwhelmingly yesterday to end guaranteed welfare benefits for the poor.The action was a major step toward passage of a welfare reform law this year, a top priority of both political parties.