Welfare Recipients

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WASHINGTON - The Republican-led House began debate yesterday on a measure backed by President Bush that would stiffen the work requirements imposed by the landmark 1996 welfare law. The bill appears likely to win approval today, though it is almost certain to be reshaped in the Democrat-led Senate. Centrists in the Senate want to provide more money for child care and for education and training, which they say are needed to help those who leave welfare stay out of poverty. Republicans hope the House debate on how to extend the 1996 welfare law will help them reap some political benefit.

WASHINGTON - In the six years since Congress directed the states to start moving welfare recipients off the dole and into full-time jobs, Maryland has been among the most successful. Its welfare caseload has dropped nearly 70 percent since 1995, compared with a national average of about 60 percent. But the proportion of Marylanders still on welfare who are meeting the federal requirement that they engage in some work or related activity is nothing to boast about: just 6.3 percent. The national rate is 34 percent.

"LET'S GET married today." Al Green sang that in 1973. These days, it's George W. Bush on lead vocals. The president recently unveiled proposed changes in former President Bill Clinton's 1996 welfare reform act. And although Mr. Bush's plan to tighten work rules on welfare recipients has drawn fire, it's what he wants to do about the institution of marriage that really has some folks up in arms. You see, he wants to ... encourage it. That is, the president proposes to earmark $200 million in federal money to fund state programs that promote and maintain healthy marriages.

WASHINGTON - President Bush proposed yesterday to change the landmark 1996 welfare law to toughen work requirements for recipients and to subsidize programs that encourage the poor to marry. The plan would also extend a ban that bars legal immigrants from receiving aid for five years. The reforms enacted under President Bill Clinton - which ended welfare as a permanent safety net and for the first time forced recipients to find jobs - succeeded, Bush said, but work remains. "We ended welfare as we've known it, yet it is not a post-poverty America," the president said at a Catholic church in a low-income section of Washington.

An imminent economic slump will test the resilience of Maryland's 6-year-old welfare reform program, state officials said yesterday. After years of decline, the state's welfare rolls have leveled off recently. But officials fear that the number of recipients could soon grow as unemployment rises and consumer confidence fades in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "You have to act with that possibility in mind," said Del. Samuel I. Rosenberg, a Baltimore Democrat who is co-chairman of the General Assembly's Joint Committee on Welfare Reform.

Baltimore and Washington lag behind the suburbs in their efforts to reduce the number of families receiving cash welfare payments, according to a new Brookings Institution study of the effects of five years of welfare reform. Baltimore's caseload declined 50 percent from January 1996 to January 2001, compared with a combined 68 percent for its three largest suburbs. The District of Columbia's caseload dropped 37 percent, compared with a drop of 72 percent in five suburban jurisdictions, the study said.

IN 1996, welfare reform sent millions of women rushing from the public assistance rolls to jobs in the private sector. One groundbreaking piece of legislation, the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act, ended welfare as we knew it. The old system, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, relied on indefinite cash assistance to the poor. That approach robbed welfare recipients of their dignity and independence and often sentenced them to a lifetime of poverty and hopelessness.

BEFORE THEY are compassionate, it may be said, conservatives tend to oppose government. They love to find initiatives they can belittle as handouts from helpless bureaucracies. George W. Bush, who advertised himself as an exception to that rule, now pushes a tax cut plan that could squeeze compassion out of the picture. Though his insistence on the full $1.6 trillion cut is no doubt tactical, he gives no indication of wanting to help new workers (former welfare recipients) stabilize their marginal, low-wage lives.

Raising concerns among patient advocates, Maryland's insurance commissioner says he wants to close PrimeHealth Corp., a troubled HMO that was at the center of a corruption case involving former state Sen. Larry Young. Citing projected losses of at least $1.7 million, Commissioner Steven B. Larsen told a Circuit Court judge in a letter that he wants to shut down the company -which serves 22,000 low income residents - to protect the rights of creditors who are owed some $9 million. The letter, dated Feb. 12, was made public yesterday.