Welfare Reform

WASHINGTON -- For almost four years I've struggled not to embrace the charge that President Clinton is really ''Slick Willie,'' a craven politician of flawed character who has no core beliefs, no ideological moorings and no allies he won't abandon when he thinks it benefits him.I stopped giving him the benefit of doubt in 1993 when, under pressure, he dumped Lani Guinier as his choice to head the civil-rights division of the Justice Department. I was reminded then that in Mr. Clinton's Arkansas they have a term -- ''yellow belly'' -- for men who lack backbone.

Without the consent of Congress, President Barack Obama is gutting the welfare system and transforming it from a safety net into a hammock. Richard LaCourse, Forest Hill

THE recent announcement by the White House that it is scaling back its welfare-reform plans should come as no surprise.If the president were really serious about "ending welfare as we know it," his administration wouldn't be spending more money than ever on the same conventional welfare programs that already have cost U.S. taxpayers more than $5 trillion since President Johnson launched the War on Poverty in 1965. That's $5 trillion: more than the entire cost of battling Germany and Japan in World War II, or $50,000 for every family in America.

Ronald Reagan famously asked Americans, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" in a 1980 debate with then-President Jimmy Carter. They weren't, and Reagan, a Republican, went on to win the 1980 election in a landslide. Baltimore City residents are not better off than they were two years ago, or four years ago or even 10 years ago. In the last decade, tens of thousands of people have left, along with their jobs, shrinking the tax base. And poverty is at 26 percent, up 20 percent from a year earlier.

Decrying the welfare system as a form of "slavery" that can rob people of their incentive to succeed, the Maryland NAACP has endorsed in principle a Schaefer administration welfare-reform plan.But the Maryland State Conference of NAACP Branches, which is to release a letter to Gov. William Donald Schaefer today, stopped short of backing the most controversial element of the governor's plan: a "family cap" that would deny additional benefits to mothers who have babies while receiving public assistance.

Without the consent of Congress, President Barack Obama is gutting the welfare system and transforming it from a safety net into a hammock. Richard LaCourse, Forest Hill

Carolyn Colvin, Maryland's Human Resources secretary, once expressed the hope that the state's attempt at welfare reform would blaze a trail for the Clinton administration.In hindsight, that now seems overwhelmingly ambitious for a plan that was largely a pastiche of proposals already tried, or about to be tried, in other states.The family cap? New Jersey gets to take credit for that innovation, which freezes benefits when welfare recipients have more children. (Early results are promising, but incomplete.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening joined state legislative leaders yesterday to support a pilot welfare reform program that they said would help move people from dependence to work and keep poor families together.The program, which is pending before the General Assembly, would require some parents to find a job, perform community service or enroll in a job-placement program within three months of going on the welfare rolls.To encourage families to stay together, the program also would allow households to continue to receive welfare payments even if the father worked more than 100 hours in one month.

Poverty is caused by a number of issues, primary among them unemployment or low-wage employment - not laziness or lack of personal responsibility. Far from it. Those exist, but it's safe to say the "working poor" work long hours often at two or more jobs for subsistence-level compensation. Because of their income, or lack of it, the poor cannot afford health care, making them more susceptible to disease and less likely to work full or part-time. The remedy is not welfare hand-outs of the past, meager and demeaning as they are, or welfare reform, which does nothing to ensure a living wage for newly hired workers.

While Rep. Chris Van Hollen may wish that a deal to fix the federal government's fiscal problems could leave Medicaid untouched, the reality is that if the federal deficit is to be addressed, entitlement programs like Medicaid must be fundamentally reformed ("Debt crisis could hurt Maryland," July 17). Under the current Medicaid system, in which the federal government gives Maryland a dollar-for-dollar match for every Medicaid dollar the state spends, there is little incentive to control costs.

Two days after a state senator said Maryland Human Resources Secretary Brenda Donald's signature child welfare program was "not working," Donald received a warm reception - even applause - when she appeared before another group of lawmakers Thursday. At a briefing for the Joint Committee on Children, Youth and Families, Donald summarized how she believes "Place Matters," which she launched two years ago, is working to improve outcomes for vulnerable children. Under this new approach, the department focuses on reuniting foster children with their own families or keeping them in family settings, which has reduced the state's reliance on group home beds by nearly half.

Gary MacDougal can provide circumstantial evidence that welfare reform in Maryland reduced poverty, but only by ignoring the eyewitness accounts that indicate otherwise ("The welfare reform model," Commentary, Sept. 8). Since 1996, the University of Maryland School of Social Work has, at the behest of the state, engaged in a comprehensive longitudinal study of those who exit the welfare rolls. This information indicates that roughly half of the "welfare leavers" are employed in the three months after they leave welfare.

When the Republican Congress and Democratic President Bill Clinton agreed to "end welfare as we know it" in 1996, it stood to reason that states would need time to recover from decades of policies that undermined work incentives and encouraged family breakups - or never forming two-parent families in the first place. After more than a decade with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 in place, however, we now can see success has been widespread and deep, and we can assess how some states effectively capitalized on the freedom offered by this landmark national welfare reform, and how some failed embarrassingly.

Connie Tolbert Public information officer Maryland Department of Human Resources, Baltimore Salary $48,000 Age 47 Years on the job 15 How she got started As a former welfare recipient, Tolbert was asked to serve on a welfare reform commission during the early 1990s put together by then-Gov. William Donald Schaefer. Tolbert was working then as an administrative assistant for a nonprofit organization, but she had been on and off welfare for a number of years. After her work on the volunteer commission, she got a job with the Department of Human Resources certifying nursing homes.

Reform of child welfare systems in Maryland and several other states is hampered by "misguided and secretive policies" that restrict disclosure of information about deaths and serious injuries resulting from abuse or neglect, according to a report to be released today by two national child advocacy groups. Maryland was among 10 states that received an "F" grade because they "place confidentiality above the welfare" of children. The report by the University of San Diego School of Law's Children's Advocacy Institute and Washington- based First Star argues for greater transparency so child welfare systems can be held accountable and future tragedies can be averted.

On its 10th anniversary, the 1996 welfare reform law is being widely recognized as a striking success. Passage of the law was followed by a rapid decline in welfare rolls, historic increases in employment by poor, single mothers leaving or avoiding welfare, and the first substantial decline in child poverty since the early 1970s. Poverty among black children and kids in female-headed households reached all-time lows. But it would be a mistake to think the nation's greatest social problems have been solved.