From the 11/26/01 New Dem Daily.  Please let the Colorado DLC know what 
you think.

With the U.S. economy in recession and the unemployment rate up above 5 
percent, there is naturally some speculation that the millions of former 
welfare recipients who began working since the 1996 national welfare reform 
legislation was enacted may now be at special risk of falling back onto 
public assistance. Indeed, within the last week, columnists E.J. Dionne of 
The Washington Post and Bob Herbert of The New York Times have suggested 
that the successful welfare reform experiment of the 1990s might soon fall 
apart in the wake of recession.

But the facts suggest otherwise.  In an article for the forthcoming 
January/February 2002 edition of Blueprint magazine, which will focus on 
the next steps in welfare reform, Blueprint Executive Editor Tom Mirga 
takes a look at the record and finds abundant evidence that welfare 
reform's success story remains stubbornly intact so far despite the new 
pressures of a slowing economy 
(http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=3961&kaid=114&subid=143).

Exhibit A of Mirga's case is a mid-October survey by the Welfare to Work 
Partnership, a voluntary association of more than 20,000 companies who have 
agreed to hire welfare recipients.  According to Rodney Carroll, the 
president and CEO of the Partnership, 57 percent of the firms he surveyed 
said they were still hiring entry-level workers, and another 18 percent 
predicted they would be hiring such workers by the end of the 
year.  Eighty-seven percent of the firms reported that they had not laid 
off any former welfare recipients during the previous two months - which 
included the period immediately after the September 11 terrorist attacks 
when the travel and entertainment industries took a huge hit.

Mirga also looked at the official numbers in the five states with the 
largest welfare caseloads: California, New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, and 
Michigan.  In all but Michigan, caseload levels remained stable at 
historically low levels since last fall, when the 1990s boom first stalled 
nationally.  Michigan experienced a 3 percent increase in caseloads between 
September 2000 and March of 2001, but the level of public assistance is 
still only about a third of what it was at its peak in the 1980s.

In Texas and Pennsylvania, Mirga discovered that some of the upward 
pressure on caseload levels is attributable to deliberate policy changes 
that allowed welfare recipients to retain some public assistance while 
working in private sector jobs.  While expressing considerable concern 
about the effects of a sustained period of rising unemployment, state 
officials remain very optimistic about the long-term job prospects of their 
former and current clients.

What they understand - and many persistent critics of work-based welfare 
reform don't - is that the welfare system has undergone a profound cultural 
change since 1996.  Michigan welfare director Doug Howard, who is also 
president of the American Public Human Services Association, says work 
requirements have permanently and dramatically changed the attitudes of 
both recipients and welfare administrators.  "New entrants now come in with 
the expectation that welfare is temporary and transitional and that they 
need to move into employment and help their family," Howard says.  "There's 
been a cultural change for our staff as well, a new attitude about moving 
families quicker."

New York welfare agency spokesman Jack Madden echoes this belief that a 
more work-oriented system will help recipients weather hard economic 
times:  "[They] now have a work history, they understand the importance of 
work in their personal lives and they will be able to jump back into 
employment when the economy picks up steam again.  You have to compare that 
with the old welfare system, which kept people in poverty regardless of the 
economy."

The debate over the economy and welfare reform is of particular importance 
because the 1996 law is up for reauthorization in Congress next year.  Many 
of the original critics of work-based welfare reform, having grudgingly 
admitted its success, are now calling for a significant scaling back of 
work requirements and time limits on grounds that they can only work in a 
red-hot economy with plentiful jobs.

No one is arguing we shouldn't be worried about the impact of the economic 
slowdown on welfare recipients, many of whom do not yet qualify for 
unemployment insurance if they do lose their jobs.  Today's relatively 
positive picture could clearly get worse.  But the answer is to intensify, 
not retreat from, the new system of job placement, support services, and 
assistance to "make work pay" through health insurance and supplemental 
income support, that was at the heart of the 1996 reforms.

The stubborn good news about welfare reform, even in relatively tough 
economic times, provides ample evidence that it's no time to turn back from 
the most successful social policy innovation of the 1990s.