Opinions from around the country
This editorial is from The Daily Vidette at Illinois State University.

President Bush’s new welfare proposal will set aside $100 million for programs intended to get single mothers on welfare to marry. While the exact nature of the programs is not specified, the possibilities for economically motivated marriages are frightening.

Two-parent families may be beneficial for welfare families, but there are other areas of welfare in need of reform. If the welfare system can help impoverished women receive better education and job training early in life, they are less likely to have children out of wedlock in the first place. Rather than trying to deal with the effects of single welfare parents, the government should try to handle the causes.

According to The Associated Press “...the Bush plan will offer a pot of money ... for experiments aimed at getting poor people to marry.”

It is entirely possible that the wording is unintentionally pejorative, but these “experiments” sound like they could easily cross the line and begin to interfere with people’s private lives. Studies and even sociological experiments may be appropriate in other problem areas within the welfare system, but marriage, if reduced to a simple economic-familial device, would threaten to make these people less than people in the minds of policy makers and taxpayers.

This isn’t the first time conservative values have clashed with small government values, but it is strange to see a Republican president in favor of tax cuts and increased military spending pushing to keep welfare spending steady and not cut programs.

The program might be questionable, but Bush deserves credit for not caving in to conservatives who want to push nuclear families who just want economic assistance and job training. His stance on the issue, relatively moderate compared to some conservatives, presents him as something more than just a party lapdog.

Bush has also refused to force states to include marriage in their welfare programs. The needs of poverty-stricken communities vary greatly from states, and attempts to federalize the process could easily create the big-government miasma that conservatives routinely blast on morning talk shows. Kudos to Bush for staying true to the positions he was elected on, even if they are being reflected in an unusual way.

This editorial is from The Daily Vidette at Illinois State University.
This column was distributed by U-Wire.

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