Welfare access may increase
By LAURA MECKLER
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Bush wants to stiffen work requirements for welfare recipients, spend up to $300 million to encourage single mothers to get married and open the door to job training, as Congress opens debate on what changes are needed to a landmark 1996 overhaul.

“We are encouraged by the initial result of welfare reform, but we are not content,” Bush said in remarks prepared for delivery at a church Tuesday. “Child poverty is still too high, too many families are strained and fragile and broken, too many Americans have not found work and the purpose it brings.”

Bush also wants to maintain the five-year ban on benefits for legal immigrants.
The biggest change would be a sharp increase in work requirements facing states.

Under current law, states are required to have 50 percent of their welfare populations engaged in a work activity for at least 30 hours a week. The Bush plan would increase the required hours per week from 30 to 40, and it would slowly increase the percentage of people who must be working to 70 percent by 2007.

The plan also makes it considerably harder for states to meet these targets. For the last five years, the 50 percent minimum has been almost meaningless, because states have largely met the requirement by reducing the number of people on welfare at all, meaning it didn’t matter how many people were officially meeting the work requirement. The Bush plan would eliminate this caseload reduction credit.

At the same time, Bush would allow states to put recipients in education, training and other programs for up to two days a week, or 16 hours, administration officials said.
Liberal advocates were sharply critical.

“The Bush welfare reauthorization proposal runs counter to everything we have learned in the past five years about what helps poor families survive,” said Deepak Bhargava, director of the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support. “The plan calls for a massive increase in the number of people required to work, an unrealistic proposal in the best of economic times, but truly bizarre in the middle of a recession. It represents a huge step backwards.

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