Los Angeles County came out with a proposal to cut welfare costs today, or at least that is what they called it. In the world of government, where black is white, and a spending increase is a cut, these bureaucrats think they are helping "balance the budget." Their proposal, however, is an example of just how far off the reservation our government has gone. These bureaucrats want to use the child care money to pay parents to take care of their own children. Think of it this way, welfare recipients get their welfare money to stay home, and then, on top of that, they get child care money to take care of their own kids. What an idea. Does anyone really think that welfare recipients will make any effort to get off the rolls, once they hit this gravy train?
I was the Vice Chair of the Committees that oversaw welfare policy for 12 years. It is the worst job for a Republican in the Legislature. Thousands of whining bureaucrats trot out the sob stories of society for hours on end, demanding more government spending. Truth is, 75% of the money spent on our welfare programs are spent on bureaucrats, administrators, or wealthy vendors, while the recipients literally become the excuse to steal taxpayers money, and hand it over to the bureaucrats, administrators and wealthy vendors.
In the late 1980s, the federal government came up with the GAIN program (Greater Avenues through Independence), a welfare to work program that sounded good. Interestingly enough, Riverside County actually used the program to put people on welfare to work, so when I came to the Legislature, I thought GAIN was the answer to welfare. Wilson administration officials, however, said GAIN was only a marginal success, it saved some money, but it cost a lot. I couldnt figure it out. What was wrong, I wondered.
I found out when I stepped in as the lead Republican on welfare issues. Most Counties didnt use the GAIN money to put people to work. They used it for "job training" and child care. Welfare recipients learned how to work the system. They never had to work. They would just sign up for classes at the local community college, never go to class, call it "job training," collect the child care expenses and pay it to their cousins, parents, or friends, and never have to work. That wasnt true of all recipients, but it was true of enough of them that the savings achieved by putting some people to work on this program were offset by the extra costs of job training.
Congress figured out the scam, and in the welfare reform of 1996, tried to institute a "Work First" welfare policy. In the states like Wisconsin, Florida, and Michigan, where the work first ethic was enforced, welfare roles plummeted. There were counties in Wisconsin with only one or two families on welfare. The program was a huge success.
It was a success in California right at first. Under the plan approved by the Legislature in 1997, there was an attempt to push the work first ethic as well. However, as soon as Gray Davis took over, that ethic fell apart. Several changes to the welfare law reinstated the "training is ok" ethic, paid out welfare to work money for child care again, and costs began to skyrocket once again, as welfare recipients learned that California was not serious about putting them to work.
We have now come full circle. Using child care money to pay parents to take care of their own kids, and calling that savings is an example of how convoluted government thinking has become. If people actually went to work, the bureaucrats who came up with this cockeyed scheme might lose their job, or perhaps their caseload would drop so much that they couldnt justify their six-figure salaries. So, lets pay people to not work, and then call taking care of their own children the work they are getting paid for.
This is what has happened to the one of the few good things the Republican Congress delivered to this state, and to this country, in ten years of control. How far have the mighty fallen?