Opinion: Struggling to stay afloat

New Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson has a strong mandate to build on the welfare reform philosophy he shared during his Senate confirmation hearings: "For welfare to be successful, you have to make an investment up front. It can't be done on the cheap." It is a philosophy Thompson put into practice as governor of Wisconsin, where welfare reform was accompanied by generous increases in state support for families making the transition.

Four years after Congress and President Clinton ended welfare as we knew it, independent studies are proving Thompson right. Nationally, reform has succeeded mostly in moving people from the public assistance rolls to the ranks of the working poor. Despite an economy with nearly full employment, work has not meant the end of poverty for many leaving welfare.

With the economy weakening, government's obligation is put into sharp relief: Make work pay, rather than simply making people work. In Florida, that means writing more income supports for the working poor into state law.

A recent study of Florida's first welfare-to-work program, which began in Pensacola in 1994, shows that those who left welfare, took jobs and had a range of support are only marginally better off than those who never went to work. Former welfare recipients who got paychecks from jobs, plus non-cash help from the state, earned more than their counterparts drawing traditional welfare checks at first. But by the end of the fourth year, the two groups were bringing in about the same income, and the rate of employment between the two groups was nearly identical.

Nationally, studies show that a sizeable minority of those leaving welfare early on returned to the rolls later. While working, many were unable to pay rent, mortgage or utility bills. About one-third of the women who had left welfare told researchers they had had to cut the size of their meals or skip meals in the past year. And these numbers exclude the very hardest-to-serve families who, either because of exemptions or time limits, remain on traditional welfare.

What's more, it doesn't appear the working-poor can do much to change their situation unilaterally. Even two-earner families struggle to stay afloat. And working more hours doesn't seem to work either. According to the Urban Institute, even if all able-bodied adults nationwide went to work full-time, only one-fifth of them would be raised out of working poverty. "Even if policies aimed at promoting work -- such as child care and transportation assistance -- induce a large increase in work effort, a substantial number of people would still live in low-income families," the researchers said.

So now that families have gone to work, we owe it to them to help them succeed. Thompson called it "helping the poor find work and helping the working poor find rewards in their efforts." And he has backed it up in Wisconsin with services and cash supplements for former recipients worth more than even Florida's model program.

But what those leaving welfare need most is what state and national lawmakers appear least inclined to give: higher cash supports and expanded earnings supplements, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit. A recent Illinois study points to what Florida needs to do. Families who were most successful at avoiding hardship were able to combine work with some modified form of welfare assistance. In the absence of significant minimum wage hikes or access to other benefits at the federal level, such help from states is crucial to lifting incomes among the working poor -- before an economic downturn plunges them again below the poverty level and pushes more back onto the welfare rolls.

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