ILLINOIS MOVES TOWARD FEDERAL WELFARE MANDATES

Lawmakers in Washington and Springfield have decided that the welfare system that has existed for 60 years will be gone as of July 1, replaced by a stricter code requiring healthy adults to find work after two years and spend less than five years of their lives on the dole.

There is a penalty in the federal law for states: Illinois, for example, will lose millions of dollars in federal money if the welfare rolls aren't trimmed in half by 2002. Illinois Public Aid spokesman Dean Schott said the state is well-positioned to meet that goal, because 30 percent of welfare recipients are already working at least 20 hours per week.

Fundamental to the new welfare system in Illinois is that it abandons the notion that welfare is an entitlement. Hard-pressed taxpayers can say "amen" to that.

A key aspect of the Illinois plan is a $103.6 million increase in daycare funding for parents who earn less than half the state's median income. A family of three would have to earn less than $21,800 to be eligible. This new state money will let 150,000 poor children while their parents work.

Reformers should keep in mind that as they proceed that none among us really knows for sure how to reform welfare. We have been 60 years getting into the mess we have now, and we won't escape it overnight. Meanwhile, the states are acting as they were intended to under our form of government -- that is to say, as "laboratories of democracy," experimenting with what does and doesn't work. And a new form of competition emerges between all 50 states: The race to see who can move the welfare population to work the fastest.