MISSOURI COMMENTARY: WELFARE REFOM ON THE CHEAP?

It was one of his first speaking engagements in Missouri. In 1987, a somewhat obscure governor from a somewhat obscure state came to a small college in Kansas City to speak on welfare reform. Without a note or prop of any kind, Governor Bill Clinton mesmerized his small audience on the subject of welfare reform. He described our public assistance program as one that trapped tens of thousands into a way of life from which there was no escape.

Clinton clearly is no Johnny Come Lately to welfare reform. He has always favored turning over much of the functioning and implementation of welfare to the states. For many years, Clinton has wanted to "end welfare as we know it."

What is new is Clinton's willingness to gamble on whether so many desperate people of all ages will fall between the cracks and, if they do, whether the states and the federal government have the resolve to act expeditiously to remedy dire conditions.

Over the very long term, welfare reform, if implemented thoughtfully, might save some tax monies. Self-evidently, the more people who are put to work, the better off the country will be.

Over the near term, welfare reform, it implemented thoughtfully be considerably more expensive for the taxpayers. Job training, child care, education, personalized counseling, transportation are all expensive necessities for converting societal failures into functioning workers. Are the states will to pay for all of this?

Many in Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, look upon welfare reform as a way of cutting the federal budget immediately and of dumping, with reduced funding, a mind-boggling dilemma onto the states. Admittedly, our welfare system needed overhaul, but is this the best remedy? Our policy now is to simply delegate it to the local governments and hope they will do it better with less.

Vast numbers of people on welfare have little formal education; many are high school dropouts. Time was when a company might teach basic skills to their employees. Motorola, for example, had such a program, but it is being phased out. Motorola says "We will train people to grow proficient in scientific and technical disciplines, and help them improve their people skills. What we cannot do is train them to be trainable."

According to Bernard Avishai, the former editor of the Harvard Business Review, "America's thorniest social problem is not unemployment but unemployability. As the economy becomes more dependent on knowledge and specialized skills, the gap between haves and have-nots is increasingly a chasm between 'knows' and 'know-nots'. ... The most basic jobs now require developed academic and social skills, chiefly reading, math and teamwork. These are the skills that many at the bottom of the income ladder lack. Companies can't be expected to teach them."

Can the states teach them? All sorts of people are on welfare -- old and young, healthy and unhealthy, able-bodied and disabled, white and black. Although two-thirds of the individuals on welfare are not black, the poster picture of welfare abuse is an unmarried teenage black female with a couple of kids lounging around smoking crack. It is this image that serves as the "proof" that welfare doesn't work.

When the time limits expire, what happens to mothers who have tried unsuccessful to get a job? Do we realize that at the core of the problem is the job shortage for unskilled workers in the inner city? Don't we realize here and now that some affected areas like Los Angeles will not be able to absorb the shift in welfare costs?

The amazing thing was not that Clinton signed the welfare bill. The amazing thing was that there was really such muffled criticism within the Democratic Party for his doing so. This is partly because of Clinton's lead over Bob Dole and partly because of the shrinkage of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

One thing is certain. The governors who now beam with pride about the new power they have snatched from the evil federal government will have to put their money where their beam is. Welfare done right will be expensive. Welfare done on the cheap will compound the existing tragedy.

~Tom Eagleton of St. Louis is a former U.S. senator from Missouri.