MISSOURI WATCH: CHANGING WELFARE -- BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE

Since the attention span of most of Missouri's political leaders is about as short as that of a three-year-old in a sandbox, it is not difficult to understand why a major overhaul of the state's welfare system has been given such shrift. Deficit Attention Syndrome is not reserved for only politicians, it should be noted, since the voters who elect them into office have also been infused with the virus, as John Q. Public shifts his interest from 0.J. Simpson to the Unabomber to Marge Schott, sometimes all in the same day.

Besides, there are more sides to welfare reform than the political situation in the old Yugoslavia. A year ago at this time there was considerable wringing of political and media hands over the forthcoming drought in matching welfare money to the states from a Washington that was then under siege by supposedly penny-pinching contractors with America, all serving loyally under the flag of their commanding general, House Speaker Newt Gingrich. In less time than it takes to spell Whitewater, the states no longer feel they stand in mortal danger of having to bear 100 percent of the costs of their public assistance programs.

Indeed, the impending danger of just a year ago now seems more like a bad dream than a catastrophic drain on state treasuries. With that crisis out of the way, at least for the immediate future, and with the Contract with America seemingly still waiting for earnest money, most public officials in Missouri have decided they can look at other problems for campaign themes. It's likely that no more than a mere handful will even mention how the state can modernize its outdated public assistance during the dreadful campaign months that await us poor voters. The politicians have other fish to fry and they will probably serve up enough inconsequential dishes to give all of us indigestion before November 5.

The one state where welfare reform is still on the front burner is Wisconsin. There, unlike Missouri, the governor is at the forefront of a serious, sometimes flawed, effort to improve a system that has grown like Topsy and is so out of control that legislative appropriations are now almost automatic, given no more study than the funds to be spent for state parks.

It is worth noting here that this absence of public and official interest in remodeling the welfare structure is extremely dangerous for a number of reasons. For one thing, the welfare appropriations of Missouri and 49 of its sister states are continuing to consume ever greater sums of tax money, whether the source is the federal treasury or the one in Jefferson City. Missouri now spends 60 cents for every $1 of its total revenue on education and welfare, with the latter consuming nearly 30 cents of that figure. Secondly, there is little the state or federal government can do at the present moment to inhibit the steadily rising cost of welfare, without revising the present programs that are increasingly costly. Thirdly, despite near-record low unemployment rates in Missouri and the country as a whole, the welfare roles continue to increase, a fact that conjures up even greater outlays during a national recession or worse, a depression.

And lastly, but still importantly, the declining demand for untrained workers in the nation's business sector makes it more and more difficult, with the passing of more and more months, of finding adequate employment for persons moving from public assistance to private employment. America's rapidly increasing use of computers serves to diminish the number of human hands required to perform just about any job now in existence, and as more and more machines assume more and more of the routine work of both small and large companies, any demand for new workers will be lessened, even eliminated, in the years ahead. Enhancing this problem is the growing practice of corporate outsourcing, not to smaller domestic firms but to huge companies in foreign countries where routine tasks are performed at one-tenth the cost.

Each one of the conditions noted above is reason enough to begin a serious restructuring of a welfare system that has almost completely failed to halt the rapid increase in welfare costs to the taxpayers of America. Putting them all together, the prospect of changing the present welfare system for the better grows dimmer and dimmer. There could well be a time when needed reforms can no longer be instituted, given the cost of converting even now from an entitlement system to one demanding performance by recipients.

This, basically, is what Wisconsin's reform plan is attempting to do: convert a system that automatically provides resources to recipients who are required to do nothing in return except cash their government checks and devise ways of increasing the amounts on those checks.

Before I am accused of abandoning my compassion for the less fortunate, let me say that I am evidencing as much concern for the less fortunate by suggesting the need for reform as those who say the system does not nor should not be improved. Indeed, those who defend the status quo are doing welfare recipients no favor, despite their good intentions, for there is an end, even if not visible at this moment, to a public's tolerance of those who are viewed as being unwilling to help themselves. The knee-jerk reaction of many of the "advocates" for low-income Americans is immediate rejection of Wisconsin's plan to end entitlements and institute work/training/retraining programs that require something from every one.

President Clinton, who promised an end to welfare as we know it back in 1992, first announced his support of the Wisconsin plan and then buckled when advocacy groups threatened to brand him as an enemy of the poor. Not surprisingly, Clinton changed lanes and began driving in the other direction, where he joined most other public officials whose lip service to improving the lot of society's poor and neglected is all the service rendered. Sometime in the future, without revision and reform, the welfare check will no longer be in the mail.

Jack Stapleton of Kennett if the editor of the Missouri News and Editorial Service.