WELFARE REFORM

Where serious welfare reform is concerned, all eyes are on Wisconsin. Under Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson and Republican majorities in both houses of the state legislature, Wisconsin has become the nation's unquestioned leader in radical welfare reform.

At the heart of Wisconsin's bold reforms is a commitment to work. Beginning in December 1993, Gov. Thompson signed into law a program that has come to be known as W-2, which stands for Wisconsin Works. A spokesman for the governor states that W-2 "is based squarely on work." The Wisconsin law ends authorization for Aid to Families with Dependent Children effective Jan. 1, 1999, and replaces it with a number of services all emphasizing work.

Although not yet fully implemented, early results are encouraging. Since early 1994, Wisconsin has sharply reduced its welfare caseload, achieving a first-in-the-nation reduction of 33 percent in the number of families receiving assistance. This remarkable fact alone commends the Wisconsin reforms to a whole nation of working Americans eager to reform welfare.

The Wisconsin reforms are based on seven key principles:

* No automatic welfare check.

* All parents are required to work to support their families.

* The system will help find the best self-sufficiency alternative, and there will be a place for everybody, regardless of capabilities.

* Opportunities for advancement are provided through the self-sufficiency ladder.

* Child care and health care will be available for all low-income families who need it to work.

* Child care payments will go to whom they belong; working custodial parents and their children.

* A unified delivery system that will be funded based on performance.

After these guiding principles, the details of Wisconsin's pathbreaking approach to welfare reform become extremely complex. It wouldn't be surprising to find knowledgeable critics picking apart this or that point in the fine print of the bloated and encrusted welfare system, where, to take just one horrifying statistic, 65 percent of recipients remain on assistance for eight years or longer. And indeed, critics, mostly representing "welfare rights" organizations and others in the recipient community, are vocal in their objections.

Working Americans, though, who long ago tired of paying the freight for folks who have become accustomed to welfare as a way of life, will look to Wisconsin as a beacon of light and hope in the morass that the modern welfare state has become. Wisconsin is truly functioning in the finest sense of what leading scholars have called the essence of federalism: The states are intended to function as "laboratories of democracy." In this sense, each of the 50 states can try out different methods for dealing with common problems, experimenting with what works and what doesn't. In this healthy experimentation, it looks more and more as though "Wisconsin Works.

Other states, Missouri most especially included, should take heed.