Welfare Backtrack

Welfare Deform

By John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

January 11, 2002 3:00 p.m.

n 1996, as part of welfare reform, Congress made immigrants ineligible for food stamps unless they had been working here for ten years. The principle of the legislation was that immigrants who were down on their luck should get aid -- but that people shouldn't be coming here to qualify for assistance. Since then, the rule has been loosened so that children, senior citizens, and disabled people who came here before 1996 can get food stamps.

Now President Bush is proposing to make immigrants eligible for food stamps if they've been here five years -- whether or not they've worked. The proposal is more expensive even than the proposal that left-wing senator Tom Harkin put in the farm bill. No doubt the president's move on food stamps is an attempt to appeal to Hispanic voters. But it's hard to see how increasing their dependence on government will help Republicans in the long- or even medium-term.

In any case, the administration has moved away from the principles of welfare reform without any Hispanic-vote rationale in a previous episode. In July, it backed an amendment to eliminate a requirement that unemployed public-housing tenants perform 8 hours of community service a month. That time, the administration was to the left of Sue Kelly, one of the most liberal Republicans in the House. During the debate, she pointed out that President Clinton had supported this requirement.

Welfare reform is coming up for reauthorization this year. Conservatives who want to use the opportunity to tighten work requirements can't be heartened by these developments. Judged by their results, work requirements are one of the most compassionate policies the government has adopted in years. But are they compatible with the spirit of "compassionate conservatism"? During the campaign, Bush said that it was wrong to think of compassion as a soft virtue. Oh really? It's always easy to be compassionate with other people's money.

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