The Senate has joined the House of Representatives in approving a welfare plan that would end the Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) program. A House-Senate Conference Committee will iron out differences between the two bills.The elimination of guaranteed aid to those who meet already stringent eligibility criteria brings to an end a 60-year-old system that ensured at least some federal support for the nation’s poorest individuals, the vast majority of whom are women and children.
"The 104th Congress’s non-stop war on women will end with women and children sleeping on grates," said Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority. "Not only has Congress cruelly slashed anti-poverty programs, but it has set up a musical chairs competition for jobs that don’t exist."
The Senate welfare bill, which passed 87 to 12, is similar to the House bill in that it replaces an array of federal anti-poverty programs with inadequate lump sum payments to the states, known as "block grants," which are not even required to be spent on welfare. "There is no guarantee that poor women and children will ever see a penny of those block grants," said Smeal. "For all we know the states will use the money for highway construction."
The Senate bill differs from the House version in that it does not require states to deny money to women who have another child on welfare, nor does it require states to deny money to teenage mothers. However, under the Senate version states are free to restrict welfare money in these and other ways if they choose. Both Senate and House versions require states to move half of their welfare recipients into jobs within five or seven years, a requirement that experts say most, if not all, states will not be able to meet because there are not enough jobs available.
Disappointingly, all but one of the women Senators voted for this bill which effectively ends the federal welfare program. The eleven Democratic Senators who voted against the bill include stalwart advocates of the poor: Carol Moseley-Braun (IL), Edward Kennedy (MA), Bill Bradley (NJ), Paul Simon (IL), Daniel Akaka (HI), Bob Kerrey (NE), Frank Lautenberg (NJ), Patrick Leahy (VT), Daniel Patrick Moynihan (NY), Paul Sarbanes (MD), and Paul Wellstone (MN). The lone Republican to vote against the bill, Lauch Faircloth (NC), did so because the bill did not deny benefits to children born to teen mothers or welfare mothers.
After the bill comes out of the House-Senate Conference Committee it will undoubtedly contain some of the more draconian measures of the House bill. President Clinton has said he supports the Senate version, and he is not likely to veto the bill unless it moves much closer to the House version.