Bush wants tough new work-welfare rules, spend $300 million to promote marriage - Brief Article

Community Action, March 18, 2002

WASHINGTON -- U.S. President George W. Bush is proposing a tough new set of work requirements for welfare recipients and $300 million to promote marriage, including $135 million for abstinence education.

The plan will require that 70 per cent of all welfare recipients in a state be working by 2007 even though the typical state currently has only 30 per cent of its caseload working,

In addition:

* recipients will be required to spend 40 hours a week working,

* two of those days may be used for education or training,

* people who need short-term, intensive help will be allowed three months of full-time drug rehabilitation or job training,

* immigrants who entered the U.S. after 1996 and have not become citizens will continue to be banned from receiving welfare benefits for five years.

The plan does not include any new money for child care, said Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund. At present, only one in seven children eligible for federal child care assistance gets it, she said.

One-third of births in the United States each year are to single mothers, a rate that jumps to 68.5 per cent among blacks. Children growing up in one-parent families are four times as likely to be poor as those in two-parent households, say experts who note that a majority of families in the welfare system are single-parent households.

The money will be redirected from another program that granted bonuses to states where rates of out-of-wedlock births declined and should be used for pilot projects that provide premarital counseling or marital enrichment classes.

Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, said it is an outrage to suggest that marriage is the path to economic stability for poor women. If the government wants to help women and children, it should provide them with more assistance, she said.

Abstinence is the only sure way to prevent unwanted pregnancies, Bush said as he unveiled his plan. But critics said he is going to make things even tougher for single parents with his new work requirements.