Worst than no bill - the Senate debates on anti-illegitimacy measures - The Week - Column

National Review, Oct 9, 1995

FIRST, the good news: the Senate spent much of the last two weeks discussing the devastating effects of illegitimacy. For that, Sens. Grams, Gramm, and Faircloth -- and Reps. Talent, McCrery, and Hutchinson -- deserve enormous credit. The bad news is that the Senate then rejected efforts to deal, however gingerly, with the problem.

Still, we learned a lot from the debate:

* About the priorities of Catholic Charities. It opposed a Faircloth proposal to divert a mere 2 per cent of job-training funds to abstinence education.

* About Republican "moderates." They declined to make even a symbolic gesture against a welfare policy that actually increases benefits when single mothers have additional children. Under the proposed "family cap," states would be able to use their own revenues for this purpose although they couldn't use federal money -- and since money is fungible, this restriction could be effectively bypassed if a state so decided. The "moderates" rejected even this.

* About the relation between fiscal conservatism and social liberalism. When push came to shove, Republicans who claim to support both found that the latter trumped the former.

* About Pete Domenici. He argued that welfare cutoffs both do and don't have effects on behavior (they won't reduce illegitimacy but will increase abortions). He fought to require states to continue spending on welfare at 80 per cent of current levels. So Congress can tell states how to spend tens of billions of their own revenues, but can't tell them how to spend federal revenues, even in a way that can be bypassed. Rarely have the federalist sentiments of Republican voters been exploited more hypocritically.

Still, it could have been worse. The senators voted to reward states that reduce their illegitimacy ratio without an increase in abortions (even this was too much for ten Republicans). And as a result of persistent attention to technical details on the part of Sens. Grams, Faircloth, and Gramm, the Senate bill is tougher on work than the House bill (no thanks to Sens. Dole and Packwood, whose original proposal was actually weaker in this respect than Sen. Daschle's Democratic alternative). Work requirements are worth supporting, not to push single mothers into the workforce, but to discourage them from going on welfare, and thus indirectly from becoming single mothers in the first place. But they are not a substitute for a direct assault on the root problem of state-sponsored illegitimacy. In an ominous sign, Michael McCurry, President Clinton's spokesman, cheered last week's votes: "They are beginning to move the legislation in the direction of real reform of our welfare system."

Most Republicans voted for the anti-illegitimacy measures; Bob Dole should appoint representatives of that majority sentiment to the conference reconciling the House and Senate versions of welfare reform. Conservatives should push in conference to restore the cash ban and family cap, and to allow the states to spend less. (They may also want to consider a possible compromise -- a family cap and cash ban from which states could opt out -- since their goal all along has been to force states that want to keep destructive policies at least to debate them.)

Everyone in Washington seems to want to pass something called "welfare reform" this year, just as everyone thought we needed a "crime bill" last year. But a bad bill is worse than no bill. Sen. Faircloth voted against the Senate version on those grounds, and Sen. Gramm has declared that if the conference version "does not have an anti-illegitimacy provision, then I'm not going to vote for it." Others should follow their lead.