Hints from Eloise.

• Author: Lynch, Michael W.

Welfare-reform pioneer Eloise Anderson speaks bluntly - as always - about race, class, sex, and the realities of "the system."

"Do you think we should completely abolish welfare?" Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes asks a contemplative Eloise Anderson, director of California's Department of Social Services, on national TV.

Anderson, staring straight into Stahl's eyes, replies firmly, "Yes."

"You do?" Stahl responds, visibly taken aback.

"Yeah."

"What about those people who find it too hard to work?" asks Stahl after emitting a "Wow."

"I don't understand finding it too hard to work."

This is the dialogue - played repeatedly in ads for the 60 Minutes episode - that propelled Anderson onto the national stage. She was already known to welfare experts as one of a band of outside-the-Beltway reformers, including such Republican governors as her former boss, Wisconsin's Tommy Thompson, who pushed the debate forward. In a world in which policy makers speak in circumlocutions, Anderson stands out as a straight shooter. Her bluntness once caused the Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector to quip that he enjoys sitting on panels with Anderson because she is the only person in the country who is to the right of him on this issue.

Anderson developed her views not based on abstract theory, however correct, but from seeing the workings of the system day in and day out and its effects on people. Before rising to run Wisconsin's welfare system she had actually been in the system herself. She was a community organizer in Toledo, Ohio, and Milwaukee in the mid-1960s before getting married and leaving the work force to raise three children. But her husband left her in 1973, and she found herself in the same position as most women who go on welfare: involuntarily single with children to support and dated job skills. Anderson signed up for food stamps. But instead of accepting cash assistance, she pumped gas before resuming her career as a social worker. She came to California in 1992, attracted by the chance to work on child welfare issues, a concern she has quietly addressed while welfare reform has occupied the national stage. Today, she runs the country's largest welfare system, $16 billion in total programs.

Working in the system made Anderson an effective advocate for change. She not only makes a compelling case that we should abolish welfare, but she is as comfortable arguing it in a room full of welfare recipients as she is in a room full of middle-class policy makers. Anderson advises people who want to work on social policy to first work on the system's front lines. If that is not possible, she says, they should at least spend some time at welfare offices and social service centers. She still visits welfare offices at least once a month to interact with front-line workers and the people her system serves.

Welfare reform is now well under way. Congress ended the entitlement to welfare in 1996, giving states lump-sum block grants. Some states, such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and New Jersey, have already erected new welfare apparatuses with time limits and work requirements as central organizing principles. Others are still trying to come up with a new system. They include California, which is home to 12 percent of the nation's population but 20 percent of its welfare recipients.

Washington Editor Michael W. Lynch interviewed Anderson in her Sacramento office in December and February.

Reason: What in your background made you want to change welfare?

Eloise Anderson: I'm a commoner. I'm a blue-collar Midwesterner and Catholic. If I were white - meaning being allowed to be a human being with all the complexities that humans develop - I'd be perceived as German, because my socialization was within a German cultural community. My notions about freedom and what democracy's all about don't have very much room for public social welfare systems of the type that we designed, created, and continue to perpetuate in this country.

Reason: Who are your intellectual influences? Do you have any heroes?

Anderson: Mark Twain, because I like his voice. I think Mark Twain was a pure American, and his voice, his literate voice was one which I understood. He always brought up the hypocrisies in America in a way that we could swallow. He was funny. He was troubled by the conflict in society. If I had a hero, it would be him. If I had a heroine, it would probably be Sojourner Truth. Sojourner posed the question to feminists: Are black women considered women? If you're going to talk about feminist issues, then you can't talk about women's issues in general, because all of us don't have the same experience. Sojourner Truth brought more honesty to the women's movement than anybody [else]. So those are my two, other than my mom and dad.

Reason: How do class and gender issues relate to welfare reform?

Anderson: Child support issues probably need to be rethought in light of more than just middle-class women and their children. They need to be thought of in light of mothers and fathers of all economic levels. Another thing that needs to be rethought is this whole notion of a child and his two parents. What is it that we expect out of fathers vs. mothers? We say fatherhood is a check and that men are not expected to nurture their children. Surely we won't let him have custody of his child. We expect him to continue to pay for a woman that he no longer has a relationship with, and we expect her to do nothing in terms of financial status. The woman, we base her value to the family on nurturing, not financial responsibility.

In the way that we structure welfare and the way we structure our argument, we basically say that she was not a willing partner in the conception of this child, that he was somehow responsible for this without her consent, and that she had nothing to do with getting pregnant. Therefore he bears all the financial burden. I think that is an unfair policy, which means that we have to rethink custody. If a father has a lot of resources and mom has very few resources, and we want the child to continue to live in the comfort the father provided, maybe the father ought to have custody.

Reason: It has always struck me that family law....

Anderson: Is prejudiced against men.

Reason: ...is biased against men on many levels. For example, if a woman gets pregnant, and the man wants to keep the child but she wants an abortion....

Anderson: She wins.

Reason: But if he wants an abortion and she wants to keep the child, he is on the hook. Do you think that as we start rethinking the roles of families we may begin to question these ingrained inconsistencies?

Anderson: Just because it's ingrained doesn't mean that we can't pose the question and get some...