Poorhouse politics.

• Author: Piven, Frances Fox
• Position: Welfare reform - Cover Story

For the poor, it's back to the workhouse and the orphanage. The press tends to credit Newt Gingrich with this Nineteenth Century scenario, embodied in the House Republicans' Contract with America. But Gingrich certainly didn't invent the assault on welfare. He only had to modify a script written and rehearsed by the Clinton Administration, and then by Congress, where some twenty welfare "reforms" bills were introduced over the past year.

Bill Clinton hit upon "ending welfare as we know it" during the 1992 campaign, when the pollsters reported it was his most popular campaign issue. Accordingly, Clinton took office with a small horde of social-policy experts in tow, and welfare reform was high on his agenda.

At first, the Administration's welfare working-group schemes were fuzzy, as the experts talked not only of ending welfare with "two years and off to work," but of big new initiatives in training, job creation, health care, and day care. All of these proposals would presumably make it possible for mothers to work and earn enough to raise their families above the poverty level. However, such programs cost big money, and much more than cash assistance. So, as the dollars mounted, the services and the job-opportunity side of the plan shrank.

In the end, the enduring feature of the Clinton proposal was the two-year limit on cash assistance.

It was inevitable that the Republicans would try to go Clinton one better. They escalated the rhetoric of welfare-bashing, and then began to talk of stripping away the modest services the Democrats had proposed, and slashing cash assistance even more.

This bizarre competition moved AFDC, a relatively small program that costs only about 1 percent of the Federal budget, to the center of American politics. By election night, Phil Gramm was proudly telling Michael Kinsley on CNN that all meanstested programs should simply be eliminated.

The Personal Responsibility Act is being considered by the new Congress, and when the first 100 days are up in April, the Act may well be law, and the programs that support low-income people in the United States will be in shreds.

The provisions are chilling. The Government would cut food assistance, housing assistance, and all other forms of aid to the impoverished, aged, and disabled. And money for these programs would no longer increase to meet increased need. The Feds will combine food-assistance programs into one block grant and turn it over to the states to run as they see fit, with no guarantee of support for anyone in need. Most legal immigrants will be denied any kind of aid beyond emergency medical care.

The most alarming proposals specifically target poor mothers and children on AFDC. The Personal Responsibility Act would deny any aid whatsoever to families headed by young mothers - those under eighteen years of age or, at state option, under twenty-one - and to those who cannot officially establish paternity.

The money thus "saved" would fund a block grant that states could use to establish...