Have a Heart? Almost, Not Quite.

By Rick Horowitz

That was a close one.

Invite a few dozen prominent public servants to the nation's capital, sit them around a great big table with microphones and cameras recording their every utterance, toss in some scary dollar signs and the prospect of real human misery, and there's no telling what might happen.

This time, compassion nearly broke out.

Say what you will about the National Governors' Association, but those folks know how to tap dance. You don't get to be top dog in your particular slice of the Nifty Fifty without being light on your feet, able to strike perfectly contradictory positions without tying your body, let alone your conscience, into knots.

The pretzel maker this time around was welfare reform -- or rather, welfare-reform reform. The president, after all, had spent the better part of four years promising to "end welfare as we know it." What, precisely, he had in mind with this appealing phrase was never quite clear, though it's likely his vision -- we'll assume he had one -- differed quite a bit from that of the newly Republican Congress that took him up on his promise. Took him up on it, that is, by concentrating on the first two words of the phrase.

They had to start somewhere, didn't they? Instead of increased federal spending for education, for job training, for all the kinds of support necessary (if not sufficient) to move millions of people from welfare to work, the Republicans offered cuts -- cuts and caps and deadlines. And the president, cruising in the polls, with a chance to stand up for the vulnerable classes without putting his own career prospects at significant risk, looked at this shriveled thing Congress had sent him and declared, approximately, "Good enough."

Problems? He'll have Congress take another look at it next year. Which is this year.

Meanwhile, the governors -- remember the governors? -- were finding out that wish fulfillment isn't all it's cracked up to be. For decades, they've been clamoring to have control of various social programs returned to the states. Now it's happening, and they look around at all the people who are suddenly their responsibility, and they turn to the feds and shout, "Show us the money!"

And the feds say, "What money?"

Which is the very thing that moved the likes of New York's Pataki and Illinois' Edgar, good Republicans both, to start agitating for some fixes in the welfare fix. Restored benefits for legal immigrants, for instance -- nearly half of the $55 billion Congress chopped out of welfare for the next seven years is due to come out of the hides of legal immigrants who aren't citizens: no more food stamps, no more Supplemental Security Income. We can't abandon these people, the governors said.

For a moment there, as they gathered in Washington, the (heavily Republican) group seemed ready to push Congress to do the right thing and reopen the welfare law. Not to mention their wallets. Not to mention their hearts. Then reality set in.

The Republican leadership in Congress passed the word: Leave it alone. Open it up for one bunch of unfortunates, and everybody will want changes. Besides, welfare reform is one of our greatest accomplishments; we're proud(!) of what we did. Besides, Bill Clinton wants to reopen it, too -- do you really want to side with a Democrat president against your fellow Republicans?

So they caved.

Instead of a strong resolution telling Congress to reopen the law and restore the benefits, the governors started shuffling: Would you mind very much, O federal government -- you don't have to commit yourself or anything, and we wouldn't dream of asking you to reopen that welfare law of yours -- but could you possibly consider finding some way of helping us help at least a few of these people? The elderly and the disabled, say? If it wouldn't be too much trouble?

And just how is that supposed to happen without reopening the law? Hey, let Congress and the president figure it out; we're just governors.

But for a moment there...

2/4/97

©1997 Rick Horowitz. All rights reserved.