Molly Ivins February 20

BERKELEY, Calif. — In case you missed it, a wonderful Tom Toles cartoon gives us A Tragedy For the '90s. A TV announcer in front of a car smash reports: "A right-to-die supporter who had used a little too much medical marijuana has collided with a death-penalty supporter who had consumed a little too much red wine for his heart condition. Both were killed instantly by their air bags. Investigators are listening to their illegally recorded final cell phone conversation."

The only trouble with Toles' perfect tragedy for the '90s is that, like most fiction, it makes more sense than real life. Try this tragedy for the '90s, and see what you think.

The state of California has approximately 1 million people currently seeking employment — either on unemployment insurance or recent high school and college graduates. The state also has an estimated 1 million "discouraged workers," who are no longer registered with the employment commission, and an unknown number who are underemployed and looking. In addition, the state has 900,000 welfare recipients.

The California economy, now perking along nicely, creates about 350,000 new jobs every year, and another 300,000 open up through retirement, promotion, etc. This leaves the state 1) with 2 million people trying to get 650,000 jobs now and 2) under the federal gun to push 900,000 welfare clients into the same labor pool.

Ooops. The numbers differ from state to state, but the total effect is the same everywhere.

State Assemblywoman Dion Aroner heads the committee in charge of figuring out how to make the new welfare laws work. "The first thing you realize is that this isn't a problem with the welfare system — it's a structural problem with the economy," she said. "As we move to an economy where everyone changes jobs every other year, there are going to be peaks and valleys, and what we're talking about is how to handle the valleys for everyone, whether it's unemployment insurance, disability or public income assistance."

Being a woman of great energy and good sense, Aroner is tackling her new job briskly, despite the fact that it's impossible. She's bringing everyone to the table on this, including corporations, non-profits, lobbyists, bureaucrats, you name it. But the outlines of how to deal with welfare reform were already apparent during an interview last week; the only answer is a form of triage.

"We have to figure out who on welfare is already preparing and looking for work and doesn't need help, and then we have to figure out the group of recipients that it is not cost-effective to help because they'll never get hired.

And then we concentrate on what's left," she said.

What she means by "not cost-effective to help" is, say, a 45-year-old psychologically damaged Hmong woman with no English and no skills. Because the Hmong have no written language of their own, teaching them English is exceptionally difficult; then it requires thousands of dollars on top of that to give them job skills.

As you probably know, the Hmong people were allowed to immigrate to the United States because they were our staunch allies during the late unpleasantness in Southeast Asia, where many of them suffered hideous trauma during the war. Even if such an immigrant could be prepared for the job market, at great expense, what then are the chances of a middle-aged woman getting hired?

"You have to recognize that from a practical point of view, the highest and best use for many of these women is taking care of their children," said Aroner.

California already has an effective welfare-to-work program called GAIN. But it covers only about 25 percent of those on welfare, and for political reasons, neither the governor nor the Legislature is prepared to put another $500 million into the program, which is what it would take to fully fund it. Under the new federal rules, California will get a small windfall during the first two years of the "reform" because its unemployment was measured while the state's economy was still in the dumps. The governor wants to use the money for more prisons.

As serious welfare reformers have long pointed out, the only way to fix welfare is to spend more money on it, which flies directly in the face of the currently reigning political wisdom. The Aid to Families With Dependent Children program is already the cheapest possible way to take care of the consequences of the structural economic problem that Aroner has identified.

"We can make the numbers look good for the first couple of years," said Aroner. "Frankly, there are some tricks we can do with the numbers, but about five years out, it's really going to hit."

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton was in New York on Tuesday getting reamed out by an angry black magazine publisher, to the collective horror of those who think that telling the truth to a president is unspeakably rude. I, for one, commend Earl Graves for telling the president exactly what the bill he so expediently signed will do to people.

Clinton has been wandering around like Forrest Gump, urging churches and corporations to take up the slack on welfare. According to Catholic Charities U.S.A., the federal cuts in various aid programs will average $15.1 billion per year during the next seven years, and the total charitable giving to churches and human-service groups around the nation amounted to only $11.7 billion in 1995. "To make up for government cuts, we'd have to more than double charitable giving every year," Sharon Daly of Catholic Charities told The Progressive magazine. "We don't see that as likely because for five of the last six years, charitable giving has been dropping."

More on the corporate role anon.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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