Molly Ivins October 14

AUSTIN — Six weeks after 28,000 elderly, feeble legal immigrants in Texas lost their food stamps, Gov. George W. Bush changed his mind and set aside $18 million to pay for food for the utterly helpless group. Food banks in the Rio Grande Valley were reportedly swamped, and the decision was simply a humanitarian must. And so it goes on the rocky road to "welfare reform."

The cutoff date for those too old and sick to work was Sept. 1. New York, California and Florida already had plans in place to replace the federal funds with state funds, but not Texas, ever the instructional model for how-not-to-do-it.

During the last session of the Legislature, several bills were introduced for food assistance and other services for elderly and disabled legal immigrants, but they were defeated in committee. Bush accused the federal government of shirking its responsibility and said the state had no choice but to pick up the slack. I'd say so myself.

About 121,000 legal immigrants in Texas are no longer eligible for food stamps, and about 15,000 are children. The children are clumped in the valley, where unemployment runs up to 20 percent in some counties and is in double digits everywhere. The state cannot push the responsibility onto local governments, as is being done in California, because local governments in the valley have no resources.

Meanwhile, the state is late and behind and has already made some criminally stupid decisions. According to our own state auditor, Texas still lacks a comprehensive plan spelling out how it will implement the federally mandated changes in the welfare system. And perhaps most ominously of all, no one in the political leadership has had the courage to state the obvious: As Gov. Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin (who is running what is probably the most successful welfare-reform program in the country) points out to anyone who will listen, you have to spend a lot of money to make it work.

As one knowledgeable state official put it, "Our whole welfare reform program is like the Mir space station — it's made out tin cans and rubber bands, and every time you push a button, something else doesn't work."

Texas missed the Oct. 1 deadline for having at least 75 percent of the two-parent families on welfare participating in work programs. As of July, the latest figures available, Texas had about 30 percent of such families in some form of workfare for 37 hours a week.

The state was closer to meeting the deadline for having 25 percent of single-parents on welfare in work programs for 20 hours a week — just under that goal.

The 75 percent requirement was unrealistic from the beginning. The White House is trying to work out a compromise to reduce the requirement; about half the states would find the work requirement cut by half or more under the administration's compromise, but a substantial number would still not be in compliance, including Texas.

Meanwhile, right-wing Republicans such as Sen. Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina are demanding that the administration impose financial penalties on the states that did not meet the deadline. This, of course, will leave the states with even less money to fund workfare programs. "It's the first occasion to demonstrate that we are going to make welfare reform work," said Faircloth.

Meanwhile, Texas missed at least two opportunities to make welfare reform work.

First, the state was sitting on a pool of $360 million in surplus welfare funds from the feds, a nifty bonus we got because the feds were still counting our Aid to Families With Dependent Children load from the economic downturn of 1990, and the recovering economy had already lifted a good chunk of it. Great — free money to start welfare-to-work programs and provide child care, transportation, medical insurance, etc.

Nope. Instead, the state took 40 percent of that money and used it to replace monies the state normally spends on welfare and social-service programs. They put $152 million of it into general revenue. True, they did put $126 million into job training, but the Workforce Commission, the entity in charge of the jobs program, is one of those buttons you push and nothing happens.

Then the state could have used the property tax rollback that Bush insisted on for welfare reform; it came to a big $12 in lower property taxes per household, so Texans could have forsworn that magnificent degree of tax relief in order to make welfare reform work. But no. Bush's big plan was to privatize the entire welfare system, but even the Legislature went into shock when confronted with the option of turning the whole deal over to Lockheed Martin.

Besides, the White House didn't like the plan. President Clinton initially offered to let Bush try a pilot program with about 10 percent of the welfare load. By the time the budget deal was done this summer, Clinton was up to 50 percent of the caseload, but Bush decided he didn't want half a loaf and had the Texas Republicans in Congress pull the whole scheme from the budget package. Then he whined about how Clinton had killed the plan.

Republicans, as is well known, are fond of lecturing others on the need to "take responsibility." It'd be nice to see them do it.

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

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