The California Welfare Reforms of 1971

...But this is not the same thing as saying that to the Vietnamese, or to others in Southeast Asia, making political choices is either absurd, or incomprehensible, or "impermissible...

...Between 1964 and 1971, the total number of welfare recipients rose from 7.7 million to 14.4 million, from an annual cost of $5 billion to $18 billion...

...This is one reason why colleges have attempted all too successfully to expand continuonsly over the last twenty years--with the results about which they now wonder...

...Much of the problem was solved by separating the determination of eligibility from the judgment about the amount of the grant...

...However noble the purpose of the amendments, they offered an immediate opportunity for many previously-ineligible employed people to go on welfare...

...Reflecting the trend, by the end of the sixties, the courts were striking down as "discriminatory" regulations limiting eligibility and expanding rights to eligibility where they had not existed before...

...The magnitude of the effort is suggested by the size of the Governor's reform message, which consisted of 175 pages, seventy major provisions, and scores of subprovisions...

...The materials they end up presenting do not amount to a college education...

...A few numbers will recall the extent of the problem...

...There is no space here to examine the entire range of administrative and legislative reforms that were proposed and implemented...

...We live in a society that believes (1) that opportunity ought to be equal for all...

...Yet the demand for college education is by no means wholly contrived, even if the colleges are guilty of complicity and instigation...

...Instructors are unlikely to present materials from which the gifted can benefit when the rest of the class would be unable to follow...

...This is double the proportion of twenty years ago...

...Anyway, it would upset the arrangement to do otherwise...

...The process was assisted by tightening regulations on work-related expenses, and by state responsibility for training special eligibility workers, who are kept separate from professional social workers...

...Potential political obstacles in both Sacramento and Washington were substantial...

...Under the old system, the state had no effective way of ensuring uniform rules of eligibility, because the counties had sole responsibility for making eligibility determinations...

...Before 1967, for every dollar he earned, a welfare recipient was subject to a reduction of his welfare payments by a like amount...

...Against the vigorous opposition of the welfare lobby, by early August the Democratic legislature passed more than 70 percent of the Governor's proposals, and on August 13, 1971, the California Welfare Reform Act of 1971 became law...

...Many students, therefore, are tempted to regain it by playing the role of revolutionaries, rebels against authority, in the psychodrama for which the university has allowed itself to be used as a stage setting...

...The situation in California was deteriorating even more rapidly than in the rest of the country...

...To accomplish the administrative reforms, the Governor needed the cooperation of HEW to grant waivers of federal regulations in a number of areas...

...The dollar savings to the state and counties have been substantial...

...The California Department of Social Welfare had estimated that without reform, the total welfare cost--for federal, state, and county governments--could exceed $3 billion during the coming fiscal year...

...The 1971 reforms have radically changed the incentives...

...Edward C. Banfield, '~vVelfare: A Crisis without 'solutions'," Public Interest, Summer 1969...

...In March 1961, California had 620,000 welfare recipients...

...A brief glance at the sophisticated powerplays between President Thieu and his opponents in the South Vietnamese parliament, at the alignment and realignment of political parties in Indonesia, at the lively voter appreciation of ethnic and other pluralistic constituency-balancing in elections in Malaysia and Singapore, or at the formation and expression of political opposition to the Marcos government in the Philippines, will soon convince one that it isn't...

...If the ability to learn is excluded as admissions criterion, education is not likely to succeed...

...In the process of attempting to educate the inept, the education of those who might benefit will necessarily be impaired, while very little is gained by those who are supposed to be helped...

...Nonetheless, faculties and administrations make their living through them, and that living tends to be better, the greater the total attendance...

...The easiest way to deal with the problem is to hide it, by giving higher grades for lower achievement...

...In July 1973, the rolls were declining at a rate of 10-15,000 per month and were down to 1.94 million...

...The administrative reforms went into effect on March 1, 1971, and the legislation followed on October 1. By October 1972, there were 253,000 fewer recipients on the welfare rolls than there had been eighteen months earlier, and t h r e e - q u a r t e r s o f a m i l l i o n fewer than had been projected without the reforms...

...The downward trend has continued steadily into the middle of 1973...

...The third general measure designed to tighten eligibility seeks to strengthen family responsibility through contributions for child support...

...The reasons for the welfare boom have been widely debated...

...If no training is available, the recipient must participate in Community Work Experience Projects (CWEP) and give a maximum of eighty David Brudnoy is a visiting professor of history at the University of Rhode Island, a commentator with WNAC-TV (CBS) and WBGH-TV (PBS) in Boston, a free-lance writer and lecturer, and an associate of The A l t e r n a t i v e . . . A. Lawrence Chickering, once general counsel of the California State Office of Economic Opportunity is now executive director of the Institute for Contemporary Studies...

...It was little wonder that the task force turned up resourceful people who were doing a lot better on welfare than they could off it...

...The task force set forth six overall objectives, which became the basis of the Governor's program...

...Today the counties determine eligibility under contract with the state, under regulations that have been revised and clarified...

...The result is that far more professors teach and do research than are competent to do either, and far more students attend than could benefit--even if they were taught by competent professors...

...The average payment should have been $129 for an average 2.3 children (This latter figure of $129 employs the standards of the Los Angeles County Welfare Department...

...10 The Alternative December 1973 Best of all, while other states (e.g., New Jersey and Kansas) were cutting back welfare outlays across the board, the California reforms permitted the state to increase substantially (by an average 27 percent) grants to those remaining on the rolls who genuinely needed help...

...Whence the educational inflation with its attending evils...

...Open admissions often are also justified as acts of corrective justice to disadvantaged minorities--as though the function of colleges were to equalize social disadvantages rather than to educate...

...In determining eligibility, those who are unemployable because of age, physical handicap, and need in the home, remain under the jurisdiction of the county welfare departments and receive full aid through the established programs...

...Once on the rolls, a recipient became entitled not only to the cash grant, but also to Medi-Cal, free lunches, and food stamps...

...As for instructors, an IQ of 140 was once thought necessary...

...There is a psychological advantage, but in neither case do the returns justify the additional schooling...

...have been marred by malversations at the ballot box (similar, say, to those in the 1960 presidential election tabulation in Cook County, Illinois), by poor voter turnouts COnly 55.7 percent of all Americans old enough to be eligible to vote bothered to cast a vote for president" in 1972, Theodore H. White in his study of that election has observed), and by attempts to smear, embarrass, or obstruct opposition parties and candidates (Watergate, anyone...

...These measures fell into three general categories: eligibility restrictions, the work requirement, and the measures relating to child support and family responsibility...

...Results and Conclusions It is still too early to give definite conclusions about the effects of the 1971 reforms...

...The Reforms The strategy called for reform of beth the welfare system and the state's Medi-Cal system, which wa~ available to all welfare recipients...

...It is wrong, however, to promise a degree when not warranted by expected achievement, and even more wrong to give it---whether or not the nonachievement is disguised by ungraded courses, or grade inflation, or courses in education, or in baking bread, or in other subjects which, whatever their importance, cannot be taught profitably because they lack cognitive content and are irrelevant to the activities for which they are supposed to prepare...

...To be sure, the elections that have been held in the past decade in South Vietnam (or in the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, etc...

...It either allows those who can work to receive welfare as a matter of right (FAP and the negative income tax), or of practice (the present welfare system...

...The experience in California affirms the practicality of rationing by need-which seems a far more equitable system than those that depend on severe acrossthe-board limits on the size of the grants...

...Why is it difficult even for bright students now to accept the authority of alma mater or, indeed, any authority...

...In the past, counties had little economic incentive to pursue collections: they contributed only 16 percent of AFDC monies, while the cost of collection ranged from 10-15 percent...

...In Sacramento, the problem was potentially worse, as liberal Democrats controlled beth houses of the state legislature...

...Ten years later, when the Governor submitted his proposals, the caseload had grown to 2.3 million: at a time when the state economy was booming, for several years California's welfare caseload had been growing at a rate of 40,000 per month, and there were signs the rate of growth was increasing (in fiscal year 1968-1969, the annual growth rate increased from a range of 8-13 percent to a peak of 24 percent in 1970-71...

...Throughout this volume runs a theme heard in a thousand Vietnam teach-ins of the past, namely that to the Vietnamese the making of choices among alternative forms of government, or of candidates for office, '~appeared quite absurd," that because Vietnamese are allegedly more interested in the political mystique of the prevailing "will of Heaven," the proposition that voting in an election might actually change the character of government is "an almost impermissible" notion to them, that the democratic process of balancing out the different constituencies was and is not of interest to them, and so on...

...One argument in favor of open admissions is that, after all, those who prove incapable will be dropped for unsatisfactory grades...

...The recent problems of higher education spring from educational inflation...

...Today the state provides a considerable economic incentive for the counties to pursue collections, by offering a cash incentive bringing the county's interest up to 37.25 percent...

...For several years, the rolls had been growing at a rate of more than 40,000 per month, and by mid-1972 they were expected to reach three million, at a cost of $3 billion...

...There is nothing wrong with letting anyone who wishes attend college courses whenever possible...

...Colleges are non-profit organizations...

...The new system is already showing significant improvements: in one year, collections doubled over the preceding year, and Sacramento County showed the full dimensions of opportunity when, thanks to state reimbursements, its Domestic Relations Department began running at a profit...

...The first stage of reform began almost immediately...

...The overall objective was to increase grants to the truly needy, while reducing grants to all others...

...The 1967 amendments had a worthy objective: to meet the problem of incentives wrought by this 100 percent tax...

...An unprecedentedly high proportion of the college-age group--more than 40 percent-now attends college...

...But in practice instructors hardly ever give failing grades to a majority, or even a plurality of students in their classes...

...In only three months, the task force had uncovered massive abuses in the welfare system, which were hurting both taxpayers and those recipients whose need was real...

...Differences in past records are thought to have been produced by different opportunities--not by different inherent capacities or inclinations...

...In practice, welfare workers began applying the disregards to determine eligibility-thereby violating the spirit of the amendments, which sought to encourage people to work their way off the rolls, not to open new opportunities to get on...

...Just so, and Beedham's remark well applies to the whole of Southeast Asia as it seeks to survive in the Nixonian "peace in our time ." [] In March 1971 Governor Reagan submitted to the California legislature the most comprehensive welfare reform legislation in the history of the state...

...Public support for reform was increased by frequent news stories of widespread abuses and fraud in the system...

...Whereas the unadapted curriculum teaches much to students who learn little, the adapted curriculum teaches little to students who learn little...

...Nevertheless, the numbers alone leave no doubt the reforms have been a spectacular success...

...But even encounters and high grades may not suffice to restore the students' identity and prestige in their own eyes...

...In fiscal year 1971-72 the state of California spent $352 million less for welfare than had been projected, and by the end of 1972 nearly three-quarters of the state's fifty-eight counties had reduced their property taxes...

...In addition, the changes exempted a whole series of work-related expenses ("disregards"), including child care, transportation, and so on...

...If no job is available, they are referred for training to a program such as the Work Incentive Program (WIN...

...The students admitted would not have occupied positions of leadership automatically and independently of their education...

...Without reform, it would be impossible to avoid either massive tax increases or reduction of other state services or both...

...Hence, the result of open admissions is not post facto selection, but grade inflation and lower standards...

...California's experience has caused me to doubt the viability of the negative income tax as a means of welfare reform...

...Prestige is all too easily lost in unsuccessful attempts to master intellectual disciplines...

...Sometimes open admissions are justified by stressing that in the past the offspring of the nobility was admitted even when unfit...

...The problem occurs in AFDC, where most of the welfare caseload is located and where the bulk of the increases came in the sixties...

...This idea was bound to lead to "open admissions," i.e., admission for credit of students who have given no indication of a capacity to profit from college education...

...If this position seemed perverse to some people, it nevertheless reflected a national change in attitude toward welfare...

...Under California law, the absent parent must contribute to the support of the child, but he almost never does...

...All of this is nonsense, not only insofar as Vietnam is concerned, but also insofar as virtually all of the rest of Southeast Asia is concerned...

...In California, the level of welfare payments cannot have been to blame, because real benefits in the state did not increase at all between 1960 and 1969 (cf...

...Prior to the reforms, eligibility bore little relation to employment...

...The background of the reforms can be found in the nation-wide welfare explosion that began in the mid-sixties...

...It will remain so as long as students who are manifestly irrelevant to college education are admitted...

...College is thought to equalize capacities...

...Students drop out anyway--but because of boredom rather than low grades...

...In addition, the total cost of welfare had been reduced from $2.5 billion to $1.96 billion...

...Since their product (knowledge) is irrelevant or inabsorbable to many of its consumers, colleges had to diversify and offer courses relevant to the students they have enticed, if not to higher learning...

...Between 1961 and 1971, while the population of the United States grew 11 percent, the number of AFDC recipients rose 216 percent, from 3.2 to 10.2 million (Roger A. Freeman, Testimony before the Committee on Finance, United States Senate, January 27, 1972, p. 3...

...Even for the results we have, it is difficult to know which reforms produced which results...

...Educating requires learning as well as teaching...

...Promotion and pay largely, if indirectly, depend on enrollments...

...They included controlling the overall cost of welfare, reducing the rolls to the truly needy, reforming county and state administrations, requiring those able to work to do so, increasing assistance to the truly needy, and strengthening family responsibility...

...For comparison: before the reforms there were 2.3 million welfare recipients in California--one out of every nine in the state...

...This is being done successfully...

...Continuing the momentum of the civil rights movement and the war on poverty, welfare workers set about to sell the glories of life on the dole and thereby recruited recipients, who, though legally entitled to receive benefits, had not previously received them...

...Those who are declared employable are placed under the jurisdiction of the Department of Human Resources Development (HRD), which helps them find work...

...This reasoning cannot apply to present open admissions policies...

...In one study of the fourth quarter of fiscal year 1969-70, 17.6 percent of the absent parents contributed an average of $74.95 for support...

...is economic news editor of the Wall S t r e e t Journal . . . Patrick Cosgrave, whose writings appear frequently on beth sides of the Atlantic, is the political commentator for the London S p e c t a t o r . . . J.P...

...Fewer still have the disposition to listen to lectures for four more years after being compelled to do so for twelve...

...The choice was rather simple: either the system was reformed to bring the situation under control, or it would overwhelm the state budget...

...I)uggan is a student at the University of Dallas . . . James Grant is on the staff of the Baltimore Morning Sun . . . Ernest van den Haag is an active lecturer and a professor of sociology at the New School in New York, whose most recent book was P o l i t i c a l V i o l e n c e & C i v i l Disobediance . . . Justus M. van der Kroef is chairman of the political science department at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut . . . Peter Rusthoven is studying at Harvard Law School . . . C. Bascom Slemp is the chief Washington correspondent of The A l t e r n a t i v e . . . Richard Wheeler is a journalist and free-lance writer, whose book, The Children o f Darkness, was published this summer . . . Karl A. Witffogel, one of America's foremost scholars of Chinese history, is presently director of the University of Washington Chinese History Project in New York...

...However doubtful their validity, these propositions are widely accepted, and because they are, the idea is widespread that everybody ought to have a college education, and would benefit from it--regardless of his capacity or previous school record...

...If they do at all it will be because of their college degrees which--the symbol being confused with what it symbolizes--are The Alternative December 1973 11...

...Staffed by key members of his administration, the task force conducted over 700 in-depth interviews with federal, state, and county officials, systematically reviewed federal and state laws and regulations, and studied the organizational and fiscal dimensions of the problem...

...hours a month to a community work project, while continuing to look for permanent employment with HRD social workers, who are specially trained for that purpose...

...Another way of dealing with the problem is to institute "relevant" courses--relevant not to cognitive knowledge, but to headlines and the--often iatrogenic--psychological problems which the students suffer...

...There are two possible approaches to the rationing problem: one minimizes distinctions between different classes of welfare recipients, by treating those who can work the same as those who cannot...

...In the past, social workers had been extremely reluctant to refer cases of nonsupport to law enforcement officials...

...In August 1970, the Governor appointed a special task force to study all aspects of the problem and recommend a total strategy for addressing it...

...Thus, colleges offer "encounter workshops" in which students try to find their identity, of which the attempt to master alien ideas has robbed them...

...For that reason they exempted from the reduction the first $30 of earnings, plus one-third of everything above $30...

...Only about 25 percent of the college-age group have the IQ (110) required by previous standards to benefit from college education...

...To deny the Vietnamese the right of choice by denying that they want it, would be the last disservice the Americans could perform for that unfortunate people," Brian Beedham in his critique of the FitzGerald book has written...

...The administration thinks of students as consumers: the product must be adapted...

...In any event, in his message to the legislature, Governor Reagan warned that without reform of the laws, the rolls could reach three million in California by July 1972...

...The alternative, best represented by the present (reformed) California system, makes a sharp distinction between those who genuinely need help and those who do not...

...The new work requirement established the principle that those who could work must at least be looking for work if they want to receive welfare...

...In January 1971 the Go~ernor appointed a new secretary to the Human Relations Agency, which coordinates all of the state social service departments, and a new director to the State Department of Social Welfare...

...The prolongation of schooling for four years--more in many cases--for nearly half the age group, is not justified by the returns...

...There is reason to believe that the IQ of most is now below that...

...Chief intellectual inspiration for the effort came from the Columbia School of Social Work, where Professors Cloward and Piven were arguing that the welfare system was a plot against the poor and that the only hope for genuine "reform" lay in overloading the rolls and breaking the system (Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Regulating the Poor [New York, Random House], 1971...

...By the end of the sixties the media had us thinking in terms of welfare "rights," and the National Welfare Rights Association for a short while became a major dispenser of wisdom on social matters...

...2) that equal opportunity will make for equal results...

...Part of the eligibility problem was aggravated by the 1967 federal work incentive amendments...

...3) that equal education equalizes opportunity and thus, ultimately, results...

...This is done...

...This was indeed done...

...Since more than 40 percent of the age group now attend college, and only 25 percent have the required IQ, a significant number cannot benefit unless the curriculum is adapted to their understanding, i.e., degraded...

...The students are right then in claiming that college education is often irrelevant to them...

...They are afraid of being blamed for the students' failing and they don't want to be unpopular...

...More likely, the problem was caused by evangelistic welfare bureaucrats, assisted by the 1967 federal welfare regulation amendments...

...Faculties, of course, were inflated in the same proportion...

...It was thought that the students admitted would occupy important and powerful social positions, independently of whether they went to college...

...The expansion has been incredibly rapid...

...Without rationing by need, it must set low levels of payment to all recipients, for the system will only tolerate so much relief...

...Many of the changes are still not fully implemented...

...The need for reform was dramatized by one Oakland woman whose $14,000 annual income somehow still did not prevent her being on the rolls...

...Hence, it was better to educate them to whatever degree they were capable of being educated...

...The work requirement further restricted eligibility...

...Compared to the projected cost without reform, by mid-1973 the annual savings had reached $1 billion...

...his book, V i o l e n c e and t h e Verbal C l a s s , will be published this winter . . . Lindley H. Clark Jr...

...Their job was to help develop legislative reforms and implement a large number of administraThe Alternative December 1973 9 tive reforms, which could be undertaken immediately...

...The task force completed its work in December and submitted its recommendations to the Governor and the Director of Social Welfare (DSW...

...Reorienting them to consider child support a law enforcement function has been a major problem...

...The most controversial (and interesting) measures were those designed to reduce the number of recipients and grant amounts...