There's room for reasonable people to disagree over the wisdom of New Jersey's historic new prescription for welfare reform. But it's hard to argue with New Jersey's diagnosis about what ails much of the present welfare system.
A few days ago, New Jersey became the first state in the nation to freeze welfare payments to mothers who bear more children after they begin collecting welfare benefits. Although some states limit increases in benefits beyond a certain point, no other state refuses benefits for additional children born to a welfare recipient.If this understandably controversial provision passes muster after a mandatory review by the federal government, the New Jersey law is sure to be challenged in the courts. Critics contend that freezing welfare payments would punish innocent children and provide an incentive for abortion.
But it's hard to believe the courts would sustain such a challenge, since there is no legal or constitutional right to receive welfare. So it would help to cool the overheated rhetoric and take a calm, clear look at what New Jersey has done.
Though the New Jersey law has attracted national attention and could figure in the presidential election campaign, don't expect a rush by many states to copy it. Even conservative states that embrace the principles behind the new law are bound to be deterred by its steep price tag - $22 million the first year, $27 million the second and $44 million in the third year.
The steep price results from other provisions in the New Jersey law that have been largely overlooked in the controversy over the freeze on benefits. One such provision requires welfare recipients to participate in education or job training or risk losing some or all of their benefits. Another provision allows members of welfare families to work and earn up to 50 percent of the amount of their family's welfare check without losing any of those benefits. Still another eliminates penalties used to compute welfare for married couples.
The strangest provision is one that allows a mother receiving welfare to marry without her benefits being reduced - but only if her husband meets three conditions: 1. He can't receive welfare himself. 2. His salary cannot bring the family's earnings to more than 150 percent of the poverty level, or $20,100 for four. 3. He cannot be the biological father of the children for whom the woman is receiving benefits.
In other words, if a single mother marries the man who fathered her children, she will lose aid. If she marries a different man, her household can make money. How on earth is this requirement supposed to strengthen families, a claim made for the New Jersey law by its supporters?
But those same supporters are certainly on target in noting that the present welfare system backfires by paying recipients to be non-productive and that the way to reduce the problem is to teach recipients to take more control of their lives.
Despite tough economic conditions, much of the poverty and consequently much of the welfare burden in America results from teenage promiscuity, unwed pregnancies, divorce, and failure to graduate from high school.
Contrary to what the critics claim, New Jersey is not violating the right of welfare recipients to keep having children or to make other personal decisions. But the right to make such decisions does not translate into a right to have taxpayers subsidize the consequences of those decisions.
By all means, the new law in New Jersey could use some fine tuning. But major surgery is not in order. Instead, this state and others should be allowed to experiment with a broad range of welfare reforms. Only that way can the country discover what really works.