LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Welfare Reform: Work
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Jason A. Turner is a Visiting Fellow at The Heritage Foundation , specializing in welfare reform issues. Before joining Heritage, Turner served as welfare commissioner of New York City where he created the largest work program in the country. Under Turner’s watch, welfare caseloads in the city dropped by 47 percent and more than 400,000 former welfare recipients were placed in jobs. Turner is ... well known as one of the chief architects of the Wisconsin welfare-to-work program under former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson. He worked as Director of Family Assistance at the Department of Health and Human Services during the first Bush Administration, where he oversaw the federal welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
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In keeping with welfare reform's increased emphasis on moving families toward self-sufficiency and into the workforce, welfare caseloads continue to decline dramatically. Caseloads are at their lowest level since 1969, and the welfare rolls have fallen by nearly half since the beginning of this Administration. The number of recipients fell from 14.1 million in January 1993 to 7.3 million in March 1999, a decline of nearly 6.8 million people. In addition, the rolls have declined by 4.9 million people, or 40 percent, since enactment of the welfare law in August 1996.
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The welfare reform law ... will have a major impact on the labor market, as the large influx of native-born welfare recipients who are forced off the rolls will have to compete with immigrants for low-skilled jobs. Such jobs are already in short supply, often with five or ten applicants per opening. Indeed, that is why many working-age immigrants take welfare; many are able to find work only sporadically and turn to welfare both to fill in the gaps and to supplement the very low wages they receive. The Economic Policy Institute has warned that the sudden influx of natives forced off the welfare rolls by the new law could erode the already-meager wages in low-skilled jobs.
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Welfare reform changed all that. Strict work requirements sharply curtailed discretionary time. The five-year time limit meant that long-term welfare support was no longer an option. Faced with a dramatic shift in incentives, some women who would have gone on welfare did not do so, while many on welfare chose to leave welfare much sooner than they would have.
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December 1997 marked the end of year one of TANF and federal welfare reform. A strong economy and a focus on employment have helped Georgia's welfare rolls to decrease steadily over the past three years. But the work is far from over. During the next four years, Georgia must meet higher levels of federal work participation rates, which will reach 50 percent by the year 2002. As the more skilled recipients leave the welfare rolls for jobs, DFCS faces the challenge of helping long-term, hard-to-place recipients become self-sufficient. These recipients may have problems that are more severe Ñ problems such as illiteracy, substance abuse, and mental and physical disabilities.
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East Capitol Street begins at the U.S. Capitol, where a landmark welfare reform law was confected this year. It ends in the bleakness of East Capitol Dwellings, where government intends to wean a community from a generations-old way of life. The way President Clinton tells it, the poor must now relinquish "the degradation of welfare dependency" for "the pride and dignity of work." A month with Peeler and Jones suggests that the distinction rarely breaks so clean.
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