EDITOR’S VIEWPOINT/Listening to the right voices on welfare reform

Welfare reform is a bit like cleaning the bathroom — it has to be done, but whoever does it sure feels icky afterwards.

Right now, President Clinton is feeling icky.

By signing the Welfare Reform Act, he has spawned a fierce debate between liberals and conservatives.

Now, those who call themselves liberals basically have two things in common — they liked Jimi Hendrix’s version of the National Anthem, and they think that any attempts to tinker with welfare are the results of some nefarious plot involving 1) Republicans, 2) big business, 3) people who get their jollies polluting pristine streams and 4) the Marines.

On the other hand, conservatives believe that if you start taking away people’s welfare checks and give them all nice pen and pencil sets, they will automatically become productive members of society.

These people don’t only talk in platitudes, they think in platitudes.

To truly get to the heart of the issue, you need to listen to the voices of the cities and counties. And so far, that is not what Washington has done. Republicans in Congress, who hail largely from suburbs and rural areas, are loathe to give real money to the big cities that are home to the majority of the non-working poor. You can’t blame them; that’s not where their votes are. Putting the states in charge of welfare reform was an easy answer, given the fact that 70 percent of Americans live in states with Republican governors.

“The three Connecticut cities that have the highest percentages of welfare recipients are New Haven, Bridgeport and Hartford,” says a friend of mine who studies such things for a local government organization. “About half of Connecticut’s welfare recipients live in those cities. Do you really think that Connecticut’s Republican legislature is going to target half of the welfare money that state gets to three cities that generally vote Democratic?”

Of course, some Democratic cities don’t exactly help their own cause by doing things like sending their mayors abroad when they’re broke (Washington, D.C.) or letting their elected officials play fast and loose with their operating budgets (Miami).

And it is true that some states, like Wisconsin (which has a Republican governor), have been on the cutting edge of welfare reform since before it was cool.

But the cities and the counties are going to feel it the most when welfare reform becomes a reality. So someone ought to be listening to them.