Changing the face of welfare
Downstate Republicans view welfare differently after seeing
their own hard-working constituents forced onto public aid

Jerry Wright figured he was set for life. He had worked 13 years for the Hyster Co., a lift truck manufacturer in Danville. He'd moved his way up the seniority ladder, accruing good pay and benefits.

But when the company slashed its work force of 1,500 by more than two-thirds, Wright was one of the casualties. He was out of work for nearly a year.

"Being laid off had a significant emotional impact on me," he recalls. "I will never forget it. I feared everything that happens to people — losing our home, losing everything." In a sad twist of fate, Wright's mother died, leaving his family enough money to survive. But the experience was so devastating it led Wright to a new career with the AFL-CIO, where he steers displaced workers in Danville and surrounding Vermilion County to services and training programs.

In the last decade and a half, this area of eastern Illinois has lost thousands of industrial jobs at plants such as Hyster and General Motors. At the same time, shuttered coal mines and a declining number of farms mean many more people are out of work. These job losses have forced hundreds of employees — people with decades of experience and solid work ethics — to swallow their pride and turn to public aid, Wright says. "It's a very difficult transition for people, and there's a lot of resistance."

The changing economy also has left its mark on state Rep. Bill Black, a Republican whose east central Illinois district includes Danville. He's one of several downstate GOP lawmakers from districts where job losses have led to high poverty rates and growing welfare rolls — a different environment from the booming Chicago suburbs represented by fellow Republicans.

"Some of my colleagues need to come down to districts like mine where factory closings have left many workers without jobs," Black says. "It's been a tremendous learning experience for me."

The 10 Illinois counties with the highest unemployment rates, many in the double digits, all are in the southern part of the state. By contrast, unemployment rates in suburban or "collar" counties surrounding metropolitan Chicago are far lower — mostly under 5 percent.

Chuck Cannady, Danville Commercial-News The 1994 closing of Valmont Electric, which employed 500 people, was a blow for the Danville area. Several plants have left east central Illinois during recent years. As high-paying manufacturing jobs have dried up in downstate Illinois, many people have had to turn to welfare to meet their basic needs.

What's more, welfare rates top 18 percent in seven downstate Illinois counties. In far south Alexander County, nearly one in three residents is on welfare. In suburban DuPage County, by comparison, fewer than 3 percent of the population gets public aid. And 1990 census figures showed the median income in the five collar counties topped $40,000.

"If I lived in Schaumburg in suburban Cook County, I might have a different set of perspectives," says Black, who has been floor leader for the House Republicans and recently was named assistant majority leader. "We have to recognize inherent differences in districts. We have to learn to compromise."

As their constituents lose jobs and are forced onto public aid, Black and other downstate lawmakers have shifted their thinking: They no longer believe the stereotype of welfare recipients as unwed black and Hispanic mothers living in Chicago public high-rises. "Those never on public assistance have the idea that recipients are inner-city ladies with 12 kids who have been on welfare for generations," says Rep. Art Tenhouse, a Republican from the Quincy area in western Illinois.

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"But I've learned the majority are people on the beach who need some temporary help."

Black agrees. "Years ago, I was probably inclined to complain about people being 'welfare cheats,'" he says. "But when you have to look a 51-year-old man in the eye who's worked hard all his life and now needs some help... it changes your attitude. He needs the safety net that welfare is supposed to be."

Republicans now are the majority party in both legislative chambers. But in Illinois, where politics is rooted in regions, it can't be assumed that all GOP members will think alike. Although Republican leaders in the House and the Senate are from suburban DuPage County, and most of that party's rank and file hail from the suburbs, many downstate Republicans' votes will be needed to pass a GOP program.

Among the items high on Republican leaders' agenda is welfare reform, and Black says he doesn't want suburban legislators who haven't faced much poverty in their districts to spearhead deep welfare cuts.

"A lot of us go to Springfield and see what the perception of a welfare family is," he says. "Yes, there are some abusers, there are some four-generation families on welfare, but there are people who had to go on public aid who in their worst nightmare never believed it would happen to them."

Mike Cys, spokesman for House Speaker-to-be Lee Daniels of suburban Elmhurst, acknowledges there are different attitudes toward public assistance among House Republicans. "There will be members of our caucus who will say, 'Completely do away with welfare,'" he says. "I think we have to be careful about any cold turkey approaches."

Nonetheless, Cys outlined a Republican welfare reform program that many would describe as punitive. It includes ending welfare benefits after two years, denying grant increases to families on welfare who have more children, requiring teen welfare recipients to live at home with a parent or other "responsible adult," and tying benefits to children's achievement in school.

For his part, Gov. Jim Edgar is promoting work requirements for parents on welfare who have kids 13 and older. He also will push a provision requiring deadbeat parents to participate in a welfare-to-work program if they are using joblessness as an excuse for not making child support payments.

This map shows high poverty rates in southern Illinois; it also is worth noting that the counties with the highest unemployment rates are also in the state's southern tip. They are Gallatin, Saline, Franklin, Alexander and Perry.

Divisions among state Republicans over welfare reform mirror the national GOP debate. U.S. House Republicans, led by Speaker-to-be Newt Gingrich of Georgia, plan to propose a federal welfare bill that sets strict limits on welfare spending. Food Stamps and child nutrition programs would be replaced with lump payments to each state. An alternative was offered by U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas; it calls for the federal government to take over Medicaid and leave states responsible for everything else.

In the meantime, the Illinois agenda is "not something that's going to be discussed solely within the Republican caucus," Cys says. "I don't think Democrats think welfare is working too well, either. There are suburban versus downstate versus city interests — regional differences rather than just party differences. The idea is we can't keep the giveaways."

Across the Capitol rotunda, Mark Gordon, spokesman for Senate President James "Pate" Philip of suburban Wood Dale, doesn't see the expected welfare measures as punitive. "What we've proposed in the past have not been attempts to punish or hurt welfare recipients. One of the main complaints is that welfare is counterproductive — for instance, rewarding people by paying them for having more children. Restricting this is not as much an attempt to punish as an effort to stop rewarding."

Keivy Brown, director of public policy for the Public Welfare Coalition, a statewide advocacy group, says he expects Republican leaders will be able to pass whatever measures they want. "The wild card in the process will be the new Republicans — the ones from rural districts, the one-industry towns that have seen the job losses." Of the 13 House seats gained by the GOP, nine are downstate. "I think these are the folks we need to listen to," Brown says.

The new Republican lawmakers hail from rural areas all over Illinois — from farming communities outside Rockford to far southern towns where coal mining jobs once were plentiful. "We've seen huge job losses," says freshman Rep. Mike Bost of Murphysboro, whose district includes Union County, at the state's southern tip. One in five residents there receive public aid — a statistic that surprises most because he thought the number would be even higher. "I'm going to work very closely with Democrats from my area because we've all seen the same economic situations," he says. "We've all seen these devastating job losses."

It wasn't too long ago that Black would have agreed with conservative, even restrictive welfare reforms. But now that he's seen the economic realities of people on welfare he has other ideas on how to improve things.

"I hope we make these cuts with a scalpel — a really sharp one," says Black. "Wisconsin's got a two-year limit on benefits, and we'll need to study that carefully. But I hope we truly will work toward incentives rather than punishments. That's

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Ways to make welfare effective Reprints of Illinois Issues' 1994 'welfare series' available Welfare doesn't work. That was the conclusion of a six-month investigation of welfare in Illinois undertaken last year by Illinois Issues under the auspices of a grant from the Woods Fund of Chicago. The first of the two-part series was published in February and examined present welfare programs in Illinois. Among its conclusions were that: • Basic welfare benefits are insufficient for most public aid families to meet monthly expenses. • Medicaid leaves hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans without health coverage and thousands more with inadequate medical care. • Public housing projects or housing subsidies often leave residents in substandard and overpriced shelter. • The state does not effectively collect child support payments from noncustodial parents, and when it does collect, keeps most of the money rather than using it to support families on welfare. • Programs to move welfare recipients to work produce too few jobs and often produce jobs that fail to pay enough to support a family better than — or even as well as — living on welfare. On the other hand, there is a way out of welfare. That is the conclusion of the second article of the series, published in April. That article examined welfare-to-work programs and found that: • Rigid time limits (such as two years) for how long someone can remain on welfare can be counterproductive to helping a person actually trade welfare for work. • Many welfare recipients need to build a host of skills and competencies — from basic academic skills to positive work attitudes — to prepare for the work force. • A case manager approach, in which a social worker assists the client in a variety of ways, from a pat on the back to a shoulder to cry on, is the most effective mechanism for long-term success. • Beginning with a job, even a low-level, entry-pay job, often puts a welfare client on a surer path to long-term employment than beginning the process with school or training programs. • Moving from welfare to work often comes in fits and starts, and takes time, patience and willingness to indulge small, incremental steps out of welfare. The present system doesn't work. But many people have found creative ways to move people from welfare to work. Free reprints of the articles, written by Donald Sevener, are available by writing to Illinois Issues, Sangamon State University, Springfield, IL 62794; or fax your request to(217)786-7257. The articles are also available electronically at no charge through Access Illinois. Dial (217) 787-6255 with your modem, follow the simple, free registration procedures and download the articles from the Illinois Issues menu.

where we steered wrong in the past."

He and Tenhouse worry about legislation that would limit the number of children welfare recipients can have and still receive benefit increases.

"Ideas like these make great press releases," says Tenhouse. "But those of us who are prolife are having a hard time with this. We're saying, 'Have this child, but we're not going to help feed or clothe it.'"

Black prefers measures that would ease the welfare-to-work transition. "With the Project Chance welfare-to-work program, for example, the medical card for people's kids is removed and we won't subsidize child care," he says. "We're going to have to continue subsidizing day care for welfare moms as they go back to work. They can't afford to pay $350 a month for day care, $50 a month for medical expenses and the market rate for rent on a minimum-wage paycheck. Not when they're lucky to net $1,000 a month."

Extending certain types of aid is a worthwhile investment, Black says. "I know there are people who abuse the system, but there are people who would get off welfare with certain help. If that means day care assistance for a longer period, or a medical card for 18 months rather than a shorter period, it would be better to assist someone.

"Is everybody gonna share my thought? Absolutely not," he acknowledges. "I didn't know about these problems until I saw them myself. Do punitive measures work? If they did, most prisons would be unnecessary. It's better to start with incentives."

While state lawmakers grapple with Illinois welfare reforms, they also have an eye on federal proposals. Republicans sound especially interested in those that would give states block grants to spend and stop guaranteeing benefits to everyone who qualifies.

"We need to move toward more flexibility for states," says Black. "Supposedly, we should know our own best needs. If a person in Danville is laid off but has his house paid for, the house is seen as an asset. The current system would make him sell the house, spend down the money, then put him in public housing. It takes self-sufficient people and says, 'We'll help, but only if you're dependent.' You've got to sell your car, your house. Well, if you don't have a car, you can't look for a job."

Tenhouse says he'd like to see the federal government take over Medicaid and give states the flexibility to set up welfare programs that fit different regions' needs and don't require people to spend all their assets to get temporary help. "A general monolithic model is used nationally, but the needs just aren't the same in every state or every community."

Black says circumstances in districts like his dictate a careful approach to welfare reform.

"One of the things I get touchy about with my colleagues — and granted, I don't understand DuPage and Lake counties — is that they don't always understand the people here are descendants from families who have been here 150 years," he says. "They haven't seen plant and mine closings, and bankruptcy forms. Some people can re-train, but damn it, some of them worked their whole lives and now they're out of a job.

"This is not going to be an easy task," Black says. "It could become a heated regional battle. I hope we don't allow ourselves to fall into those traps."

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