Block (Grant) Party (1996)

What will the states do differently once they have block grants? The short and simple answer: We will put our ideas to work. Once a block-grant system becomes operational, several key areas of public assistance will be set loose from the dead weight of federal oversight. For the most part, the block-grant system frees states from the shackles of a waiver system that has inhibited innovation and stymied true reform. Prior to recent congressional action, if a state passed an innovative welfare reform initiative, it would have to go to Washington on bended knee and kiss somebody's ring in order to get a waiver to implement the program. In Wisconsin, we know the waiver system all too well. We have sought and received 227 different waivers to implement our innovative welfare programs. And we know that you never get everything you ask for in a waiver request, either. If your waiver asks for 10 items, you are lucky if Washington grants you three. In Wisconsin, the block-grant system means we will be able to implement the most ambitious change in the welfare system that this country has ever seen. The changes we expect to enact are called W-2, or Wisconsin Works. This initiative would end the automatic welfare check. It would end AFDC. And once implemented, W-2 will mark the greatest change in social policy in this country in the past 50 years. In Wisconsin, we will no longer have a welfare system; we will have a work system. In fact, we have already transferred our welfare division from our Department of Health and Human Services to our Department of Industry, Labor, and Human Relations, and have made it a work division. The reason: We are replacing the automatic welfare check with a comprehensive package of work options, job training, health-care and child-care services, and even financial planning. And we know W-2 will succeed in moving people off welfare and into the workforce. Wisconsin has been reforming the welfare system longer than any other state by far, having begun when I took office in 1987. Since then, our AFDC caseload has dropped 30 percent, and we're saving our taxpayers $17 million a month. Imagine what Wisconsin and other states could do with the freedom and flexibility provided by the block-grant system. In a recent study, Princeton University professor Lawrence Mead concluded that Wisconsin cut its welfare dependency because it tied benefits to work. W-2 is based on the philosophy that for those who can work, only work should pay. We assume that everybody is able to work-or at least is able to contribute to society through some work activity within their abilities. The only way to escape welfare or to escape poverty is to work. There is no other way. Therefore, W-2 helps the traditional welfare recipient make the transition to employment and an independent life as quickly as possible. When people seek economic assistance (or what used to be known as AFDC) from the state, they will be required to sign up for work immediately. And it is only by performing some level of work that they will receive economic assistance. W-2 consists of a four-rung job ladder designed to help participants climb out of poverty and government dependence and into a life of independence and self-reliance. The top rung is unsubsidized employment. Under this option, participants who are job-ready will be matched up with the best available job. This is the ideal option-the rung on the ladder that all participants should aspire to reach. A W-2 participant directed into unsubsidized work is also eligible for, depending on his income, food stamps, health care, child care, and the earned-income tax credit. The second rung on the ladder is subsidized employment, or trial jobs. This rung is for people without a work history but with a willing attitude. Employers who hire people on this rung get help in offsetting some of the costs of training and trying out a new employee. The wage subsidy is limited to between three and six months. …