Support workfare, enforce child support, state flexibility
Let’s correct the things wrong with the current welfare system. Here are a few ideas and guiding principles:
We should encourage states across the country to build on the most promising reforms already at work in places like New York, Maryland,
and Colorado.
Pass tough laws to hold absent parents responsible for child support.
Make work a requirement for receiving benefits.
provide skills training and child care so recipients can get and keep outside jobs.
Remove the perverse
incentives. Perhaps the most important factor in the success of the CAP program in New York was that we eliminated the rule that said to welfare recipients, “For every dollar you earn in the marketplace, expect to lose a dollar in benefits.”
Continue
to give the states flexibility to experiment with sensible new reforms.
Establish federal safeguards to protect the poor from the possibility of cutting contests between the states.
Use every means we have to fight fraud, abuse, and waste.
