by William E. Spriggs
�Guest Columnist�

The current welfare debate in Washington is beltway politics at its worst.

Six years after the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, Congress must reauthorize the nation�s safety net for poor children. Obviously, Congress has changed the philosophy of the program formerly called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), re-christened in its new guise, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).

In fact, children are no longer mentioned in the proposed legislation, and this has cleared the way for the discussion to degenerate into a contest over who can be tougher on poor mothers. So, now we have a debate that some are using to castigate the morality of single mothers�and one which is woefully short on discussing children, or for that matter, the realities of the program.

Presumably, the political trade-off was for TANF to be a block grant to state-based programs to move poor mothers into the job market, as opposed to AFDC, which was an entitlement to support the housing, clothing and feeding of poor children.

The philosophy of TANF was that mothers could lift their children out of poverty by working, and that more money needed to go to work supports like child-care and transportation assistance than to poor families. Many states took that to heart, and devised programs to help make that happen; some other states did nothing.

But Congress is not debating the success of some state programs and setting them as models to the failing states. Instead, it is increasing the requirement that TANF recipients work, and work only.

For the mothers, the change in programs instituted in 1996 had a catch. It assumed that mothers receiving benefits would do better to follow a government-imposed view that work would diminish their poverty.

Now, however, studies are showing that mothers on AFDC were in some ways better off.

Research is showing that mothers on AFDC were more likely to get married than mothers on TANF. Apparently, mothers on AFDC spent time developing and nurturing relationships that led to marriage, and often led out of poverty, too.

And recently, the National Urban League Institute for Opportunity and Equality published results showing that mothers on AFDC were more likely to go to college than mothers on TANF.

In fact, from 1996 to 1998 college enrollment for welfare recipients dropped by 20 points although it simultaneously increased for other poor women during those years.

The decline can be partially explained by examining state policies toward postsecondary education. In 1996, only nine states did not allow welfare recipients to count college as a work activity. But by 1998, 25 states did not allow welfare recipients to count college as a work activity. State policies implemented after welfare reform accounted for at least 13 percent of the decrease in the probability that recipients would go to college compared to other non-recipient poor women ages 18 to 35.

Most alarming is the finding that strict "work first" state policies are most detrimental to Black recipients.

The median income for American women with a high school education is a little over $15,100 a year (meaning half make less), barely above the official poverty line of about $14,900 for a family of three. By contrast, college educated women have a median income of twice that amount. Little wonder that under AFDC, without any restriction on their time, women with high school diplomas chose to pursue a college education. And, given that half of welfare recipients are high school graduates, that would be the soundest advice to give them.

In addition to the mother�s income, and lifting children out of poverty, the mother�s education is a key predictor of children�s life outcomes�access to health care, educational attainment, and the list goes on. Model behavior illustrated by mothers showing their children that education is the way out of poverty is essential for increasing the life chances of impoverished children. It provides a means for stopping intergenerational poverty. And, given our national shortage of teachers and nurses and computer programmers, it is in our best interests to encourage more college attendance, not less.

Unfortunately, the House of Representatives prefers to moralize and tell poor mothers that work first, and not education, is best for them. The contrast with the congressional push on the estate tax�to exempt the untaxed value of America�s richest estates versus instituting a policy that has been proven to encourage welfare recipients to enroll in college�could not be more stark.

It appears politics favor the wealthy who reap the benefits of inheritance, unearned wealth, over compassion toward and common-sense attitudes about poor mothers and the futures of their children.