Not All of Welfare Needs to be Reformed

March-April 1997

An Interview with Wendell E. Primus

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Last August, when President Clinton signed the welfare-reform bill into law, Wendell Primus, a deputy assistant secretary at the Health and Human Services Department, resigned in protest. An elder in the Washington, D.C. Christian Reformed Church, Dr. Primus has long been active in government on the basis of Christian conviction. He served the House Ways and Means Committee as chief economist for years before joining the Clinton administration in 1993.

James Skillen and Stanley Carlson-Thies interviewed Primus in his office at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on January 10.

Question: Let's start with your resignation last August. Why did you do it?

PRIMUS: I believe that the welfare-reform law will have a drastic effect on children. It cuts over $50 billion in federal dollars and allows states to cut up to $40 billion more over the next six years. My own research and that of others convinces me that over 1 million children will be placed in poverty as a result of the law, and many families with children will be made poorer. And the bill does little to increase self-sufficiency among welfare recipients.

Question: But your answer assumes that nothing changes except the removal of federal dollars. Yet states are changing their laws and responding in new ways to the cut back of federal funds.

PRIMUS: I am not optimistic about new efforts being sufficient to overcome the federal cutbacks. Much of the rhetoric about welfare reform was about moving people from welfare to work. However, with the exception of some additional child-care funding, no additional dollars were provided to pay for transportation, job search, or work programs.

Furthermore, the new law places harsh restrictions on legal immigrants, sets arbitrary time limits for ending support, no longer recognizes welfare as an entitlement, and shifts most responsibility to the states through block grants. This is motivated more by the desire to cut federal spending than to bring about genuine reform.

Question: Doesn't your point of view imply that the government should be the family of last resort to those in need? And isn't that precisely what led to some of the problems of welfare dependency for some recipients?

PRIMUS: I recognize that government cannot do everything. The old system was not performing well for some people. In fact, I believe that government should be even tougher in demanding personal responsibility from the fathers of children in poverty. But it also needs to assist unemployed absent fathers find work so they can pay child support.

Having said all that, however, I still believe that government can and should provide the basic necessities of food, shelter and clothing to people. Churches should offer equally important support in the form of love, encouragement, and one-on-one support.

If we did not live in a fallen world, but rather in one free of abuse, unemployment and addiction, there would be little need for government and welfare. Because this is not the case, government must hold parents accountable to children and hold men and women accountable to each other. Churches must exhort and teach about the basic dignity of persons and how to love each other, particularly our children and spouses.

Question: So you agree that the old welfare system was too soft in some respects, particularly regarding male responsibility, and that perhaps some of the reforms states might enact under the new system could help?

PRIMUS: The welfare system is too sexist—it expects females to be parents, caretakers and nurturers. The main rhetorical focus of the new law is on putting mothers to work. We blame females that there are roughly 9 million children on welfare in America. Males should be held equally accountable. And males who see impregnation of females as a sign of manhood reflect a culture that is void of dignity between men and women. I think the system should be tougher on fathers who abandon their children and easier on those who care for the children. But this needs to be backed by laws at the national level and not left to individual states.

The law President Clinton signed could have been better. It should have provided the funding necessary to move recipients to work rather than merely mandating that they do so. Those of us, especially Christians, who are not poor should imagine ourselves in reversed roles and "do unto others as we would have them do unto us."