President William Clinton
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500

                                                        July 31, 1996

Dear President Clinton,

I strongly urge you to reconsider your decision to sign the welfare
legislation now before Congress.  The elimination of the entitlement status
of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) Program, as well as
deep cuts in the food stamp program and the denial of assistance to legal
immigrants, will greatly increase hunger and poverty among children and
other Americans.

During your first Presidential campaign, you told American voters that you
would be the first President who was an avowed advocate for children.  It
would be a betrayal of their trust to sign the most anti-children piece of
legislation in American history, condemning more than a million children to
a life of poverty.

While most Americans believe that the welfare system should be reformed to
focus on work, they want reform that will move participants into jobs, not
into shelters, soup kitchens and doorways.  Rev. Fred Kammer, President of
Catholic Charities USA, has described the Senate and House welfare bills as
"largely a sham designed to appease the ignorant and to pander to our worst
prejudices in an election year."  During your administration, welfare for
corporate interests has continued to grow while both major parties posture
over how best to take food out of the mouths of poor children.

It is clear that there are significant problems with the present welfare
system.  It fails to provide families with an income adequate to enable
them to provide their families with basic necessities such as food,
housing, utilities and clothing.  It often penalizes married couples and
imposes barriers to those seeking work.  However, imposing arbitrary time
limits on welfare will not magically eliminate poverty or produce a full
employment economy, especially if the Federal Reserve continues to raise
interest rates whenever they fear unemployment has dropped so low that it
is likely to cause inflation.  Increasing the number of people desperately
looking for work, without increasing the existing number of jobs, will
further depress the wages for low-income workers.

Rather than signing legislation that will punish poor women and children by
cutting off their benefits when they fail to obtain employment, we need
legislation to create decent paying jobs for all those able to work.  We
need to "Make Work Pay" by raising the minimum wage at least a $1 an hour
above what Congress is presently considering; substantially increasing the
Earned Income Disregard so that welfare participants can keep more of their
earnings from work; and providing universal access to health and child
care.  The lack of access to child care still remains the biggest barrier
for parents trying to leave welfare for employment.  Public opinion polls
show strong public support for increased investment in job creation, job
training and education.

As Professor David Ellwood (a prominent former member of your welfare
reform team) recently pointed out in a July 22nd op-ed in the New York
Times, "No bill that is likely to push more than a million additional
children into poverty -- many in working families -- is real reform."
Children would be even worse off if states cut their own spending for
income assistance by up to 20% as allowed in the Senate bill (25% in the
House bill); states could cut an additional 8% if certain standards are
met.  The Urban Institute released a report estimating that the welfare
legislation would increase the number of poor children by 1.1 million and
would also make poor an additional 1.5 million adults (assuming no
reduction in state welfare spending).  More than one-fifth of all families
with children would see their incomes fall by about $1,300 per year.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that between 2.5 and 3.5 million
children would lose all assistance once a five-year limit was fully phased
in.  States would have the option to impose earlier time limits; for
instance, a two-year time limit would impact approximately 5.5 million
children.

Senator Moynihan earlier this year warned his colleagues to remember their
vote on welfare reform when the sight of children sleeping on heating
grates becomes common in our communities within the next decade; I hope you
take the Senator's warning to heart.

I urge your administration to publicly estimate the number of children who
would be impacted by the legislation presently being considered.

The bill would also allow states to impose a Family Cap, denying benefits
to children born to parents receiving welfare.  The average AFDC family
size has steadily declined over the past twenty years and is about equal to
the size of the average non-AFDC family.  Comparative studies indicate that
the national child bearing rate for women on welfare is considerably lower
than that for the general population.  In addition, the longer a women is
on welfare, the less likely she is to give birth, (Mark Rank, "Living on
the Edge: The Realities of Welfare in America, 1994."  The State-contracted
study by Rutgers University of the pilot program in New Jersey has not
found any change in the birth rate after the Family Cap was imposed -- it
only found children being forced deeper into poverty.  There is no reason
to allow this failed experiment in social engineering to be replicated
nationwide.

The bill ends the federal guarantee of cash assistance for children and
families, replacing it with a flat block grant that would not respond to
growing need when unemployment and poverty rises.  The $2 billion
contingency fund would only have covered little more than one-third of
additional federal funding states needed during the last recession.  One of
the lessons of the Great Depression is that infusion of federal dollars to
combat poverty is most needed during difficult economic times when state
and local governments do not have the resources to respond.

The depth of the proposed cuts in food stamps is scandalous.  Food stamp
cuts of about $28 billion over six years will reduce the average food stamp
benefit from an already inadequate 80 cents per person per meal to 66 cents
(taking inflation into account).  The Children's Defense Fund (CDF)
estimates that 14 million children will lose food because of these cuts.

While proponents of the welfare bill claim it will convert the welfare
system into a "work-based" (i.e., not a job-based) program, the bill fails
to provide the resources necessary to achieve even this limited goal, while
providing new incentives to cut off aid rather than help parents find work
and presenting the risk of sharp curtailment of child care aid to working
poor families outside the welfare system.

Under current law, states can already require the vast majority of parents
receiving AFDC to participate in a work program.  However, only about 20%
of AFDC adults were working or participating in JOBS (Job Opportunities and
Basic Skills) activities each month, even though states could have imposed
requirements on 70% to 80% of parents. The principal reason of the
shortfall in "work activity" participation is that expanding participation
costs money -- money Congress has not been willing to provide.  JOBS funds
have been limited, and most states have not even drawn down the full amount
available to their state (in FY 94, only 77% of available JOBS funding was
drawn down; only 17 states pulled down their full allocation).  States have
also frequently sought to limit participation because of the cost of child
care.

CBO estimates that the bill falls $13 billion short over six years of what
would be needed to meet their expanded work participation requirements.
The shortage of federal funds for work programs is compounded by provisions
permitting states to withdraw large amounts of state funds from work and
income support programs.  The bill actually allows a state to be counted as
having met the work requirements if the state does nothing more than reduce
its caseload by cutting off assistance to needy families.  CBO estimates
that due to the costs and administrative problems related to increasing
participation in work activities, most states will simply accept the
financial penalties associated with non-compliance.

States seeking to comply with the work requirements will face steadily
increasing pressure to curtail child care aid to working poor families.
The bill imposes caps on the level of federal funding for child care
available to states each year.  After FY 98, states would be forced to
redirect funds currently expended for working poor families through the
Transitional Child Care and At-Risk Child Care Programs in order to address
the need for child care to meet the work requirements.  According to the
Center for Law and Social Policy, by FY 2001 states would fall short of the
child care funding needed to meet the work requirements even if they
redirected every dollar currently expended for TCC and At-Risk Child Care
-- a reduction of about $1 billion a year in child care for working poor
families outside the welfare system.

Despite repeated and overwhelming support for job training and education in
public opinion polls, the welfare bill actually makes it more difficult for
states to provide access to such programs.  Over half of all participants
in the JOBS program in FY 94 were involved in some form of job training and
education.  The proposed legislation would only allow 5% of AFDC adults to
count toward the work participation rate by participating in education or
training programs in FY 97.  (In years after FY 99, when the required hours
of participation to count toward the rates begin to exceed 20 hours a week,
states would be able to count some education and training activities
towards the hours in excess of 20.)

The cuts in assistance to legal immigrants are deeper than in the
legislation you have already vetoed.  The overwhelming majority of
immigrants are legally banned from receiving assistance, going even further
than the previous bills: the original House welfare bill last year exempted
legal immigrants who are over 75 or severely disabled; the Senate version
made exceptions for victims of domestic violence and people who would face
severe hunger or homelessness.  Particularly severe are the provisions that
would allow states to deny Medicaid to large numbers of legal immigrants.
Most poor elderly and disabled immigrants are likely to find purchase of
individual health insurance prohibitively expensive -- imagine an 80-year
old poor legal immigrant with a heart condition trying to purchase a
policy.

The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law estimates that 315,000 low-income
children with severe disabilities would be denied SSI assistance over the
next six years by eliminating the individualized functional assessment
(IFA).  The IFA allows disability examiners to decide if the impairment
significantly interferes with the child's ability to do everyday things
most children the same age can do.  Critics claim the IFA allows children
to fake disabilities -- such as emotional and behavioral problems -- to
qualify for assistance.  However, none of the various studies to date has
found evidence of widespread abuse.

Do not sacrifice the fate of poor children and adults to election year
posturing.  Do not destroy this country's safety net that was forged from
the pain and despair of the Great Depression.  The welfare legislation
presently being considered in Congress will not move more poor people into
jobs, it will only drive them deeper into poverty.  It is one thing to
require individuals to accept personal responsibility to do what they can
to make a better life for themselves and their families.  It is another
thing to punish poor people for the mistakes of political and economic
leaders who are more concerned with the maximization of profits for a few
wealthy individuals than they are with providing adequate employment
opportunities and a decent standard of living for all Americans.

Sincerely,

/Ralph Nader/s

Ralph Nader
P. O. Box 19312
Washington, DC 20036
202-387-8030

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