ARTICLE: Saving the Safety Net

Almost everyone agrees that welfare reform needs to incorporate the private sector. One experiment that has received much attention is the Wisconsin W-2 program. Here is one Wisconsin pastor's perspective on this program.

There is common agreement that welfare in the United States has become a monstrous consumer of public money from which society receives little payback. In recent months the Wisconsin welfare reform program has been lifted up as an example for others to follow--but not by me.

I serve as pastor in a small urban area of about 30,000 people. The neighborhood around our church is lower middle class, with the "underclass" scattered among us. About 99 percent of our county is Caucasian; our poor are as likely as anyone to belong to our town's "old families." For many, a missed paycheck drops a family from the lower middle class to the underclass.

Once in a while, strangers from the neighborhood come to our parsonage door in financial distress. We give them emergency help for gas, food, or other necessities. But recently, a letter from the county interrupted our routine. Entitled "The Role of the Churches in Welfare Reform," it was enlisting me, as a local pastor, to become an integral part of the new W-2 state welfare program.

Henceforth, the letter said, applicants for Aid to Families with Dependent Children must solicit their relatives, other agencies, and local churches for support before applying to the government. The letter then asked us to join a list of those to whom applicants could come for help--not emergency help, but continuing help.

The next step, the letter said, was "Pay for Performance." AFDC benefits would no longer subsidize most stay-at-home parents caring for their dependent children but only those who accept government-provided jobs outside the home. Cash benefits would be limited to earned income; other benefits would include health care and child care. These benefits are limited to two years at a time and five years total in a lifetime.

The invitation to become an advocate for the new system had the opposite of its intended effect. I oppose it because income from the private sector is too sporadic to provide for people on a sustaining basis. The state should not rely on resources it can neither enforce nor guarantee. The Capitol Report from the Wisconsin Catholic Conference has it right: the proper goal of welfare reform is to "reduce the number of people living in poverty, not just reduce the number of people on welfare."

The Wisconsin program has popular appeal because it focuses on moral failure as the principal contributor to the creation of the underclass--illegitimacy, alcoholism, undisciplined education, lack of a work ethic, and the other usual suspects. Moral causes do lie at the root of poverty sometimes; but if we are going to focus on sin, let's do evangelism; if we are going to meet physical needs, let's offer food, housing, clothing, education. Governments may punish criminals, but it is not their task to punish sinners.

In this moralistic atmosphere, economic factors in the creation of the underclass have gone largely unnoticed. For instance, an attractive, articulate, young childless couple in our community had their hours drastically cut at the retail stores where they worked. These two able-bodied wage-earners could not find enough work to maintain a household for two people in our city; so the churches helped them return to their hometown where a fast-food job, at under $7 an hour, was waiting for the young man. He was happy to get it.

This couple illustrates what happens to those at the bottom of our economic system. In free enterprise, a business cannot remain competitive by paying employees it does not need. Competition requires the fewest and best workers available at the lowest possible wages.

The bottom of the system consists of those not quite good enough to be hired, those who apply after the jobs are filled, and those not quite disabled enough to qualify for pension. An arbitrary limit, such as "two years and out," with no provision for general relief, has no plan for the care of these persons after the limits are exhausted. In theory, they may starve without the government taking any responsibility for them. The premise is absurd; by itself, it is enough to declare the Wisconsin reform program unworkable.

This issue goes far beyond Paul's admonition that "anyone unwilling to work should not eat" (2 Thess. 3:10, NRSV), which is about disciplining a lazy Christian. We would do better to look to Deuteronomy. There we find laws to protect both the property-owner and the poverty-stricken. Property rights are protected by the prohibition against stealing, but those with property are commanded to provide for the poor: the poor are granted gleaner rights (24:19-21); debts are canceled every seventh year (15:1); and generosity is commended for the poor in the land (15:10-11).

These Deuteronomic provisions were not suggestions for private charity. These were laws for the entire society. Surely their general application today is straightforward, though specific strategies may be debated: Society as a whole is responsible not only to protect the rights of property and free enterprise, but also to provide for those who, for whatever reason, have no role in the economic system. Only the government, by common consent, has the right and power to represent the whole society--to act on behalf of those left over and left out, and through taxation to require everyone to support its programs on their behalf.

Everett L. Wilson is pastor of the Marinette (Wis.) First Covenant Church.

Copyright © 1996 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.