Romney Pitches Welfare Plan, House Leader Calls it "Dead on Arrival"
By Cyndi Roy for the State House News Service
       With the state’s federal welfare waiver set to expire in two months, Gov. Romney and lawmakers are battling over separate plans to help needy residents while ensuring that those who are able to are working.
       Romney on Friday filed legislation that would bring the state’s welfare program in line with stricter federal standards and would require an estimated 14,000 more recipients to enter the workforce. The governor’s plan would eliminate current work exemptions for thousands of recipients with disabilities, those with young children, and for pregnant
women. Investments related to this proposal, and already approved by the Legislature, include $8 million for education and training and $6 million for child care.
        At a press conference, Romney said his plan empowers recipients by prodding them to increase their household income. “Without work, our concern is that people just become permanently trapped in a cycle of poverty,” he said. “We want to provide more work opportunities every place where it’s possible.”
       Just over 47,000 residents now receive welfare benefits, down from 103,000 on the rolls before state leaders imposed a limited work requirement on recipients a decade ago. Currently, 28 percent of the welfare population has to either work or engage in job training; Romney's plan would raise that to about 55 percent. The governor says about 10 percent of welfare recipients are engaged in paid work.
       Romney said his goal is to secure work for at least half of those on the rolls by providing aid for job training, child care, and case management. Romney also said his plan recognizes that there will be some recipients who, because they are severely mentally or physically disabled, will never be able to work.
       To bring the state work requirement in line with federal standards, Romney's plan requires 20 hours of work by adult welfare recipients with children who are between the ages of one and five. Recipients who have children age six or older will be required to work at least 30 hours a week. Currently, recipients with children between the ages of two and five are required to work 20 hours per week; those with children between the ages of six and eight are required to work 24 hours per week; and those with children nine or older must work 30 hours per week. Recipients with children under two are currently exempt from any work requirement.
       But lawmakers have another plan and say Romney’s proposal is unrealistic because it’s predicated on the notion that many disabled residents would be able to work. They also say it could cost the state federal dollars by dragging down the state’s work participation rate, as currently exempted populations, they say, would not be able to work, despite the new requirement. Keeping with the decision to keep policy changes out of the budget, lawmakers ignored a similar Romney’s proposal included in his budget.
       “The governor’s proposal is dead on arrival,” Rep. Anthony Cabral (D-New Bedford) said in an interview. “It’s too late to join this debate, not only because we didn’t want to do it in the budget, but we rejected it because ours is a better approach to address the needs of the citizens of Massachusetts.”
        A plan authored by Cabral and Sen. Cynthia Creem (D-Newton), and recently approved by the Children and Families Committee, would create a separate state-funded assistance program to pay benefits to families who would otherwise be ineligible for benefits because they don’t work. Cabral says a separate fund is necessary because many of the 5,600 disabled recipients will not be able to enter the workforce under Romney’s plan. Cabral also said his proposal will not cost additional money because state is already required to spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually in a “maintenance of effort” to capture the federal welfare block grant. Under their proposal, some state money would be placed in an account to cover those people who cannot meet the requirements. Both plans call for additional investments in job training and child care resources to help recipients
       But Romney and administration officials say their plan is “superior” to the Cabral-Creem proposal, which they said creates additional bureaucracies and will do nothing to lift recipients out of poverty.
       “In my view, obviously, I wouldn’t propose a different program if I didn’t think it were a superior program,” Romney said. “I’m convinced that this is a way for us to have the kind of heart that allows people to have the dignity and the opportunity for themselves and their children to recognize the importance of work in their life.”