Paul Davidson

USA TODAY

President Trump’s plea this week to get millions of welfare recipients back to work sounded like a Republican clarion call from the early 1990’s.

After all, sweeping welfare reform under the Clinton Administration in 1996 has sharply reduced the nation’s welfare rolls.

Yet Trump, in his first address to Congress on Tuesday, said “Millions lifted from welfare to work is not too much to expect,” repeating a message he has voiced several times since he was elected in November.

Are there still millions of people who can work but don't?

Maybe, depending on how the president defines "welfare."

The number of welfare recipients has fallen steadily the past two decades. There were 638,000 adults and 2.8 million children on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) in fiscal 2016. That’s down from 4 million adults and 8.7 million children in 1997, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).

With fewer than 1 million adults receiving benefits, it doesn’t sound like there's much opportunity to get millions back to work.

The 1996 welfare reform bill required recipients to be working, looking for a job or getting training. It also limited how long they could stay in the program and restricted immigrants' access to it.

In exchange, states received a fixed annual amount — a total of $16.5 billion nationally — in federal block grants for TANF and they got more flexibility in how they used the money. Before, they got varying amounts each year based on need.

With unemployment under 5% and employers struggling to find workers, there would seem to be ample opportunity for welfare recipients to get jobs. Yet many recipients don’t have the required skills to work, don't qualify for disability even though they are mentally or physically ill, or simply don’t know how to job hunt, says LaDonna Pavetti, vice president of family Income support for CBPP.

Tight labor market allows more job seekers to call the shots

Here’s the rub, and at least partial support for Trump’s goal:

Before welfare reform, the vast majority of the federal grants were earmarked for cash payments, and a small amount was for work-related activities, such as training and help with job searches, child care and emergency aid, according to CBPP.

But today 25% of the money is used for cash payments, 17% for childcare, 10% for work activities and related support, and the rest for other things, Pavetti says. Those include other state services for poor families, such as pre-K education and child welfare, which are legal but largely run counter to the purpose of the reform bill.

“States do not focus on helping people find a job,” says Ron Haskins, one of the architects of the welfare reform legislation and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

And many states are not strictly enforcing the work requirement, Haskins says.

At the same time, the share of poor families receiving welfare has fallen to 23% from 68% two decades ago, Pavetti says, partly because many can’t or won’t meet new bureaucratic requirements under the law.

So Trump and Congress could force states to devote more of the money to job searches and training, an approach Haskins advocates. But Pavetti says that would set up a brutal political battle, noting they’re accustomed to using the money for other services.

“States don’t want to give that up,” she says.

Economic growth lackluster at end of 2016 but stronger gains may lie ahead

Even if the Trump administration succeeded in coaxing all 638,000 adult welfare recipients back to work, that would still fall far short of the “millions” the president targeted on Tuesday.

A possible explanation is that Trump was using the term "welfare" broadly to include the tens of millions of Americans on programs like food stamps and Medicaid. Their ranks have fallen the past few years but are still up significantly from pre-recession levels. About 43 million Americans were on food stamps last year, up from about 27 million before the downturn. About 70 million were on Medicare, up from 43 million, though that increase is partly due to the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.

Work requirements for food-stamp recipients also could be strengthened, Haskins says. Most of the recipients, however, are already working, or are older adults, children or disabled people, CBPP says.

Even if Trump and Congress could prod several hundred thousand or even a couple of million social-service beneficiaries back into the work force, don't expect a big boost for the economy. The added workers would do little to expand a labor force that has been increasing more slowly in recent years, restraining productivity and economic growth, says economist Gregory Daco of Oxford Economics.

Why?

About 4 million baby boomers are retiring each year.