During the Rose Garden signing ceremony in August 1996 of his landmark welfare reform law, President Bill Clinton told a welfare-to-work story that had inspired him to join with Congressional Republicans and pursue reforms to break the difficult cycle of dependency. The Washington Post reported Clinton describing how a decade earlier he had asked Lillie Hardin, a former welfare recipient in Arkansas, what the best thing was about being off welfare. Ms. Hardin replied, “When my boy goes to school and they say, what does your momma do for a living? He can give an answer.”

For too many Californians, the heartbreaking truth is that their son or daughter has been left with no good answer. That is because while other states have made progress in reforming welfare, California has been left behind.

The numbers tell a bleak story. In 1996, California had 21 percent of the nation’s welfare cases. Today, 32 percent of all welfare cases in the United States are in California, even though we only represent 12 percent of the total U.S. population. Consider this troubling comparison; California is nearly twice as big as New York state, but we have five times as many welfare cases.

Despite being a state famous for opportunity and promise, California lags much of the nation when it comes to moving people from welfare to work, according to the federal government. Only 22 percent of welfare recipients in California who are required to meet federal work minimums are working. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, our state is one of only nine that does not unconditionally enforce the federal government’s five-year lifetime limit on cash welfare assistance. These flaws in our welfare system, coupled with a monthly cash check that is almost 70 percent higher than the national average, work against the goal of helping more welfare recipients leave welfare for a life of greater independence and dignity.

California simply cannot afford this kind of failure any longer. The good news is we don’t have to. Michigan, which enacted sweeping welfare reform in the 90’s, is a good example. When adjusted for population, Michigan has half the incidence of welfare dependency as California, despite a higher unemployment rate than ours. A 2009 study by the Public Policy Institute of California found that if there were stricter sanctions on adults who fail to meet work requirements here in California, the state’s caseload would be substantially lower and its work participation rate would be significantly higher. Everybody would be better off.

My campaign for governor is focused on creating jobs, fixing public education and controlling Sacramento’s enormous appetite for wasteful spending. A common sense welfare reform plan can help achieve all three goals. First, we need to send a strong message that welfare in California is a temporary helping hand, not a permanent way of life. We can do this by replacing the seldom enforced, five-year time limit with a strictly enforced two-year limit. Second, we can require the able-bodied to work, perform community service or achieve a GED. Lastly, we will utilize modern technology to much improve the collection of child support and hold absent fathers accountable for meeting their legal and ethical responsibilities. Over the past decade, California has spent more than $1 billion in fines because we could not put together an efficient computer system to collect child support payments. That extra money could help struggling families reduce – or even end – their reliance on welfare.

There are now more than 1.3 million people trapped in California’s ineffective welfare system. It is costing the state’s ailing budget billions of dollars while doing too little to help welfare families break free from a vicious cycle of dependency. Applying long overdue common sense reforms to welfare will relieve stress on the state budget and is the right thing to do for our communities.

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