The Wisconsin Model of Welfare Reform and Why It Might Be A Guide for the Rest of the Country.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: SEPTEMBER 03, 1997
Time: 12:00
Tran: 090301NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Wisconsin Welfare Reform
Sect: News; Domestic
Time: 12:06

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

It's been a little over one year since President Clinton signed the welfare reform bill into law, imposing time limits on cash benefits and giving more authority to the states.

Now, states around the country are struggling to put new welfare systems into place. Wisconsin is further ahead in the process than most states. For more than a year, Wisconsin has imposed the nation's most stringent work requirements. And this week, cash assistance in the state was essentially ended.

My guest, Jason DeParle, has spent several years covering welfare reform for the New York Times. His recent Sunday Magazine cover story was about the Wisconsin system, with a focus on Milwaukee. DeParle says that Wisconsin's model isn't typical, but if it succeeds, it could represent the best-case scenario for welfare reform.

DeParle told me there's three reasons why.

JASON DEPARLE, NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER: The state is putting all kinds of money into the program. Spending is up by about 62 percent just from last year. So -- and that's one of the lessons that Governor Thompson keeps trying to stress: that you can't do welfare reform on the cheap. They are investing a lot in caseworkers, in child care, in health insurance benefits when people do get jobs, new services to get them to jobs, transportation, on job placement services.

So, they're doing more in a financial sense than anyplace I know to try to make "welfare to work" more than just a slogan. That's one thing I think is encouraging to me.

The other thing is -- the second thing is that the caseloads are down so much. I mean, there are places -- there are about a dozen counties in Wisconsin where the caseloads have fallen by more than 90 percent. Now caseloads falling is not necessarily a good thing, particularly if people who need benefits aren't getting them. And if they're going from being on welfare to an even worse form of destitution or impoverishment, that would be a bad thing.

But the evidence in Wisconsin is pretty slender that there's anything like that happening -- there -- anything like that happening on a large scale. Certainly, there are examples of people who have lost their welfare benefits and wound up even poorer than they were when they were on welfare.

But in Milwaukee, which is really the big test case -- Milwaukee's got 60 percent of the state's population -- welfare population -- and it's the only real big city in Wisconsin. In Milwaukee, 10,000 people have left the rolls in the past year and a little bit. And the best estimates are that on a given winter night last winter, about 41 families, additional families, wound up in shelters.

Now, when you take 41 families and you multiply it by a couple of kids in each family, that's 100 and -- or 150 people who are in shelters that might not have been if the old welfare system was in place. That's not an insignificant development, but when you compare it, again, to 10,000 families leaving the roll, it will let you know or it seems to let you know, at any rate, that most people are making other arrangements. That if they aren't necessarily rocketing into the middle class, they are avoiding the worst-case destitution that we -- some people feared would come about with the end of welfare.

GROSS: What's the third?

DEPARLE: The third thing is harder to put your finger on in a statistical sense, but it's what I would call a kind of civic energy. Welfare has been such a contentious subject throughout -- well, for the past several decades, and particularly since 1992 when President Clinton promised to end it.

One thing that I was encouraged by when I was in Wisconsin is that you have a Republican governor of the state, you have a Democratic mayor of the City of Milwaukee -- who more or less share the basic idea about what the system should look like. They're fighting over the details and in some cases they're very important details.

But from the governor on down to the mayor on down to local community-based organizations that are providing some of these workfare positions, there seems to be a lot of civic commitment, civic energy. People aren't kind of tearing their throats out.

It's not like in New York City where you have large numbers of people condemning the work program as slavery or Nazism. I mean, there's a little bit of that on the fringes in Milwaukee, but it is the fringes. And the vast center -- 85 percent of the political spectrum -- is getting down to the work -- the hard work of trying to make the best out of this. And I thought that was an encouraging thing as well.

GROSS: For about a year, Wisconsin has had what you described as the nation's most stringent work requirement, and this week a new system went into place in Wisconsin that you describe as being more generous than anything that has come before. What is the work requirement and what is the state offering now?

DEPARLE: Well, the old work -- I have to answer that in three short parts. In pre-welfare reform days, you would have a kind of vague work requirement, but it was always very difficult to impose and there were a lot of exemptions to people and various slender penalties if they didn't actually comply.

What Wisconsin did was require 30 hours of community service, basically for almost everyone. Well, almost everyone in this context means probably half the people on the caseload, where in the past it might have been 10 percent. And for those who didn't comply, they would get docked by the equivalent of the -- you had to work 30 hours a week for your benefits, and you lost $4.75 an hour for every hour you didn't show up.

And if you didn't mean a minimal threshold of requirements, you could lose all your cash and all but $10 of your food stamps. So -- in other words, if you didn't work, you didn't get paid. That was -- that's probably what most Americans have in mind when they think of as work requirements, but that's not the way the welfare system is usually worked out.

What it usually meant was if you didn't show up at a work requirement, there were lots of appeals and in the end you might be penalized 10 or 20 percent of your grant.

GROSS: What's the system that Wisconsin has put in place to help people on welfare find jobs?

DEPARLE: Well, let me talk about it in Milwaukee, because again, Milwaukee is the place where the state really faces the challenge. They've taken the whole city and they've divided it up into six regions. This is -- in order to make it more manageable administratively.

And this could be very significant because you've got throughout the country, major cities where the welfare bureaucracy has never shown an ability to administer anything like the challenges it's now facing with putting people -- moving people from welfare to work; and turning themselves from income maintenance organizations -- that's actually the slogan that they used. The way they describe their mission in the past has been income maintenance -- to maintain people's incomes.

And now they're being turned into job placement agencies, and that's a huge new mission. In order to make it possible for the bureaucracy to do that in Milwaukee, they've divided it into six regions and subcontracted it out to private agencies. They've just put it up for bid and five different agencies -- one writes to the contracts; one's running two regions. And these agencies are now working like job placement firms.

And their -- one of the keys is the way they're financing it. It's very much -- it's like a health maintenance organization. These agencies get a flat fee. They have about 3,000 cases each. And the more people they can move off of the welfare benefits into jobs faster, the more money they make. The more people they let linger -- stay on the roles, the less money you make, because the money's essentially coming out of their contract.

Now, the good thing about that is it really gives you a motive to get people moving from the rolls into work. The potential downside is much like an HMO. It could lead these agencies to withhold benefits from people who really need them, and we just don't know how that's gonna work yet.

GROSS: Might it also lead to not very good fits between workers and jobs? I mean, in other words, if the agency's getting paid for placing you -- if the job doesn't work out and you're out in a week, they still get their money, right? So, I mean, do they care how long-term it is?

DEPARLE: Again, in theory they should because if you go get a job and you lose it and you're back on their doorstep in a week, then they have to go through the whole thing again and in the meantime, you might be getting benefits. You keep -- if it's a revolving door and they keep coming back onto their doorstep, that's more of their time and energy.

GROSS: Where does job training and job readiness fit into the picture here?

DEPARLE: Well, those are two very different concepts in the welfare world these days. Job training essentially does not fit into the concept. Job training was very much the idea of the round of welfare reform that occurred about a decade ago and culminated in the Family Support Act of 1988.

The idea there was you couldn't just move people into a job right away because the job wouldn't pay a sufficient wage for someone to live on, and they would just wind up back on the welfare rolls. You had to invest in the people so they could get better jobs.

There's a very famous experiment in welfare circles around the "GAIN" (ph) program in Riverside, California, that showed when people moved directly into a job, any job -- even a bad job -- on the whole, they wound up earning more money than a similar group of people -- of 100 people, 1,000 people -- who went through a job training program.

Essentially, it showed that, or it's been interpreted as showing that job training didn't work and what works is work -- immediate work, universal work. The idea that you find a job first and work your way up.

So that idea has been taken perhaps to an extreme, really, across the country where it's very hard now for people on welfare to get training. What they can get is the second thing you mentioned, which is job readiness.

Now that means typically a class. It might last a day. It might last a week. At most, it might last two weeks, where they teach you how to compile a resume; how to go through an interview; how to dress; what's expected of you at the workplace -- that you have to show up on time; that you're not supposed to fight with your coworkers.

Basically, every welfare office in America is running some version of this job readiness or job preparation class. But it's very different from in the old days, say, that they would send you to school for months at a time to get a GED; or for two years to a community college. That whole approach has basically died at this point.

GROSS: Mm-hmm. So Wisconsin's providing for job readiness, but not job training?

DEPARLE: Exactly. Yeah, there's basically no provision in these W-2 (ph) agencies to putting one through any kind of extensive schooling.

GROSS: Right.

DEPARLE: But every -- each of the W-2 agencies in Milwaukee would have some kind of job prep class; job search. They bring you in. They go through a -- have you fill out your resume; show you how to go through an interview. And then the W-2 agencies have two really -- they have two sets of what they would call "clients." One are the welfare recipients, and their responsibility to those clients is to get them a job.

The other set of clients is employers. It's hard to imagine how much labor demand there is in Wisconsin, especially on the outskirts of Milwaukee -- not in the central city, but in the counties that ring it. There are employers who are so starved for employees. Quad Graphics is an example. They've made a commitment to hire 400 welfare recipients for a big printing plant there, and they're sending vans into the city to help people get out to Quad Graphics to get there.

And these businesses really, really need employees. So what they're looking -- they're the second set of clients for the W-2 agencies -- and what they're looking for is an agency, like one of the, for instance, is Goodwill. They want to go to Goodwill and say: "we need 20 employees. Can you give us 20 names?" And they would expect them to be screened; to have some work history; to be screened for drug problems; to be screened for criminal background checks; to be ready to show up and work on the same, on the first day.

And the W-2 agencies are trying to satisfy the needs of both of those sets of employees.

GROSS: Maybe we should say "W-2" stands for "Wisconsin Works"...

DEPARLE: Wisconsin Works, yes.

GROSS: ... which is the name of the welfare reform program.

DEPARLE: Please excuse me for the endless jargon in the welfare world.

LAUGHTER

DEPARLE: Yes, W-2 is the -- is Wisconsin Works. It's the name of the new program in Wisconsin.

GROSS: My guest is New York Times reporter Jason DeParle. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

Back with Jason DeParle, who writes about welfare reform for the New York Times.

I'm wondering if there's any sense yet about whether many other employers are sharing this enthusiasm, this eagerness, to hire people who've been on welfare? I think a lot of employers are very skeptical about hiring people who've been on welfare and consider them to be semi-employable or unemployable.

DEPARLE: My impression in my travels has been that there's quite a sea change about that in the past year. And I would say it's mostly being driven by the economy. There are just real labor shortages in some places, and it's not a matter so much of corporate responsibility or good works as it is people need laborers and they can't afford to be choosy.

So to some extent, businesses, just because -- because they're expanding; because, you know, varies a lot by region. In places where businesses need the employers -- need the employees, they're certainly willing to look at welfare recipients.

I think a smaller part of the change, but not insignificant part of the change also comes from -- welfare is enjoying its moment of policy chic and the shift in -- there is, to some extent, there has been a shift in business attitudes that's been prompted I think by the president going around talking about people -- urging businesses to hire welfare recipients. They now -- he's now set up this -- or helped set up this non-partisan welfare-to-work partnership in Washington, with CEOs from United Airlines, UPS, Burger King, Monsanto, Sprint.

There's been a real push to get businesses to take a second look at it. I think three quarters of the willingness of business is just being driven by their own needs for employees, but there's a kind of overlay, too, of corporate responsibility about it now.

GROSS: That...

DEPARLE: You know, that...

GROSS: Yeah, go ahead.

DEPARLE: Well, that whole shift, to me, has been -- is just a part of a larger shift that I'm fascinated by...

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

DEPARLE: ... having covered this stuff for so long. In 1995, after the Republicans captured Congress, you had a real angry, bitter welfare politics that kind of -- throughout the fall of 1994, everybody was running, in the campaigns, were running anti-welfare ads.

Ted Kennedy was on TV with an ad promising to crack down on welfare recipients. Dave McCurdy, the former representative from Oklahoma who ran for the Senate, lost his race, but he had a very stark black and white television commercial with him posed in front of an oil derrick where he was talking about how his father had taught him to fight, and that's why he was fighting against welfare.

It almost sounded like he was going to drag somebody in front of the camera, bop him in the nose, you know, to get him to go to work. I mean, there was this -- and then the Republicans won Congress and throughout the spring of 1995, you had on the floor of the House of Representatives welfare recipients being likened to wolves and to alligators and just -- you couldn't be tough enough or harsh enough about welfare.

That was then, this is now. Now, you've go the President of the United States going around urging businesses to hire welfare recipients a. You have an ad campaign that's about -- a public service ad campaign that the welfare-to-work partnership is about to run, urging people to give -- urging businesses to give welfare recipients a second look; worrying about the stigma of welfare.

I mean, imagine CEOs shelling out corporate money to help erase the stigma of welfare. I mean, the end of -- we're in the stage where we're past fighting about the welfare bill and we're now in a kind of a almost gauzy, sentimental time where welfare recipients are enjoying a new popularity; almost a sentimental politics. It's fascinating to me.

GROSS: Do you think that a lot of the new enthusiasm that you're seeing on the part of CEOs to support welfare reform and hire people who've been on welfare has to do with their enthusiasm for, you know, hiring low-wage people for low-wage service jobs -- people who won't probably be full-time; who won't be paid benefits?

DEPARLE: I do think that the motive for most of the corporate interest in hiring welfare recipients is self-interest; that they need workers and this is one place that they can get them. I think -- and get -- and yes, get lower wage workers.

I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, that to have -- the self-interest part of it at any rate -- 'cause I think -- not the low-wage part, but the self-interest, that -- because I think self-interest would be -- is going to be a more sustainable motive than...

GROSS: Idealism?

DEPARLE: ... that this is the -- yeah, than philanthropy. To some extent, this is the kind of charity of the year. It's now welfare. You know, and next year it'll be on to some other cause, whether it's the rain forest or whatever. So, you know, welfare is having its moment. The chicness of it will dissipate.

If these people -- substantial numbers of them -- turn out to be good employees, then the self-interest part will continue on, and I think that's, oddly enough, a hopeful thing.

GROSS: Now what you're saying sounds like it's really good for now, but I wonder, like, you're saying there's this need right now that many companies have to hire people on welfare because they need employees. But what happens when, you know, if the economy changes...

DEPARLE: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ... and people, you know, corporations aren't looking for new workers. They're laying off more workers. That's when you really need some kind of infrastructure in place for people who are unemployed. What happens to the system then?

DEPARLE: There's no doubt that that -- an economic downturn will prove the real test of what we're up against with the new welfare system. There's a lot of optimism right now, but we all have to recognize that we're operating in optimal conditions of low unemployment and a growing economy.

What happens when a recession hits -- a recession will prove problematic in two ways. One, the last hire will be the first fired, and former welfare recipients will be back on the rolls and needing more services. The demand for services will go up at precisely the time when state revenues will go down because of lower tax collections, and they'll have less money to give to people.

And that's when critics of the new system fear that something like a race to the bottom will occur, where states will get competitive with each other to reduce benefits and try to encourage poor people to get up and move -- go somewhere else.

That's the pessimistic scenario. I think it's worth at least keeping in mind a counter-optimist -- more optimistic scenario. Now, I really -- I have -- I'm trying to hold both equally at the same time. I don't really know what I personally think is going to happen in this regard.

But the optimistic scenario is that you can change the welfare -- the welfare politics with the new, tougher rules; that the American public didn't hate welfare recipients; they hated welfare. They hated a discredited system that seemed to give people something for nothing; to require -- to give people charity and require nothing in return.

And that by converting welfare recipients into workers, you create a new politics around work, and it could be a much more generous politics, if these are people who would no longer be seen as cheating the system; not trying themselves. They'd be seen as unemployed workers, and that a more supportive, more generously financed system could arise to support them in times of economic downturn.

There is some evidence for that. You know, even in the very tight budget times that we've had for the past few years, there's been a huge expansion in the tax credits given to low-wage workers at the very same time that you saw a huge erosion in welfare benefits. So, Congress seemed to be reading the -- or expressing the will of the people as: "yes, more for people who are trying to help themselves; and less for people who seem not to be."

GROSS: Jason DeParle covers welfare reform for the New York Times. We'll talk more in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Jason DeParle.

For several years, he's covered welfare reform for the New York Times. In August, he had a Times Sunday Magazine cover story about Wisconsin which has already put a welfare reform program into place.

This week, Wisconsin implemented a new phase of welfare reform, essentially ending cash benefits. An elaborate job placement system has already been put into place.

In your recent New York Times Magazine article about welfare reform in Milwaukee, you say that it's probably going to be harder to keep a job than it is to get a job in this new system. Why do you say that?

DEPARLE: Oh, gosh, it's so easy to get a job in Milwaukee. Their -- everybody is hiring. You can -- you can -- I sat in a job placement class one morning and two women came in with typeset resumes. All's they had done is gone to a Kinko's or somewhere and typed up -- I mean, had no particular experience. One had worked for a month as a housekeeper somewhere.

Just the act of getting the resume typeset showed enough of a willingness to work that they were immediately hired. I mean, they didn't even sit through the first five minutes of the class. The woman running the class had employers who had already been to her saying: "I need people." In the first -- she able to ship those two out right away.

The challenge isn't landing a job. The challenge is keeping it when you're a single parent and you -- a low-income single parent with unreliable child care; unreliable transportation. And those are the two things that liberals have tended to worry most about; that even when you want to work, you can have problems getting to work; 'cause your kid gets sick; or the babysitter doesn't show up; or the car breaks down -- and you lose your job quickly.

And on the other side, work is -- takes a lot of acculturation, and people don't always show up. A lot of times, they have personal problems -- fights with boy friends, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, quarrels with supervisors. All those things also can lead people to lose jobs.

I mean, there's hardly anybody on welfare who hasn't worked. People on welfare work all the time. They just don't work, typically, the long-term recipient doesn't work for very long. The woman I wrote about, Opal Caples (ph), has had seven jobs in the last four years.

GROSS: Well, the one that she had while you were writing about her was working as a janitor in a hospital. Things seemed to be going...

DEPARLE: Right, she lost that...

GROSS: ... fine -- yeah.

DEPARLE: ... lost the job in the middle of the article.

GROSS: Yeah, and why don't you explain how she lost it.

DEPARLE: Well, I should back up and say I probably interviewed maybe 25 different welfare recipients to try to figure out which one to focus on for the -- screened 25 -- talked to different -- got kind of quick, quick histories on 25 different people. And chose Opal.

Among the reasons I chose her was I -- she had seemed to be on this job long enough that she had established a bit of a history there. She'd been on the job for about six months, and her boss said she was a good worker.

But as I started following her around, I realized she had had some problems with absences in the past, and she was on a kind of probation for missing work even when I was following her. She's a hospital maintenance woman -- housecleaning woman at a hospital and I followed her around on her shift a few nights, and she had told me about a few of the problems she'd had with her supervisor.

And then we arranged for her to go to a photo shoot with the governor -- Governor Thompson. And I was very worried about her ability to get there. We went through a kind of elaborate logistics to make sure she was there and got there on time. And when I called back a couple days later -- I had left Milwaukee by then; was back in Washington -- her supervisor said she -- he hadn't heard from her and for two or three days had no idea where she was.

Well, it turned out -- I was eventually able to get a message to her through her boy friend's mother. She'd had a fight with her boy friend. She was very upset. She hadn't -- he was taking care of her kids part of the time. She got so upset she didn't call -- she didn't go to work that night, and then she figured she was probably fired anyways for not going to work, and she had been on probation anyways.

So she never even bothered to call, and didn't go back. It turned into a kind of an interesting aftermath of the story, because her supervisor was a very concerned man who'd once been on the board of a homeless shelter in Toledo and he didn't want her to lose her job. And he had -- couldn't -- but he couldn't find her to tell her that.

So he sent the message back through me to Opal that he'd be willing to talk to her. And she came in his office and wrote a long apology and explanation. And he tried to help her get her position back, but the hospital wouldn't let her -- wouldn't let her come back. They just felt she'd had too many absences.

GROSS: Did you choose this woman to be the focus of your article 'cause she -- you thought she was doing really well?

DEPARLE: No. I was looking for somebody who seemed somewhat typical.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

DEPARLE: There were a couple of women I met who really were doing well. One had gotten a job with the county Corrections Department that was paying something like $25,000 a year.

GROSS: Right.

DEPARLE: And I thought that was too unrepresentative. Opal seemed interesting to me because she was obviously a very intelligent woman, and clearly could succeed. Yet, there was something -- but yet she hadn't. And she was also very frank about -- that she would grow weary of working all the time and she would go back on the welfare system just because she could. And I thought that was an interesting kind of candor that I hadn't necessarily heard before.

So I chose her because I thought her -- she had an interesting mix of talents and challenges, and mostly she was very articulate about them.

GROSS: Do you think that she's kind of typical in having been on welfare for a long time and not quite getting some fundamental things about the culture of work? Like, if there's an emergency and you can't come in, you let somebody know that day? Or at least the day after?

DEPARLE: Yes. I might not say she didn't know. I think she probably did know. I mean, she's very smart. She didn't -- she didn't do it, and why she didn't -- why she didn't call in; why she didn't work harder to save that job, I'm not really sure. I don't know that if -- that she's really sure.

But I wouldn't necessarily say that she didn't know to call. I mean, I think she did know to call in and in fact that's why the next -- by the next day, she never even bothered. She just figured she was fired and was ready to move on.

It's an interesting story the way I met her. I was sitting in a job -- one of these job preparation classes that we were talking about a minute ago, and they had her come up. She was sitting there looking kind of bored in a group of 10 or 15 women in the class. And the instructor called her to the front of the class and wanted her to go through a fake interview.

And Opal kind of rolled her eyes, and she said: "I know how to get a job. I just don't know how to keep a job." And she had to be coaxed up to the front to go through this interview, and when she did, she immediately proved her point -- that she knows how to get a job. I mean, her spine straightened and her posture was perfect, and the "g's" stopped falling from the end of her sentences.

And they said -- the instructor said: "well, tell me about yourself." And she said: "I am polite. I am courteous. I am responsible. I know how to show up at work." And she went through this whole thing -- people in the class were howling. I mean, they were clapping for her. She pulled it off as though she were exhibit "A" in how to get a job.

And as soon as the little exercise was open, she'd sort of dissolve laughing and kind of went back to a street persona and said: "I don't want a job. I know how to get a job. I don't want to work. I like being home with my kids." And she kind of -- her whole demeanor changed as she kind of reverted to this bored recipient in this class that she didn't want to be in.

So, she struck me almost as bilingual. You know, she's...

GROSS: Right.

DEPARLE: ... fluent in the language of the street. She's fluent in the language of the workplace. And what W-2 tries to do is to tilt the balance a little bit more so that she -- it's harder for her to choose public assistance and easier for her to choose -- to choose to work.

We haven't talked about the positive things W-2 does, I mean, the -- the negative incentive is it's much easier just to be denied cash assistance than it was in the past.

GROSS: What's the positive incentive?

DEPARLE: The positive incentives are the state has made a pledge to provide child care on a sliding scale for basically anybody who needs it. You don't even have to have been on welfare. Any low-income worker who needs it.

So there's not a kind of discrimination against the working poor and those who went on welfare. It's just if you're below a -- it's up to almost 200 percent of the poverty line, or up to, say, the mid-20. If you're a low-income worker making up to about $25,000 a year, you can get some sort of subsidized child care.

And Wisconsin's also now negotiating with the federal government to provide the same, on a similar scale, medical benefits so that if you choose to work, you can have subsidized medical care, subsidized child care.

GROSS: And it sounds like there's quite a large new bureaucracy being put into place in order to handle all of the demands of the new system in Milwaukee.

DEPARLE: Well, there's a large new administrative structure that's needed to do it. But I think what they've been smart about is not putting a large bureaucracy in place. They've bid it out to these private agencies.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

DEPARLE: Let me just say a word about them. They're very diverse. One's a for-profit -- just a profit-seeking company called Maximus that does human services consulting work all over the country. They're just in it -- well, I shouldn't say that they're just in it to get a profit, not that that's necessarily bad. I mean, General Motors is just in it to get a profit and they produce a lot of cars.

So, I mean, they're a regular profit-seeking company that's out there to provide a service and earn money.

By -- on the other end of the spectrum, Goodwill Industries is probably the biggest -- is the biggest agency in all Milwaukee. They're doing it in part because it's a big contract for them, and in part because it fits with their quasi-religious mission of putting people to work.

There's a third kind of agency -- a neighborhood grassroots group that has a contract to run one of the region's -- called the "Opportunities Industrialization Center." It's almost a black nationalist group. It's -- with roots in kind of black self-help.

So a lot of different -- you were saying, a large bureaucracy being put in place; a lot of different medium bureaucracies are being put in place to try it.

GROSS: Meanwhile, one of the really big parts of the new federal welfare reform legislation hasn't really been tested yet, and that is a five-year welfare limit. You can only collect for five years in a lifetime, and that five years hasn't elapsed yet for anybody.

What are the concerns about that? What's the optimistic and pessimistic scenario right now?

DEPARLE: Well, the optimistic scenario would be that the threat of a five-year time limit -- the consciousness of it implants in the average welfare recipient, and they go out and get jobs and hold them.

The pessimistic scenario is that when those limits kick in, and they're shorter in some states -- as short as one year for some recipients in Texas -- that you'll start having large numbers of welfare recipients hit the streets.

I would come at it from a third angle, actually. I think time limits, to some extent, have been -- we've put too much emphasis on time limits. I think the immediate impact of the tougher welfare reforms won't be on time limits which were planned over a number of years, but rather on the penal -- on what are called "sanctions." Sanctions are the penalties that when you don't comply with a new work rule right away, what happens?

For instance, state "X" has a work requirement. You have to show up at the office and look for work, and you can do that and then after five years, you wouldn't be allowed to even do that. That's when a time limit will kick in.

Well, in the meantime, there's a wide variety in states of what they do if you don't meet that initial work requirement. Some will only cut, like Minnesota, cut your grant I think by 25 percent. Others like Mississippi, takes away entire cash and all your food stamps.

So I think the real test of wel -- of the downside of what happens to people who don't comply won't be when you hit the time limits in some three or four years, five years away from now. I think we're going to find it much quicker in the imposition of these sanctions.

GROSS: My guest is New York Times reporter Jason DeParle. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

We're talking about welfare reform with Jason DeParle of the New York Times. The Welfare Reform Bill that President Clinton signed a year ago imposes a five-year lifetime limit on federal cash assistance.

What provisions are there for people who really can't hold a job because of, say, drug addiction or illness or mental illness or just because they really aren't skilled and they aren't good at getting any employable skills?

DEPARLE: Well, there's two. First of all, there's a 20 percent exemption, which -- there's a lot of debate over whether that's big enough or small enough, but it's not an insignificant amount -- that you can use federal money to continue benefits after five years for up to 20 percent of the caseload.

Number two, there is no limit at all on state money. And in fact, Michigan has already vowed that it will not impose time limits if you're complying with the work requirements. If you're looking for a job or doing what you're supposed to do, and you exceed this five-year lifetime limit, they'll continue to provide benefits out of state money.

I think we really don't know whether this five-year limit will turn out to be incredibly porous and essentially meaningless on the streets; or whether it proves quite restrictive and large numbers of people end up getting cut off. I mean, we just haven't gotten to a point where a state actually has to start doing it in anything other than very tiny numbers.

And it's very much, you know, up in the air whether by the time we get to that point. My suspicion is that it won't end up being as strict as it seems on paper, and again, that's why I was talking about these sanctions. I think that's where the -- where some of the bite is going to take place; Not on people who reach five -- an arbitrary five years and get cut off -- but people who are cut off immediately because they don't meet these new strict work requirements.

GROSS: Are there any concerns that welfare reform will in part be a game of musical chairs? That as more women on welfare get moved into jobs, fewer men will be getting those jobs?

DEPARLE: Certainly, there's a sense of musical chairs. I don't know so much gender specific, but that as -- but -- in a class way, yeah, that the unions in particular have that concern that their members would be displaced by other low-skilled workers. Sure, that's a -- that's why you're having such huge fights.

You will be seeing huge fights this fall over that very issue -- that the unions won some important protections for their workers in the budget bill. The Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, fears that those restrictions have become so cumbersome that it will make it impossible, or make it difficult, for states to run their welfare-to-work programs, and he wants to reopen those regulations and he's got some Democratic governors on his side.

And the issues seem very technical, but they get at exactly what you're saying -- that unions fear very much that their members, particularly unions of low-skilled workers, public employee unions, unions of people who do clerical work or sweep the streets -- they fear very much the direct competition from welfare recipients.

And with good reason. It -- I mean, they are a threat; they -- this is not a fear that they're just making up; that these are people who could take their jobs.

GROSS: I know you spent some time at Goodwill Industries in Milwaukee, and Goodwill is one of the organizations that has been contracted to find jobs for people who've been on welfare. What were some of your observations watching people, often hard-to-place people, get placed for jobs?

DEPARLE: Well, you know, I've spent probably a decade now looking at different welfare offices and it's not often that I see something that really makes -- strikes -- makes me see a situation in what feels like a completely new way.

But I did feel that way when I visited a factory run by Goodwill on the north side of Milwaukee. One of the things Goodwill does is it gets state contracts to put physically disabled people to work. And they have a huge factory floor there with a commercial laundry and a big shrimp wrapping and assembly project there.

And the factory floor is being crossed by people in wheel chairs, some of them obviously with Down's Syndrome sitting at tables sorting washers or doing other forms of small labor. It's a kind of physical embodiment of Goodwill's really quasi-religious belief that labor is a gift that everybody can give; everybody should be able to do something.

And you've got the government there spending, say, $15,000 a year on -- of their handicapped person with a contract to Goodwill to help them work. On the other hand, the government's also spending $10,000 or $15,000 a year to pay the able-bodied not to work -- people like this woman I was writing about, Opal Caples.

So that contradiction really came to my mind in a very visual way, being at Goodwill. It sort of became hard to say why somebody -- why it was unrealistic for somebody -- an able-bodied woman like Opal -- not to work when people with just great physical handicaps were being able to do it.

And Opal herself said that. She would say to me, you know, there's not -- "I'm not handicapped. I can work."

GROSS: Do you think that the plan put into effect in Milwaukee now which you think is looking pretty good can happen in larger states? Can be put into place? Can be effective?

DEPARLE: Yes, I do. I think -- and you know, if you'd asked me that a couple of years ago, I might have said no. One of the "lessons" of the past -- of the recent past -- has just been that change can happen faster than most of us tend to realize.

Sure, they could. I mean, Franklin Roosevelt got a work program for 3 or 4 million people up and running in about six months. Of course, it could be done. Whether -- so in that -- in that sense, yes. Whether the politics of other states will prove as amenable as Wisconsin, which has this long history of a kind of progressive state government, you'd have to -- based on experience be a little more skeptical.

But I wouldn't want to be dismissive and say: "oh, it can only happen in Wisconsin." Sure, why couldn't it?

GROSS: Where are you going next to analyze what's happening in welfare reform?

LAUGHTER

DEPARLE: There's a few places I'm interested in. I'm interested in Utah, which has been working with hard-to-place welfare recipients for a long time and seems to have learned some lessons about what you need to do for the hardest and most disadvantaged people on the caseload.

I'm interested in Hawaii, not for the obvious reasons of wanting to be in Hawaii rather than Washington, but because it's the first -- it's the only place where the welfare rolls have been going up; where they've had a huge caseload decline across the country. They've been going up in Hawaii because the economy's in bad shape and that, even though it's Hawaii and it's not representative of the rest of the country, it's the first place where you've seen welfare reform trying to work itself out in a context of the recession that people fear elsewhere.

GROSS: Well, Jason DeParle, I want to thank you a lot for talking with us.

DEPARLE: Thank you.

GROSS: Jason DeParle writes about welfare reform for the New York Times.

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: Jason DeParle
High: New York Times reporter Jason DeParle. In a recent New York Times Magazine cover story, DeParle wrote about Wisconsin's reformed welfare system. This week, that state enters a new phase in its efforts to shift welfare recipients into the workforce. Cash assistance ends. In exchange, the state plans to provide more opportunities to get a job.
Spec: Welfare Reform; States; Wisconsin; Media; Politics; Government
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1997 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1997 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Wisconsin Welfare Reform
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: SEPTEMBER 03, 1997
Time: 12:00
Tran: 090302NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Beg, Scream, and Shout
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:55

TERRY GROSS, HOST: Rhino Records has just released a six CD set called "Beg, Scream and Shout: The Big Ol Box of '60s Soul." Coming at a time when vintage soul music is being used in commercials, on TV shows and in the movies, you'd think the storehouse of good music might be exhausted.

But rock critic Ken Tucker says this collection of 144 songs unearths some fine, fresh examples of the genre.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "ARE YOU LONELY FOR ME BABY?")

FREDDIE SCOTT, SINGER, SINGING: Are you lonely for me baby?
Yes, I am
Are you lonely for me, baby?
Coming home, baby
Are you lonely for me, baby?

Oh, it's the last train to Jacksonville
I'm gonna get on it, baby
You know I will
Will you try -- come on and try
To forget all the pain I brought ya?

Go on and cry, go ahead and cry, baby
I know that I'm the one who told ya
To be lonely baby

KEN TUCKER, FRESH AIR COMMENTATOR: There's a steady relentlessness in Freddy Scott's voice and the arrangement of that song, "Are You Lonely For Me, Baby?" that summons up a whole world with the vividness of a film noir scene, as Scott drives home to his girl friend all night long, using his desire as caffeine.

The selection of that song, Freddy Scott's only hit, typifies the good taste of "Beg, Scream and Shout." It includes a lot of great stuff you've heard a thousand times, with relatively obscure gems like that one, which unaccountably stalled on the pop charts at number 39 in 1966.

Not making it any higher was this bit of wickedly satirized race relations -- "The Funky Judge" by Bull and the Matadors.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "THE FUNKY JUDGE")

SINGER: Now listen, I can do it, your honor
I can do it, judge

CHORUS: Judge, you sho' is funky
Judge, you sho' is funky
Judge, Judge, Judge, Judge
Owwww
Judge, you sho' is funky

TUCKER: You may not have heard that one before, but most of the material on Beg, Scream and Shout adheres to the classic soul canon we all know. Even the ones from famous names turn out to be shrewd selections that haven't yet been co-opted by baby boomer ad agency execs.

The Supremes' "Love Is Like An Itchin' In My Heart" is surely their most obsessed, urgent work. "Seven Rooms of Gloom" by the Four Tops is their most gorgeously despairing. And while Smokey Robinson and the Miracles' "The Love I Saw In You Was Just A Mirage" has been justly lauded many times as a masterpiece of longing and regret, who wouldn't want to hear it again?

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "THE LOVE I SAW IN YOU WAS JUST A MIRAGE")

SMOKEY ROBINSON, SINGER, SINGING: There you were beautiful
The promise of love was written on your face
You led me on with untrue kisses
Oh, you held me captive in your false embrace

Quicker than I could bat an eye
Seemed you were telling me good-bye
Telling me good-bye.
Just a minute ago your love was here
All of a sudden, it seemed you disappeared

Sweetness was only heartaches
Camoflauge
The love I saw in you was just a mirage.

TUCKER: The best thing this collection does is to shine the spotlight on people who were just out of its glare in the '60s, like O.V. Wright (ph), a Tennessee gospel singer who went secular in Memphis at producer Willie Mitchell's High Record studio. There, he cut this fine ballad that uses the judicial system as a metaphor for romance on this 1967 cut "Eight Men, Four Women."

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "EIGHT MEN, FOUR WOMEN")

O.V. WRIGHT, SINGER, SINGING: Eight men, four women
(Unintelligible) the jury of love

I dreamed that love was a crime
I was alone, so lonely and blue
You know why?
Because eight men and four women
Lord, they found me guilty of loving you
Loving you
Have they...

TUCKER: I think soul represents nothing less than the high point of American popular music. Created by African-American musicians aiming for commercial and cultural outreach, it sought and found a universal audience.

Conceived at a time when the dream of America was integration, it became a genre of unmatched scope and range. As the title of this collection is intended to remind you, there's no mood or emotion that soul did not manage to dramatize.

Beg, Scream and Shout doesn't tell the whole story of soul music. You have to build your own library for that. But it can stand as a first-rate introduction.

GROSS: Ken Tucker is critic-at-large for Entertainment Weekly.

Dateline: Ken Tucker; Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest:
High: Rock Critic Ken Tucker reviews Rhino Records' new 6-CD set called "Beg, Scream & Shout!: The Big Ol Box of '60s Soul."
Spec: Music Industry; History; 1960s; Soul
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1997 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1997 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Beg, Scream, and Shout
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.