The distinctive New Democrat contribution to the successful 1996 welfare reform legislation was the principle of "Work First:" the idea that the best path to independence from public assistance for welfare recipients is immediate placement in private-sector jobs. It is this approach, coupled with efforts to make work pay, that has succeeded where previous attempts to reform welfare failed. Yesterday, a group of New Democrat Senators led by DLC Chairman Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), and Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) outlined a legislative draft that should ensure that the "Work First" philosophy -- including significant new child care resources and efforts to put fathers of children on welfare to work -- is at the center of the debate this year over reauthorization of the 1996 law. Original cosponsors of their "Work and Family Act" include Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), Joe Lieberman (D-CT), Jean Carnahan (D-MO), Zell Miller (D-GA), Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Bill Nelson (D-FL).

This proposal comes at a time when growing pressure from the ideological Left and Right threatens to unravel the "Work First" consensus for stronger work requirements supported by more resources to make work feasible for high percentages of welfare recipients and absent fathers. As Bayh, Carper and Graham noted in a press release: "The White House and House Republicans are arguing for tougher work requirements without new funding, while many governors and some Congressional Democrats support more resources to help states move people from welfare to work during difficult economic times. [We offer] an innovative third way approach that takes the best from both sides."

The New Democrat bill resists the efforts of some advocacy groups to water down the Work First principle by encouraging welfare recipients to enroll in education and training programs in lieu of working -- the "education and training first" philosophy that failed so dismally in the welfare reform experiment of 1988. Instead, the "Work and Family Act" would encourage an "earn and learn" approach to educational and training opportunities for welfare recipients that combines work and skills training.

The "Work and Family Act" closely follows recommendations in four key areas for a "Work First" bill made by the Progressive Policy Institute this year.

1. Continuing the "Work First' principle by raising work participation rates (the percentage of welfare recipients who must be at work within five years) to 70 percent, with "work" defined as a full, normal work week; eliminating a big loophole in work requirements called the "caseload reduction credit" (which gave states credit against work rates for anyone leaving the welfare rolls for any reason, whether or not they found work) and replacing it with an "employment credit" that rewards states for placing recipients leaving welfare into jobs; and funding "transitional jobs" (highly supported jobs) for hard-to-employ recipients.
2. Providing the resources to make sure states and welfare recipients can succeed in meeting work requirements, especially $8 billion in new money for child care services; transitional health insurance through Medicaid for families leaving welfare; a new state option to use federal money to provide benefits to legal immigrants; restoration of funding for the Social Services Block Grant that states use for a variety of services to low-income families; and restoration of a contingency fund to give states additional money for welfare reform during recessions.
3. Putting men to work by continuing to toughen child support enforcement; including measures to ensure that support payments go directly to kids; requiring fathers of children on welfare to go to work or go to jail; giving states credit against work requirements for work by some absent fathers; and implementing Sen. Bayh's proposal to fund effective programs that promote responsible fatherhood.
4. Fighting teen pregnancy, one of the most important causes of welfare dependency, through a new grant program for effective teen pregnancy prevention efforts, and a new national goal of reducing teen pregnancy by 25 percent over the next ten years.

The Work and Family Act proposal is well positioned to serve as a blueprint for a bipartisan compromise on welfare reform. Moreover, a bipartisan group of Senators who serve on the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over welfare reform, yesterday announced an outline for legislation that also appears to embrace the formula of tougher work requirements, accountability (with flexibility) for the states in reaching them, and new resources (especially for child care) that make work feasible. This announcement, engineered by Sen. John Breaux (D-LA), a key architect of the 1996 legislation, is an important first step towards convincing the Administration to "put its money where its mouth is" (as Sens. Clinton and Lieberman argue in an op-ed piece in today's Washington Post) by supporting the new resources necessary to implement stronger work requirements.

The 1996 welfare reform experiment continues to represent a signature New Democrat initiative, and one of the most successful social policy efforts in living memory. It's appropriate that New Democrats in Congress continue to take the lead in ensuring that we "end welfare as we know it" by placing work first.