Uptight About Welfare Reform

The Sacramento Bee reports:

This week, Congress is poised to pass the most sweeping changes to welfare policy since voting in welfare reform a decade ago.

The federal overhaul of the welfare program - which is known as CalWORKs in California - would change dramatically the way states measure their success in getting people into jobs. Groups that advocate for the poor estimate that the new federal rules will require up to an additional 60,000 California families to be working starting next October.

County welfare directors say the federal bill doesn't provide enough funding to cover child care for all those families. They also argue that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal earlier this month to take back $114 million in promised funding for CalWORKs child care programs moves in the wrong direction at the wrong time.

It will be interesting to see how the "push" for more work out of welfare reform will be received by those who opposed welfare reform in the beginning.