WASHINGTON — The wide-ranging spending-cut bill scheduled for a final House vote on Wednesday includes provisions toughening welfare regulations, including work requirements on two-parent welfare families that experts say is almost impossible to meet.
The Republican-backed bill would hold adults in two-parent families to a higher work standard than those in single-parent families. States that failed to meet the standard would lose some of their federal welfare money unless they chose to exclude two-parent families from assistance.
California, home to the largest number of two-parent families on welfare, would be hardest hit, and Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has written to the California congressional delegation in protest.
Sharon Parrott, a welfare expert with the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, said it was "the height of hypocrisy" for congressional Republicans, with the acquiescence of President Bush, to promote policies that would give states incentives to discriminate against two-parent families. "This isn't a pro-family policy," she said.
There are no good statistics on two-parent families, which are still the exception on welfare rolls. Two years ago, the government said there were 114,000 such families nationwide, 44,000 in California. A more recent estimate put the number of such families nationwide at 105,000.
The bill before the House provides that the adults in 90% of the two-parent welfare families must, between them, put in 35 hours a week either working, training for work, or participating in other job-related activities.
States would face an easier work requirement for their single-parent families. Half of all parents would have to work 20 hours a week if they have a child under 6, or 30 hours if their children are older.
Mark H. Greenberg of the Center for Law and Social Policy used some rough data from the Congressional Research Service to estimate that 35,000 two-parent welfare families met the 35-hour-a-week standard. That is 61,000 families short of the 90% requirement.
Welfare policy is only one of many flashpoints in the bill, which reduces federal spending -- primarily in social programs -- by about $40 billion over the next five years. The higher education community is up in arms over changes in student loan programs, which account for $12.7 billion of the spending reductions. Cuts from Medicaid benefits, estimated at $7 billion, also are coming under fire.
