With House Welfare Vote In, Activists Focus on the Senate

As the Senate takes center stage in the welfare reform debate, Jewish activists have intensified their efforts to restore the government’s guarantee to support the poorest Americans, including immigrants.

The House of Representatives’ vote last Friday to end most welfare benefits for immigrants, put programs for poor children and turn over the responsibility for America’s poor to the states came as no surprise for Jewish organizations that had vigorously lobbied against the reforms.

Nearly certain that the House would move as it did — the vote was 234 to 199 – – these activists for months have been laying the groundwork for an all-out push on the other side of the Capitol building.

Now these activists have moved into high gear, in the words of some, to “right the wrongs” of the Republican’s Personal Responsibility Act, as the welfare legislation is known.

The bill is “irreconcilable wit American and Jewish values,” said Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism.

There is already talk in the Senate among key members to scrap the House bill and start from scratch. But until full-fledged hearings begin later this spring, no one knows for sure what the Senate’s version of the bill will look like.

The House version of the Personal Responsibility Act ends the federal guarantee of support for the needy and declares states in command of the nation’s poor.

Under the legislation, legal immigrants would be barred from access to the major cash-assistance welfare programs, including food stamps, Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid.

And until immigrants obtain U.S. citizenship, their sponsors’ income would be counted as their own in determining eligibility for other assistance programs.

As expected, the House legislation would limit tens of thousands of Jewish refugees to five years of access to welfare benefits.

The overwhelming majority of Jews who come to the United States each year from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe enter the country as refugees. Thousands more come from Iran. An estimated 30,000 Jews are expected to come to the United States from the former Soviet Union this year alone.

Although refugees are considered immigrants under American law, they are afforded special benefits because they are presumed to be fleeing a “well- founded fear of persecution.”

Under the House legislation, only refugees older than 75 and those who become citizens would remain eligible to collect welfare beyond five years.

Many activists here suggest that the bill is not welfare reform, but a massive budget cut to offset tax cuts.

“Let’s call it what it is — budget cutting, not welfare reform,” said Diana Aviv, director of the Washington office of the Council of Jewish Federations.

“If the goal is to move from dependency to durability, let’s give them the tools to do so,” Aviv said, arguing that cutting money for job training, transportation and child care ties the hands of welfare recipients.

Saperstein added, “Welfare reform should help move people off of government dependency. Nothing in this so-called reform has done that.”

The House bill would saves an estimated $66 billion over five years. Republicans resisted a move that would guarantee that the savings be used to offset the deficit, fueling charges among critics that the GOP was taking food from the poor to give tax breaks to the rich.

The traditionally slower paced and deliberative Senate holds the greatest hope for many in the Jewish community who will seek to reinstate legal immigrants to the welfare rolls and restore the poor’s entitlement status to America’s safety net.

Activists say that are optimistic that senators will more seriously consider the adverse impact of the legislation on welfare recipients.

“The Senate now has to essentially decide whether they want welfare reform or they want to cut the budget,” Aviv said, pledging an all-out push to turn the tide.