Welfare Reform and Congress:

An Interview with Dennis Kucinich

Aired September 16, 1999

David C. Barnett–The changing face of welfare in Ohio is largely the result of legislation passed in Washington and signed by President Clinton several years ago. That legislation will be up for reauthorization in the year 2002. Joining us on the phone is Dennis Kucinich, who represents Ohio's District 10 in U.S. House of Representatives. Good morning, Congressman.

Dennis Kucinich–Good morning.

DCB–First of all, what's your sense of what we've learned in the two years since time limits were imposed on Ohio's welfare system?

DK–Well, the first thing I'd like to say before I get into that is hearing Nicole Tompkin's story is very important because it shows how someone can move towards self-sufficiency if given the opportunity and given the encouragement, and I think it's a wonderful story.

DCB–It's not all negativity.

DK–No it isn't, and I wasn't in Congress when the welfare reform bill was enacted, I was in the Ohio Senate, and as I look towards the next two years, I think some of the issues that are going to be dealt with, that must be dealt with, is what do you do about the fact that in Ohio, for example, you've got a half-a-million children who are living at or below the federal poverty level regardless of their parents' income. What do you do about the working poor who may not have health insurance, for themselves and their children, and who may not be able to or might have to miss work to collect child support or get health services or get child care assistance? These are some of the issues, by the way, which the Children's Defense Fund raised in their Labor Day report, and I think their issues, which are worth looking at, because if we're going to make this transition to self-sufficiency work, we have to make sure people have a living wage and we have to make sure that people are able to survive and we are not plunging their children into poverty.

DCB–What about this whole issue of time limits, though? We are two years in and one year from now, you know, it's going to be cut-off time. Is three years proving to be not enough time or do you think this is working?

DK–I think Congress may have to look at the issue of time limits. Now we certainly want to encourage people to work and I think most people want work not welfare, but I also think government has a role to play for those who are temporarily down on their luck, and who have not been able to make a connection. You know, we have a pretty strong labor market right now, but at the same time, people, for one reason or another, may not be able to keep a full-time job and may need assistance, and so while we want work not welfare for those able to work, we also have to be careful that we're not throwing people overboard because of their difficulty in entering the workforce.

DCB–You've talked about what we've learned so far. What do you see happening?

DK–Well, again, I think what needs to happen, what I hope to participate in, is to work to make sure that people have health coverage. I think that's really one issue which is key. You want full-time employment, because many people are being given work opportunities that aren't necessarily full-time jobs. The second thing is that full-time employment should have health care for themselves and for their children, because otherwise, people can be teetering between self-sufficiency and abject poverty with one illness in the family. There's also some larger issues here about the way that wealth is being redistributed in our society, in that children, in one report that was done points out, I think the figures were, in 1980, there was a 42:1 ratio between what corporate executives made in terms of their pay and what factory workers made, it was 42:1. By 1997, that ratio changed to 419:1. In other words, corporate executives made 419 times what a factory worker would make, that's by 1997. I think one of the things that have to be looked at in this society, and it's an urgent question, is why is it that the gap between rich and poor is growing so quickly, and what about the pressures being put on the middle class, who also may be finding themselves slipping towards that federal poverty level, so there's large economic issues that have to be looked at here, one aspect of which is, what can we do to keep people moving towards self-sufficiency, but also what's happening with our economy, where people are being threatened with economic extinction because there's an illness in the family, or because they are unable to get the kind of help that they need in order to live a decent life.

DCB–OK, these are your concerns. What do you sense as the mood of the Congress?

DK–I think Congress is going to keep moving towards the direction of imposing tighter and tighter restrictions.

DCB–Is this a Republican versus Democrat thing, or liberal versus conservative thing?

DK–I think it could be some..., but I'm hopeful in that debate, we can visit the issues with respect to income eligibility for families, who would receive Medicaid, and to look at the federal poverty level and make sure that people are substantially higher than that federal poverty level. The same thing goes with the issue of child care assistance. I mean, any time you look at welfare issues, you have to look at how people's lives are going to be impacted by the changes, because federal law can be somewhat impassive. We're creating circumstances which affect real lives and which we want to get people off of welfare, we want to get people to self-sufficiency, but we don't want to impose cruelties on them and make it impossible for their children to be able to have a decent life, so it's hard to predict exactly what Congress would do, but I can tell you what my intention is, and that is to make sure that we address the issues that are talked about in the context of a welfare debate. One of the things that I did as a state senator, by the way, was when the Senate passed a welfare reform law, I offered an amendment which would have given 50,000 Ohioans a chance to have full-time jobs in this transition to welfare-free society. Unfortunately, that was voted down because the State Senate felt that the private sector would provide all the work opportunities. Let's hope that that continues to happen, but not all the work opportunities are good paying jobs, and very few of them have the kind of health care benefits which are needed for working families and for their children.

DCB–Dennis Kucinich represents Ohio's District 10 in the U.S. House of Representatives. Thanks for joining us this morning.

DK–Thank you.