Welfare reform's biggest test begins

Dulce Severino just hit her five-year limit on federal welfare benefits. Unless she can qualify for a state program that would prolong her benefits, she's not quite sure how she'll feed her two kids.

Until October, the single mom also had a factory job, but the pay was so low that she continued to get federal aid. Then she was laid off.

Across the nation, as five-year time limits kick in according to the 1996 welfare-reform law, thousands of other long-term recipients of aid find themselves in Ms. Severino's position: unemployed in an economic downturn and confused about their future.

Their plight highlights that welfare reform, until now largely hailed as a success, has entered a new, difficult phase. Most states are trying to cushion the impact of time limits, using a provision in the federal law that allows them to exempt up to 20 percent of their caseloads. But not all are. Thousands of people in Ohio, for example, have already been forced off public assistance.

And even in states like New York - which has begun shifting more than 30,000 welfare recipients to a state-based program - some see holes in the safety net.

"The fact is that on the ground level, there's a lot of confusion, a lot of people are being denied benefits, and exemptions are not being granted," says Barbara Blum, a welfare expert at Columbia University in New York.

The fate of people like Severino, coupled with concerns about the ability of state and local governments to shoulder financial burdens once federal aid stops, is prompting some experts to call for a rethinking of 1996 law's time limits.

The act's achievements have received wide publicity.

Welfare rolls are down more than 60 percent nationwide over the past five years, and many credit the five-year limit with motivating former welfare recipients to find jobs.

But others contend that the time cap is arbitrary and unrealistic, and they warn of an impending disaster if the recession deepens. They are among a growing group of advocates and welfare experts who want Congress to take a hard look at the issue when welfare reform comes up for reauthorization next year.

Even some conservatives are questioning the advisability of maintaining rigid time limits.

"We shouldn't be in the situation where we take any parent who legitimately can't find a private-sector job and say to them, 'You're over this time limit, so you're out of luck,' " says the Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector, who was a key architect of welfare reform. "It's much more compassionate if you have a universal work or constructive activity requirement. With that, time limits become almost ... irrelevant."

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