Utah gets 'F' on welfare

WASHINGTON — Eight years after Congress handed over to the states the responsibility for getting people off welfare and back to work, Utah's welfare reform performance has been given a resounding "F," according to a state-by-state report card discussed Tuesday at a forum sponsored by the Cato Institute, a public policy research foundation in Washington, D.C., that is nonprofit, libertarian and seeks to limit the role of government.

"What is surprising is that Utah would fail both on the policy side of the equation and the results side," said Jennifer Zeigler, a welfare policy analyst with the institute and author of the study.

"It is unfortunate Utah is lacking important programs needed before it will ever see the results," she added.

Utah was one of eight states and the District of Columbia to receive failing grades. Overall, the state ranked 45th.

Utah's neighbor to the north, Idaho, received the highest ranking of all states.

Zeigler said Utah received low marks because its welfare policies are not consistent with getting people back into the work force. For example, the federal reforms require that 50 percent of those on welfare must work at least 30 hours a week.

But Utah wrote "exceptions" into its law, and the state now meets the federal standard if its welfare recipients are merely looking for work or going to school.

"I'm not saying going back to school or looking for work are not good things," Ziegler said. "But let's not call it work."

State welfare officials defend the more flexible policy, saying it is grounded in the notion that escaping the constraints of poverty is more likely to happen with education.

Merely landing a minimum-wage job with no benefits does little to alleviate the financial realities faced by many of the working poor, said Curt Stewart, a spokesman with the state Department of Workforce Services.

"We think our program is sound and that many people agree with it — from advocates to people who administer the program in Washington, D.C., at Health and Human Services," he said.

Utah also scored the lowest grade possible for its failure to implement a standard whereby those on welfare do not receive additional welfare benefits if they have more children while on welfare, something called a "family cap."

In most states, welfare benefits are frozen at the level when the benefits were first granted — an incentive for welfare mothers not to get pregnant while on welfare and thereby compound their poverty.

Advocates, however, say there is little need for such a cap because the average size of a family on welfare in Utah is 1.9.