After Cellucci, the deluge

The governor's get-tough welfare policies are built on the fiction that good economic times will roll on forever

Governor Paul Cellucci is more lucky than smart. Since 1991, when he and Bill Weld were inaugurated in the midst of an unprecedented fiscal crisis, Massachusetts -- like the country as a whole -- has made a remarkable economic recovery. Now there are signs that Cellucci is confused by his own rhetoric, and can no longer distinguish between cause and effect.

Nowhere is this more evident than in his mutterings about welfare.

Since 1995, the number of families receiving benefits has plummeted from 102,993 to 58,961. Spending on AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) has fallen from $759 million to $402 million. But rather than crediting the economic boom, Cellucci points with unseemly pride to the state's harsh Welfare Reform Act of 1995 -- and argues that new, even harsher measures will bring those numbers down still further.

If Cellucci's proposal -- to force welfare recipients to seek work immediately, and to force recipients who are already working to work even more -- were considered in isolation, he would merely seem, depending on your point of view, either hard-nosed or uncaring. When placed in its proper context, though, the governor's plan can more properly be seen as evidence that he has no appreciation or understanding of the serious, long-term fiscal problems the state faces, and no idea how best to prepare for those problems when, inevitably, the economy returns to more-normal levels and the bills come due.

Make no mistake: the state's economic future is far from secure. The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation warns that the exploding costs of the Big Dig have created a "crisis" that could make it nearly impossible to fund road repairs and school construction. The Tax Equity Alliance for Massachusetts reports that the inflation-adjusted wages of low-income workers have dropped by 8.2 percent since 1989. The nonpartisan think tank MassINC and the Teresa and H. John Heinz Foundation have found that skyrocketing housing costs are driving the young and the well-educated out of the state.

Real welfare reform could actually help solve these problems by training people for well-paying jobs. But thanks to Weld and Cellucci's short-sighted welfare-bashing, Massachusetts's post-reform welfare system excels mainly at manufacturing poverty. For instance, Massachusetts is one of the few states that do not count education toward recipients' work requirements. Now Cellucci proposes to go in precisely the wrong direction, upping the work requirement from 20 to 30 hours a week, thus forcing those going to school either to drop out or to cut back. Even worse, the two-year time limit -- already contributing to a rise in poverty -- will, when the boom is over, be the cause of unprecedented and needless suffering.

"The social safety net is gone," says Jim St. George, executive director of the Tax Equity Alliance. "We don't notice it right now because the economy is stronger than it's been in 30 years. The challenge is trying to get anyone to imagine that these good times won't last forever."

Like the king of the Mardi Gras, Cellucci has trumpeted the message "Laissez le bon temps rouler." But it's a saying associated with another French king, Louis XV, that more aptly describes Cellucci's party-now/pay-later style of governance: "Après moi le déluge." Someday -- perhaps sooner rather than later -- there's going to be hell to pay. Cellucci can only hope he's long gone when that time comes.

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