Welfare: Doleful Dole

“There’s nobody in this room who can tell me about hard times—because I’ve seen them,” said West Virginia’s Democratic Senator Robert Byrd. The Senator explained that his mother had died when he was ten months old and that he was raised by penniless foster parents, who “never took five cents” in welfare funds. “Some people may think we don’t know what it is to wear tennis shoes in the snow. I went from one end of the community to the other with a little wagon gathering up scraps saved for me by housewives so I could feed the hogs. I was out of high school for 16 years before I could go to college. So never let it be said that I look at this problem from any ivory tower.”

Byrd* was defending himself against charges that, as chairman of a subcommittee investigating welfare fraud in the District of Columbia, he was plucking bread from the mouths of women and children. As Byrd’s probe ended last week, it was apparent that some of those women and children had been eating pretty high off the hog.

Man in the House. Washington’s welfare payments have bloated from $9,500,000 to $21,300,000 in the past seven years, and Byrd wanted to find out why. In random sampling, investigators discovered that many families on relief had one TV set and that several had two. At one appliance store at least four persons on relief were buying expensive stereophonic phonograph sets on time. Of the cases reviewed, investigators found that 78% of the persons on general relief were really ineligible for aid, as were 57% of the mothers receiving checks for dependent children. Some case studies: A mother of four,receiving $169 a month on the claim that her husband had deserted her, had actually driven him away from home by “threats and abuse” so that she could receive public assistance. What was more, the husband had been giving her $50 a month since January, was employed, and wanted to return home to support his family. A mother of eight children(fathered by three men) was getting $255 a month, had turned down two job offers so far this year. She told investigators it would be foolish for her to go to work since it would mean losing her welfare benefits. Another mother, getting $205 a month on the claim that she had no other resources, was in fact employed part time, and during one period had received $10 a week from a boy friend toward a $420 TV set.

Nearly one-third of the supposedly abandoned mothers were violating the District’s “man in the house” rule. It forbids payments to any woman for her dependent children if an able-bodied man lives with her; it makes no difference whether or not he is her husband. In eleven cases investigators found men hiding under beds, in closets or bathrooms—or heading hell-bent out the back door.

New Look. Such were Byrd’s findings that some of those who had criticized his investigation earlier were now coming around. Among them was the Washington Post and Times Herald, which agreed that the District should “put its house in order.” And at the prompting of Senator Byrd, Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Anthony Celebrezze was planning a review of the nation’s entire $4.3 billion relief program on the premise that what had happened in the District might also be happening elsewhere.

* No kin to Virginia Democrat Harry Flood Byrd.