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GOP sees welfare as area to start tightening belt
House Republicans said that more stringent rules for the benefits would save the state money, and that while the amount would be relatively small, government needs to look for solutions both large and small to remedy the budget deficit.
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In Minnesota's Rock County, which straddles both the Iowa and South Dakota borders, nearly one in three people who received welfare benefits in 2007 had lived in Minnesota for less than a year. In the six Minnesota counties that adjoin North Dakota, the number was roughly one in four.
Armed with those statistics, and with an eye on the state's $4.8 billion budget deficit, House Republicans said Wednesday they want to tighten the state's welfare rules on a variety of fronts, moves they say could save as much as $50 million over a two-year period.
Under the centerpiece proposal of the GOP initiative, anyone who applied for state welfare benefits within a year of moving to Minnesota would be limited to no more than they received in benefits in their previous state. The limits would continue to apply until their eligibility ran out. Only people who moved to Minnesota after the measure became law would be affected.
A leading DFL legislator quickly labeled the proposal "short-term thinking." House Minority Leader Marty Seifert and other Republicans acknowledged that the initiatives by themselves would do little to remedy the state's budget woes but viewed them in a broader context.
"You might say, 'We're in the face of a $5 billion deficit [and] it doesn't seem like a lot of dollars,'" said Rep. Matt Dean, R-Dellwood, who joined Seifert at a morning news conference. But Dean said the state's massive health and human services budget needs to be examined "line by line, with a fine-toothed comb, to say where can we start to pull out some dollars."
While acknowledging that welfare is a hot-button issue for many Republicans, Seifert said that legislators -- particularly DFLers -- need to start thinking in terms of small and not-so-small solutions to the state's economic problems. "Essentially, the Democrats have ignored this issue," he said.
Seifert said the welfare-related initiatives would be introduced as legislation next week.
The proposals, Republicans said, would include another one that was suggested by House Republicans last summer: a crackdown on people receiving welfare payments in Minnesota and using state-issued electronic-benefit cards to make purchases in other states. In a one-year period ending last June, state officials said the cards were used 48,821 times in Illinois alone, for a total of $1.3 million. Overall, purchases in other states amounted to $10 million a year, state data show.
Sen. Linda Berglin, DFL-Minneapolis, chairwoman of the Senate Health and Human Services Budget Division, said Republicans were missing the point.
"We only spend 1 percent of our total state's general funds on welfare benefits," she said in a statement. "People often move during times of unemployment to look for employment in other locations, so it may not be 'welfare' benefits they come here for, but employment opportunities."
Seifert acknowledged that similar attempts at welfare changes have been blocked by the courts, in part because of equal protection concerns. He said the new proposal will be studied by the state Attorney General's office before moving forward. And noting new appointments to the state Supreme Court, he added that "it is more of a [Republican Gov. Tim] Pawlenty Supreme Court ... I would sense that they would look at this in a different way."
Mike Kaszuba • 651-222-1673
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