Ever since President Clinton signed the welfare-reform bill two years ago, his administration has been fiddling with technical parts of the law to blunt its impact. Now a Republican is trying to get into the act. Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey has introduced legislation that proposes to penalize states that deny extra benefits to women who have babies while on welfare. This policy -- informally known as the "family cap" -- was first introduced in New Jersey in 1992 and is now in place in 23 other states. Besides lowering welfare spending, many welfare experts believe the family cap may have reduced the number of births to women on welfare, while also providing a disincentive for women to start receiving welfare benefits.
Smith, co-chairman of the House Pro-Life Caucus, believes the "family cap" has led up to 1,000 New Jersey women to opt for abortion rather than give birth to a child and be denied extra benefits. But his evidence comes from a flawed Rutgers University study. When the Congressional Research Service analyzed the Rutgers study recently, it found an array of technical problems with the study. That doesn't persuade Smith though, who joins strange bedfellows from the National Organization for Women and the ACLU in wanting to overturn family-cap policies. Just how hard he's going to push his House colleagues to pass the legislation isn't clear, but Smith enjoys considerable clout with the House's pro-life caucus. Still, his efforts are likely to meet with some skepticism: NOW and the ACLU haven't suddenly turned anti-abortion; they're just willing to resort to any tactic that will result in higher welfare payments.