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Instead, the lege passed welfare-reform measures that were strict but somewhat more forgiving, with three-year time limits and provisions that the able-bodied must work. It also extended the child-health-insurance program to 200,000 more children. "In my experience, when given a choice between compassion and noncompassion, Bush invariably takes the noncompassionate path," says Elliott Naishtat, a Democrat who chairs the powerful house committee on human services, which handled the welfare bills. "Punishing the kids to get the mom to cooperate is not acceptable and not compassionate. You don't have to do it that way."
Naishtat and other Democrats believe that the harshness of Bush's positions sprang from his concern for winning Republican presidential primaries. "He did not want to leave himself open to attack on the right by appearing lenient," says Naishtat. House Democrat Glen Maxey remembers a day at the end of the 1999 session when Bush was pumping hard for his full-family-sanctions bill. Maxey and Naishtat were in the members' lounge when Bush aide Terral Smith walked in. "He sat down between us and said, 'We need y'all to have a meeting today to vote'" on the bill containing full-family sanctions. As Maxey tells it, Smith then said, "We think we need to adopt the Governor's welfare reform. The Governor needs sanctions to protect himself against Pat Buchanan in the primaries." Smith says he told them only that Buchanan would have a "heyday" with their welfare proposal.
When TIME asked Bush why he supported the sternest welfare measures, he resorted to standard-issue conservative rhetoric. "I don't buy the argument that old-style welfare programs are compassionate. Creating a sense of dependency is not compassionate." But why punish children for the sins of their parents? "We never said we were not going to fund children," he claimed, against the evidence. "They'd [still] have health insurance and food stamps."
That might sound convincing, until one recalls that 25% of Texas children have no health insurance and that food-stamp receipts in the state have dropped by almost half since 1995, even though 3 million Texans live in poverty. That's because people leaving welfare weren't informed that they still qualified for them. At best, Bush has been cavalier about the issue of hunger. Last December, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that Texas has the second worst hunger problem, with 1 million people going hungry each day, he dismissed it out of hand. "I saw the report that children in Texas are going hungry," he told a reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "Where? I want to know the facts. I would like for the Department of Agriculture to show us who. Where are they?"
One explanation for Bush's ignorance on the subject is that in 1995 he vetoed a bill that would have established, at minimal cost to the state, a Food Security Council to gather information on hunger. "I'm sure there was a valid reason why I did that," Bush told TIME. "There's a lot of nice-sounding bills I have vetoed." He added, "I appreciate the kindness of the food-bank operators. I understand that the food banks are in some cases full. Seems like they're doing their jobs." He headed into a laugh, but caught himself. "For that I think we ought to thank people. One child going hungry is one child too many."
DARK CLOUDS