In the decade since the end of welfare, Maine, like many states, has learned that it could move many more families than it expected from assistance to work. Its caseload in that time has fallen by more than half. It has also learned that state support – training, child care – greatly improves the chances of this transition being successful. Third, it knows from experience that some families, because of severe dysfunction in parents or children, are going to need help for many years.

This knowledge should cause the state to be concerned with the new rules issued this week by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for the replacement to welfare, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

Primarily, the new rules tighten the requirements for work by raising the number of TANF recipients who must be working and limiting what counts as work. Currently about 27 percent of Maine TANF recipients qualify as working; that number must rise to 50 percent or face financial penalties. Getting there, however, may be difficult.

For instance, about 1,000 recipients are enrolled in the Parents as Scholars program, which allows parents to attend college classes with the idea that if they can earn a degree they will find more satisfying, better paying work and remain permanently off state assistance. This success has been demonstrated over the past decade, and under the current TANF rules, the first year of Parents as Scholars has counted as work. Under the new rules, none of it will.

Similarly, English as a Second Language – remember during the immigration debate how Congress wanted all Americans to learn English? – now can count for credit toward the work requirement but under new rules would be limited largely to work-related instruction. In general, the more restrictive requirements make things more difficult for families in need of rehabilitative services and stress more vocational training over careers that will allow parents to fully support their families.

If you were trying to build a permanent underclass, these new rules and cutting taxes on estates and stock dividends would be a good way to do it. The changes are not as good at continuing or expanding a meritocracy.

One of the best ways to help single mothers with young children to remain employed is to ensure they have access to child care. The Congressional Budget Office estimates current child care programs need an additional $4.4 billion over the next five years just to maintain current services – and additional services will be in demand with the new work rules. The Bush administration has offered an added $1 billion. Maine’s backlog of requests for child care already exceeds 2,000.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, who has long promoted both Parents as Scholars and additional child care funding, is expected to propose new child care funding this year, as she did successfully last year. Her case for doing so is straightforward and compelling: “Many vulnerable, low-income working parents who need child care assistance will not be able to support their families and remain off welfare,” she said.

If the point of the TANF rule changes is merely to cut more people out of the welfare system, they are fine as they stand. But if the point is to help parents become financially independent permanently and to create a culture of work and its rewards, then the changes need reform of their own.