President Bush’s remarks this week about a program he seems to understand only slightly contradicts not only what he claims to want in a reauthorized welfare bill but contradicts the reason for the welfare bill’s existence – to help people lift themselves out of poverty. As he relaxes this weekend at his parents’ summer home in Kennebunkport he might take a few moments to review the program and modify his opinion.

The president’s comments were made Monday at West Ashley High School in Charleston, S.C., where he complained that the Senate had created work loopholes in the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families bill, including an amendment by Sen. Olympia Snowe that raised Maine’s successful Parents as Scholars program to a national level. Parents as Scholars in Maine provides services such as child care and transportation to parents eligible while they are enrolled in college-degree programs, which count in part toward meeting welfare work requirements.

A study by the Maine Equal Justice Partners showed that Parents as Scholars graduates earn a median wage of $11.71 an hour, compared with a median wage of $7.50 an hour for former welfare recipients in Maine without post-secondary degrees. Better, nearly all graduates reported receiving benefit packages through their employers, suggesting they were in the sort of jobs that can turn into careers. Nearly 90 percent of parents who went through the program left welfare and never returned.

This, the president said, was unacceptable. “Under the way they’re kind of writing it right now, out of the Senate Finance Committee,” he said, “some people could spend their entire five years – there’s a five-year work requirement – on welfare, going to college. Now, that’s not my view of helping people become independent.” He did not explain why he thinks a college education fails to help people become independent nor was it clear why he chose a high school to disparage the idea of succeeding through going to college. His point was that the federal government should deny states funding for such programs because otherwise poor people could not “live a free life, free from government control.”

Instead, “What we need is, focus on what works. Focus on reforms. Focus on flexibility. Focus on elevating the programs that have been proven over the last years to help people.” Those are fine goals, but they are where the contradictions enter. Parents as Scholars works has been proven to work in Maine and could work nationally, especially the president were to give states the flexibility to adopt as modify it to suit local circumstances.

Sen. Snowe is correct to continue to press to keep Parents as Scholars in the bill, despite the president’s remarks. The goals of Parents as Scholars match the president’s stated welfare goals: It frees people from government dependence by providing a means toward a sustaining job. And unlike some welfare jobs, it is neither punitive nor make-work, which may disappoint some politicians who view the welfare bill as an opportunity to debase its recipients.

Let’s hope the president is not among that group and that he takes another look at a Maine program that works to reduce the need for welfare.