The 1996 welfare-reform law that imposed work requirements and time limits on benefits, ended welfare as an entitlement and halved the number of families receiving assistance is up for reauthorization in Congress. The deadline is Sept. 30, after which time federal benefits will end if no new law is enacted.

While the House of Representatives has passed a bill that toughens work requirements and funds a modest increase in child care, the Senate has yet to act on its bill with Majority Leader Tom Daschle expressing ambivalence about whether it will vote before the deadline. A crowded end-of-session agenda and the majority leader's desire for substantially greater increases in funding for child care seem to be the major impediments.

Yet, there is more to this impasse than meets the eye. For starters, both Daschle and President George W. Bush are playing election-year politics with welfare reform. Both say they would rather not support a reauthorization bill that is inconsistent with their principles while projecting confidence that after this November's midterm elections they can get a bill that is. It's almost as if they do not care about welfare reform at all, except as an election-year political symbol.

More important, legislative deliberations in both houses reflect a rather superficial understanding of the effects of welfare reform on the millions of families (mostly single mothers with children) who need to rely on public assistance. Apart from a few thoughtful dissenters, both houses have largely bought into the idea that welfare reform is a success - and that it is a success because it has reduced the numbers of recipients and decreased the rate of poverty.

Yet, a close reading of the burgeoning research on the topic suggests that neither of these easy assumptions withstands close scrutiny. Instead, there is more evidence that the booming economy of the 1990s did the most to lower the rolls and reduce poverty. Welfare reform has largely been responsible for increasing the ranks of the "working poor." Work requirements and time limits on benefits may have been a spur to some single mothers who could support their families through paid employment, but for many others the get-tough policies enacted in 1996 have meant little more than replacing the old hardships of the punitive and stingy welfare system with the new hardships of the punitive and stingy workfare system.

Welfare-to-work studies in the states suggest that during the go- go years of the late 1990s anywhere from one-half to three- quarters of those exiting the program were employed one year after leaving. Yet, these findings also suggest that anywhere from one-quarter to one-half were not. The numbers are probably much higher now. And "leavers" are only part of the story: Many others have been "diverted" from assistance, even when they needed it. This is often done by requiring applicants to look for work, often for an extended period of time, before they can receive welfare benefits.

In addition, research by the Economic Policy Institute indicates that single mothers making the transition from welfare to work experienced continued economic hardship at greater rates than those who remained on welfare. In part, this is because more than half these families are no longer receiving health insurance, food stamps and child care for which they remain eligible.

More recently, there is research indicating a growing trend for children under welfare reform to be living with neither parent, especially among African Americans. Many of these children become child-only cases when, in response to the strictures of welfare reform, the mother transfers responsibility for the child to a grandparent or another relative. When single mothers confront time limits and work requirements they cannot meet, facing the termination of benefits to the family, a growing number remove themselves from the picture by choosing to allow their children to continue to get assistance by placing them with a relative who is exempt from these requirements.

Most recently, a six-city study of more than 2,800 families found that "terminating or reducing welfare benefits by sanctions, or decreasing benefits because of changes in income or expenses, is associated with greater odds that young children will experience food insecurity and hospitalizations." In fact, studies show that the number of children living in extreme poverty has increased during the years of welfare reform.

Families that left welfare in the late 1990s have increasingly needed to recycle back onto welfare as the economy has slowed. However, with time limits, there is the increased prospect that families that need welfare with a downturn in the economy are now no longer able to access it.

Welfare reform was based on the flawed theory that any job was an improvement over welfare for all single mothers on public assistance. The research is indicating that this "one-size-fits- all" approach wrongly overlooks that many single mothers have legitimate reasons for needing public assistance and cannot be expected to successfully support their families strictly relying on low-wage jobs.

Yet neither the House or Senate bills gives serious consideration to these reasons. Neither proposes to support single mothers who need to stay home with young or sick children; neither is willing to support single mothers who cannot work either because of personal problems or disabilities; neither is prepared to invest in education and training to get other single mothers in a position to take jobs that can support their families; and neither is willing to make sure that budget-strapped states do a much better job to guarantee that families get their health insurance, food stamps, child care and other entitlements when they take a low-wage job.

Welfare reform reauthorization facilely assumes that the get- tough, get-a-job approach works for all families, regardless of whether they receive needed entitlements. Therefore, the impasse between the House and the Senate is not one worth resolving - at least not right now. Instead, we need to extend the discussion on welfare reform to get at the realities that Congress has so far not been willing to address.

Nonetheless, many progressive advocates are clamoring for an immediate resolution of the impasse, saying that a compromise bill is better than no bill, and that without some reauthorization of welfare reform, families currently needing public assistance will be put in jeopardy that there'll be no welfare system there if they need it. Yet, a compromise bill will be essentially an affirmation of the lack of seriousness that has characterized reauthorization deliberations to date.

The compromisers overlook that it is hard to get Congress focused on the realities of welfare reform when politics' favorite symbolic whipping boy - the welfare queen - is available during an election season. Instead, both sides jockey to see who can seem to be more for "personal responsibility" (read make single mothers with children on welfare take low-wage jobs - flipping burgers, processing chickens or stocking shelves, mostly for slightly above the minimum wage at an average of $7.50 an hour - even when they should not and even when it leaves their families suffering severe economic hardships and social deprivations.)

So rather than helping Congress resolve its current impasse, a better response is to declare: A plague on both your houses! Ironically, we should join Bush and Daschle in suggesting that we are better off waiting until after the election to decide on welfare reform. Timing is everything. The election cycle warps policymaking. The president's war with Iraq just happens to get emphasized now in an election season, and welfare reform gets turned into a political football. Better to wait until after the election to decide both.

In lieu of reauthorization, a one-year extension of welfare reform can give Congress the breathing space it needs. Then, it could begin to recognize the diversity of families on welfare, that many of them need to rely on public assistance, that low-wage work is not a panacea for any of them, and that while many families use welfare only for short periods of time, others need welfare for longer periods of time to develop the capacity to support their families at a decent level without welfare. Once the real world of welfare families in all their diversity is accounted for, maybe Congress will be ready for serious consideration of what it takes to have real welfare reform.