PRESIDENT Carter has promised to submit a welfare-reform package to Congress in the not too distant future. The time seems right. The welfare explosion of the late 1960’s has subsided, as have the echoes of anti-welfare hysteria. A new wave of research has dramatically increased our understanding of the current welfare system. As a result, the President’s analysts should find it easier to design an intelligent proposal with favorable political prospects. But this is not to say that any drastic “overhaul” of the system is a foregone conclusion. Indeed, that is unlikely-and probably undesirable.