The State Budget: Impact on O.C. : Welfare, Education Take Hit : Social services: Already spare budgets of AFDC parents will shrink 4.5%. Some say they don’t know how they’ll make it.

ANAHEIM — After paying the bills and buying the basics for her 15-month-old twins and 4-month-old baby, Sandy Estrada has $8 left from her monthly welfare payment.

Within a day of receiving her check this week, Estrada said, she had paid $450 in rent for the three-bedroom house she shares with two other couples, $125 for a month’s worth of diapers, $85 for formula, $60 for the electric bill, $30 for the gas bill and $15 for the phone. At the store, she bought baby wipes, soap, lotion, toilet paper, toothpaste and shampoo. Then she put $10 worth of gas into her car and treated herself to McDonald’s.

Next month, Estrada will have to give something up, as the state cuts 4.5% of her $894 grant from the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program.

“We’ll make it,” Estrada said Wednesday as she bounced the twins on her knees at the Orange County Social Services Agency office. “We just have to survive the best we can.”

Estrada and her children are among 80,000 people in the county receiving AFDC. The 2.4 million welfare recipients statewide will all see smaller checks next month, with percentages of the cuts ranging from 4.5% to 7.5% based on the cost of housing in various regions.

“To the average working person, that doesn’t sound like much,” said Orange County’s director of social services, Larry Leaman. “But if you’re trying to live on 600 bucks for you and two kids, 24 bucks is a lot.”

Most of the AFDC recipients waiting for their checks at the Anaheim office had not been advised of the impending budget cuts. When told their grants would shrink in the near future, dozens of women sighed and tossed back their heads, wondering how they will adjust already-slim budgets.

“That’s not cool,” said 18-year-old Jessica Perusse, 18, of La Habra, who went on AFDC two years ago when her son was born.

Perusse gets $663 every month from AFDC, which she said barely covers formula and diapers for her 6-month-old daughter as well as clothes and food.

“I don’t eat, I just feed my kids, that’s it,” said Perusse, who is currently receiving $30 a night in homeless benefits while she looks for a place she can afford. “The only time I really eat is when my friends come over to take me out.”

But like so many of those waiting in long lines to see caseworkers Wednesday afternoon, Perusse was well aware that there is nothing she can do about the cutbacks.

“I can’t go up to the President and (say), ‘Give us more money,’ ” she said, adding, “I’d like to. They should think about the people in the United States instead of other countries.”

For Mary Cagle, the state’s new budget hit home when she realized that she would no longer be able to afford photographs of her 2-year-old daughter Amanda growing up.

“There’s not going to be any extras,” said Cagle, who also has two teen-age children. “It will be absolutely only necessities.”

Cagle, 38, now receives $527 a month from AFDC. Of that, $450 goes to rent, and the rest pays for diapers and gas. Food stamps cover food.

“The simple reality is, when you have a baby, they have to have powder, they have to have tearless shampoo,” Cagle said as she kissed her crying daughter on the back of the head. “Soap’s cheap, but it’s not free.”