An increase in the federal minimum wage. An expanded earned income tax credit. Holding federal welfare spending steady, despite the fact that the number of people on welfare has dropped to 2 million from 5 million. Sound like the platform for the left wing of the Democratic Party? Nope, those are the policy recommendations contained in a new report issued by the United Way of New York City on the effects of the September 11 terrorist attack.

Called “Beyond Ground Zero: Challenges and Implications in New York City Post September 11,” the report is issued in the name of a committee that includes some of the biggest names in New York civic life — from Dennis Walcott, the deputy mayor who was president of the New York Urban League, to John Ruskay of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, to the heads of Catholic Charities and the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, to Nicholas Scoppetta, who is New York’s fire commissioner and who served in the Giuliani administration as commissioner of the administration for children’s services.

Well, we hope it won’t spoil the atmosphere of good works and crisis-response to note that many of these groups were pressing the same agenda before Sept. 11. The report acknowledges as much, noting, “all of these issues existed before September; but in the months that followed they have taken on a new urgency.”

They are urgent indeed for the New York City nonprofit establishment. The report, with admirable forthrightness, acknowledges this, too, noting, “The effect of reductions in city and state funding could have especially severe consequences for some nonprofit service providers. A recent study by Bain & Co. finds that New York City’s nonprofits typically depend on public funding for 50 percent to 70 percent of their revenues; in other cities, the average is closer to 40 percent.” All in all, it makes for a cozy circle. The nonprofits lobby for more government spending; the government funds the nonprofits; the nonprofits spend the money to lobby for yet more government spending.

Whether these needs are as urgent for the people of New York is another question entirely. There are genuine concerns that the earned income tax credit serves to discourage education, enterprise, and training by serving as an incentive to remain in low-wage work. The same caterwauling about cuts in the welfare budget that is being heard now was heard from the same quarters when President Clinton tried to reform welfare in 1996. In the event, the charities were crying wolf; the reform was a tremendous success.

We don’t want to be misinterpreted here. There are genuine needs in this city, hungry and poor and sick people who are served each day with compassion and excellence by the employees and volunteers of United Way agencies, Catholic Charities, the UJA-Federation of New York and the rest of the religious, secular and service organizations. But the leaders of those agencies and of this city are doing the poor no service by trying to use the attacks on America as a launching pad for a rear-guard defense of the failed liberal welfare state.