Posted on 02/14/2009 10:42:20 PM PST by bruinbirdman
RONALD REAGAN started it, Bill Clinton finished it and last week Barack Obama was accused of engineering its destruction. One of the few undisputed triumphs of American government of the past 20 years – the sweeping welfare reform programme that sent millions of dole claimants back to work – has been plunged into jeopardy by billions of dollars in state handouts included in the president’s controversial economic stimulus package.
As Obama celebrated Valentine’s Day yesterday with a return to his Chicago home for a private weekend with family and friends, his success in piloting a $785 billion (£546 billion) stimulus package through Congress was being overshadowed by warnings that an unprecedented increase in welfare spending would undermine two decades of bipartisan attempts to reduce dependency on government handouts.
Robert Rector, a prominent welfare researcher who was one of the architects of Clinton's 1996 reform bill, warned last week that Obama’s stimulus plan was a “welfare spendathon” that would amount to the largest one-year increase in government handouts in American history.
Douglas Besharov, author of a big study on welfare reform, said the stimulus bill passed by Congress and the Senate in separate votes on Friday would “unravel” most of the 1996 reforms that led to a 65% reduction in welfare caseloads and prompted the British and several other governments to consider similar measures.
Though some researchers have questioned the true impact of Clinton’s “workfare” reforms, they were wildly popular with millions of US taxpayers tired of subsidising what many saw as a generation of slackers.
Despite dire warnings that reduced benefits for single mothers and deadlines on entitlement would create a social calamity – one liberal senator warned at the time that children would be “sleeping on grates” – the 1996 reforms cut welfare rolls from
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
I wonder how Bill feels about his “legacy” being trampled on?
yitbos
That's just revisionist history. The Republican Congress in 1996 authored welfare reform. Clinton just signed the bill.
The bill was a cornerstone of the Republican Contract With America and was introduced by Rep. E. Clay Shaw, Jr. (R-Florida) .
Once they run through their $250 MILL loan from the Mexican loan shark charging them 14% interest, which won’t take long for a Lieberal rag like them, it won’t take the New Yecchh Slimes long to go belly up!
'Give recipients useful community service work, and if they do the work, then they get the [welfare] cash.' "
Hussein The Obammunist has 2,000,000 community service jobs available and ready to go. Half in ACORN. The other half in his Obama Jungen Soldaten Securitat Korp. aka Stasi
yitbos
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