Free Republic

Crippled by record unpopularity and uncharismatic, rudderless leadership, Germany's oldest political party has erupted into open revolt over the hot-button issue of welfare reforms. SPD, Germany's major mainstream Leftwing party, pushed through controversial liberalising reforms several years ago under the chancellorship of Gerhard Schroeder. But the reforms, which made it easier to sack workers and reduced unemployment benefits, have now come back to haunt the party, with its leading left-wingers demanding centrist economic policies be scrapped. The SPD, which governs in a grand coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU party, is currently at a historic low in polls. Since the...

City Manager Harry Walker is calling for Chester County's housing authority to temporarily stop building housing projects and placing people into subsidized housing in the city. In an open letter sent Tuesday, Walker notes public housing is exacerbating the crime and social instability that began when the city's manufacturing jobs disappeared. "Coatesville receives more than half of the county's (housing) vouchers, which equates to over 28 percent of the city's housing stock," he wrote. "This ill-conceived policy has resulted in crimes that attack the basic rights of the residents of Coatesville." These crimes, Walker wrote, include the shootings and violent...

It may surprise some folks on the west coast to learn that California may not be the most liberal state in America when it comes to mandating socialism and political correctness. Yes there may be certain things where California out ranks Maine such as the outrageous ruling banning homeschooling and the coddling of illegal immigrants but in most cases, IE: taxes, BIG government, restriction, the environment, Maine outranks California as being one of the most backward socialist states in the country along with Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode island and a few other states and it shows greatly. Maine has the highest...

The campaign of 2008 started on July 1 when Obama launched his first national advertising buy of the season. How McCain responds and whether or not he does, will have a big impact in determining whether Obama can solidify or expand his current lead in the polls. As always, the media fails to cover the significant events of the campaign -- but this is one of the most critical.

Barack Obama aligned himself with welfare reform on Monday, launching a television ad which touts the way the overhaul "slashed the rolls by 80 percent." Obama leaves out, however, that he was against the 1996 federal legislation which precipitated the caseload reduction. "I am not a defender of the status quo with respect to welfare," Obama said on the floor of the Illinois state Senate on May 31, 1997. "Having said that, I probably would not have supported the federal legislation, because I think it had some problems." Obama's transformation from critic to champion of welfare reform is the latest...

FREE CITIES How About Global Welfare Reform? by Ken Hagerty 04/08/2008 12:00:00 AM THE END OF THE COLD WAR deprived our foreign aid system of its strategic underpinnings. No longer could official development assistance be justified as part of a global struggle between two great superpowers and their competing economic systems. Foreign aid became a more amorphous exercise, motivated by a marbled mixture of altruism, vanity, pragmatism, guilt, and noblesse oblige. Development assistance has become a global welfare system, with many of the same syndromes that afflicted America's war on poverty. In 1996 the United States scrapped the war on...

The corrosive effects of AFDC on America's families - especially African-American families whose incidence of unwed motherhood has tripled since President Lyndon Johnson greatly expanded welfare (the Great Society), will finally begin to end if RI Governor Carcieri's plan passes, and the idea spreads. I have long advocated that AFDC should be an emergency program, with benefits ending after six months and eligibility denied for at least two years afterwards, as the way to help out families in crisis without creating the horrible system of dependence we have now.

I thought I had the most brilliant idea in my life the other day. Then I found that Charles Murray had already published something very much like it a year ago in his book In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State. Oh well... In a nutshell, the plan is to scrap every transfer program in the US federal budget - including Social Security, all forms of Welfare, medicare, Medicaid, etc. and replace it with a universal personal cash payment. As with most truly profound concepts, it's a simple and powerful idea, and one that has the potential...

Rudy Giuliani speaks at Harvard at the Kennedy School of Government on immigration and the 1996 Welfare Reform Act on October 10, 1996. [Transcribed starting at 1:07] I don't think immigration, over the last 30 to 40 years, has been a terrible problem for America, as I tried to point out. I think immigration has worked pretty well. I think it has areas of problems. I think the federal government isn't doing enough about illegal immigration--focusing on the right people, the people that are committing crime. But by and large, I don't think the immigration system needs tremendous reforms. And...

In the months leading up to the 2006 midterm elections, as pundits and bloggers looked forward to the '08 presidential election, there was almost a universal sense of conventional wisdom that John McCain was the plainly recognized frontrunner, whereas Rudy Giuliani's stature as a contender would immediately plummet "once those conservatives found out about those liberal social views of Rudy's." Then, during the summer of 2006, the mainstream media and beltway thinkers had their proof. A serious political action organization was formed by a group of hardcore social conservatives, dedicated to tearing down any chance of Rudy's at grabbing the...

Welfare reform is about requiring that those who depend on food stamps, ssi, and Wic be held accountable about how they spend taxpayer money to make sure they use it right. Fiscal conservatives complain about how some unemployed single mother with 5 children spends her money on a big screen TV instead of using it to feed her kids and find work. That's understandable but what about Tax cuts? We give Tax breaks to filthy rich CEOs because we hope that they will use it to build up their buisnesses and help the economy. Instead they use it to boost...

Suzette Strickland, a former welfare mother herself, sees plenty of families stuck in poverty in her outreach job at End Hunger Connecticut! Inc. From her perch in a converted house on Hartford's Hungerford Street, it's clear to her that welfare reform - exactly 10 years in - has left behind the single mothers most deeply mired in the cycle of desperation. Just last week, a 35-year-old grandmother came into Strickland's office to see about food stamps, with some of her extended family in tow. "She has a 21-year-old daughter with three children, plus custody of two grandchildren from another child,"...

There may be a reason why academics are nearly as reluctant to discuss welfare reform as they are to do a recap of The Cold War: most professors were wrong about the War on Poverty too. “Washington declared war on poverty and poverty won,” former President Ronald Reagan famously said. Most pedagogues never saw it that way. “In Wisconsin, 33 families a day entered the state from Illinois and Chicago lured by higher benefits,” the Claremont Institute’s Eloise Anderson remembers of the land-o-lakes she called home for three decades. “The academic community denied that was a motive to move from...

Ten years ago next month, a bipartisan majority in Congress and a Democratic president launched America's welfare policy in a new and largely uncharted direction. It would be difficult to exaggerate the predictions of doom hurled against the Republican welfare reform bill signed by President Clinton on Aug. 22, 1996. Mr. Clinton had previously vetoed two versions of welfare reform when, with skill, daring and persistence, Republicans in the House and Senate pushed it through Congress a third time and put it again on the president's desk. In an act of remarkable political courage, Mr. Clinton defied senior members of...

REAGANAUTS FOUND THEMSELVES IN MOURNING again last week as another of the Gipper's loyal servants unexpectedly passed away. Hard on the heels of the deaths of Caspar Weinberger and Lyn Nofziger came the sad news that Robert B. Carleson, architect of Reagan's welfare reform, had succumbed to complications from recent surgery. Hundreds of the old Reagan team gathered in the rotunda of the Ronald Reagan Trade Center, just a few blocks from the White House, to share a few tears and a few laughs, as a dozen old friends, led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese, reflected on Carleson's life...

SEVERAL recent studies have garnered wide attention for reconfirming the tragic disconnection of millions of black youths from the American mainstream. But they also highlighted another crisis: the failure of social scientists to adequately explain the problem, and their inability to come up with any effective strategy to deal with it.[snip] Nor have studies explained why, if someone cannot get a job, he turns to crime and drug abuse. One does not imply the other. Joblessness is rampant in Latin America and India, but the mass of the populations does not turn to crime. And why do so many young...

WASHINGTON - Kevin McGuire estimates that 18,000 welfare recipients in Maryland have entered the work force during the past two years. "If that's failing, I'm guilty," said McGuire, who oversees the state's Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. But under proposed changes to the nation's welfare laws, McGuire and his employees will have a lot of work to do over the coming year, or Washington could withhold millions of dollars. Congress is expected soon to approve legislation that requires states to place at least half of their welfare families in jobs or approved training programs. Only 10 states meet that...

In the wake of the scandalous reaction of the welfare underclass in New Orleans to the Katrina hurricane, a recent column by David Brooks in the NY Times was refreshing to read, but it probably bored most of its readers. Brooks pointed out that many good things have been happening in this country for the last few years, and they have spanned both Democrat and Republican administrations. He points out that: “The rate of family violence in this country has dropped by more than half since 1993. The decline in domestic violence is of a piece with the decline in...

On March 9, 2005 at 10:00 a.m., the Senate Finance Committee will consider the Personal Responsibility, Work, and Family Promotion Act of 2005,  S.105,better known as Welfare Reform.  In this bill is the Title V A-H definition of abstinence education.  There is a credible threat that Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) will attempt to amend the definition of abstinence education to include contraception and so-called "safe sex" promotion.   There is also a chance that an amendment will be offered on so-called "medical accuracy" or to authorize spending for a whole new sex-ed program.  We will not have specific information about the amendment until...

When an acquaintance of mine on the Left heard that I would be writing an article for the Free Press about how the right helps the poor, his initial reaction was laughter, accompanied by self-righteousness. It is almost written in stone today that our current welfare policies, though flawed, are the best we can do to address the dilemmas of poverty in America. When the various problems with these policies are pointed out, the Left is content to simply rest on the assumption that the Right could never offer anything better. If one’s thinking about the Left and the Right...

Oscar Wilde's imperious Lady Bracknell would have told this Labour Government that losing the initiative once at Orewa was due to misfortune; twice looks like carelessness. Yet it¹s happened. Labour has again been caught looking foolish, frantically erecting straw men with the help of the media, deliberately misrepresenting Don Brash¹s views on adoption, and making contradictory statements of protest. One minute Steve Maharey calls Brash "an idiot", then wants credit for doing several things Brash recommends. It was the same last year. One standard of citizenship and an end to special privileges for Maori was ³racist². Until, that is, Labour...

MILWAUKEE -- Angela Jobe, 38, is a grandmother who has lived most of her adult life at ground zero of the struggle to "end welfare as we know it." At about the time candidate Bill Clinton was promising to do that -- in autumn 1991 -- she boarded a bus in Chicago, heading for Milwaukee, lured by Wisconsin's larger benefits and lower rents. Unmarried, uneducated and unemployed, she already had three children and eight years on welfare. Today she is in her ninth year of employment in a nursing home, earning $10.50 an hour. How she left welfare, and how...

By George F. Will Published 2:15 am PST Thursday, December 30, 2004 MILWAUKEE — Angela Jobe, 38, is a grandmother who has lived most of her adult life at ground zero of the struggle to "end welfare as we know it." At about the time candidate Bill Clinton was promising to do that — in autumn 1991 — she boarded a bus in Chicago, heading for Milwaukee, lured by Wisconsin's larger benefits and lower rents. Unmarried, uneducated and unemployed, she already had three children and eight years on welfare. Today she is in her ninth year of employment in a...

In 1996, Eric Clapton was handed a best-record Grammy Award for his hit “Change the World.” Congress caught Clapton’s spirit and changed America, if not the world, by passing a massive overhaul of federal welfare policies. But while Clapton continues to work at his craft, winning four Grammys since 1996, Congress has pretty much left welfare alone, mostly just renewing existing welfare programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which was extended for six more months in September. Never has an issue fallen off the public-policy radar screen so rapidly and so permanently. The Harris Poll has documented...

WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) - Va Choua Vang, who fled Laos after the Vietnam War, couldn't sleep over worry about how he would support his family when the U.S. government stopped sending monthly checks. "I didn't want to live. I thought about suicide," said Vang, 74, through his son, Chue Neng Vang. The elder Vang, who doesn't speak English, did not know that the reason he and his wife stopped receiving the $1,500 in checks was because they failed to become citizens within seven years of their arrival in America. A Hmong, Vang felt betrayed. He and other members of the...

I first became interested in the subject of Welfare from reading various articles and commentary on the effects of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. The reforms are generally claimed as being successful, but the lack of exploration and depth in which the media and even academic papers covered this was frustrating to me. How successful were they? What was the rhetoric of opponents and proponents before and after the bill passed and as the results came in? If Welfare Reform was so successful why was Welfare allowed to continue for so long? Was Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty a success?...

I first became interested in the subject of Welfare from reading various articles and commentary on the effects of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. The reforms are generally claimed as being successful, but the lack of exploration and depth in which the media and even academic papers covered this was frustrating to me. How successful were they? What was the rhetoric of opponents and proponents before and after the bill passed and as the results came in? If Welfare Reform was so successful why was Welfare allowed to continue for so long? Was Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty a success?...

<p>Like Bill Clinton in recent days, the liberal Sen. John Kerry has spent the past few years bragging about his support for the historic 1996 welfare-reform bill. But neither is likely to admit that welfare reform, which has proved to be one of the most successful social-policy legislative acts in U.S. history, comprised a central plank in Rep. Newt Gingrich's 1994 "Contract With America."</p>

While no one issued a press release, welfare reform is probably dead this Congress — another legislative pelt nailed to the thick wooden door of Democratic obstructionism. And while probing the dynamics of legislative gridlock in the U.S Senate is certainly not a new subject, the stymieing of welfare reform — and the reasons why it's been derailed — deserve closer examination. Despite growing and substantial evidence that the 1996 welfare-reform legislation is the most successful social-policy change in generations, liberals in Congress appear stuck in a time warp, bludgeoning efforts to build on its successes with the same...

<p>Race to the Top Welfare Reform Works. Ted Kennedy Wants to Kill It.</p> <p>Government "reform" rarely works, as these columns often point out. But eight years after Congress ended welfare as a federal entitlement, the evidence is undeniable that this experiment in conservative social policy is a historic success. The only problem is that some people still won't forgive the reformers for being right.</p>

Governor Pataki recently proposed to make welfare reform a reality in New York. That’s why the poverty promoters in Albany are fighting him tooth and nail. The big idea behind the 1996 federal welfare reform law was this: If you want the government to support you, you have to do something in return. You must make some effort to become self-sufficient, whether through working or learning job skills or looking for work. In most of the country, that bargain holds. Not in New York. The dirty little secret of New York’s version of welfare reform is that you don’t have...

Senator John Kerry (D-MA) has voted for: Authorization for use of force against Iraq (2002, Iraq War - Op. Iraqi Freedom) Homeland Security Act of 2002 (Dept. of H.S.) Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2001 Motion to dismiss impeachment of Clinton (motion failed, nonbinding vote) Authorization for air operations & missile strikes against Yugoslavia (Serbia) Welfare reform NAFTA Resolution supporting Pres. George H.W. Bush's actions against Iraq in Gulf War Kerry has voted against: Supplemental funding for Iraq/Afganistan military & humanitarian efforts (2003) Medicare Prescription Drug & Modernization Act of 2003 Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003 Jobs and Growth...

President Bush has proclaimed Oct. 12-18 as Marriage Protection Week, calling the institution's preservation "essential to the continued strength of our society." The president issued the proclamation Oct. 3, one day after a coalition of 25 evangelical Christian and conservative organizations announced a campaign to preserve marriage as the union of a man and a woman. The effort, campaign leaders said, will begin with Marriage Protection Week and will work toward passage of a constitutional amendment to preserve the biblical and traditional definition of the institution. The Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and other organizations formed the coalition...

<p>The Senate Finance Committee yesterday passed a welfare-reform bill that revises work rules and promotes marriage, but punts on the hotly debated issue of child-care funding.</p> <p>"My intention is to defer the issue of child care to the floor, where the whole Senate can work its will," said Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican and chairman of the Finance Committee.</p>

<p>In 1965, the federal government, in its "War on Poverty," began paying very substantial cash and benefit packages to lower- income Americans. This impulse to help was a good thing, but there was a catch to it; the government required, as a condition of public assistance, that recipients not engage in the private activities that traditionally get people out of poverty.</p>

Compassionate conservatism works because it addresses people as individuals rather than as faceless units in a throng. Conservative Compassion Vs. Liberal Pity A remarkable feature of President Bush's pronouncements is his unashamed use of the "L" word. Mr. Bush calls his political philosophy "compassionate conservatism," but he is not afraid to say the older, stronger word that gives that philosophy its meaning. The word is love. Mr. Bush used the word when, during the presidential campaign, he was confronted by a man who spoke loosely and negligently of illegitimate children and the welfare system. When the man uttered the...

<p>The same folks that led the unsuccessful opposition to welfare reform in 1996 are now targeting Republican efforts to reform Head Start, the federal government's $6.8 billion preschool program for the poor. When President Clinton finally signed the Republican-controlled Congress' historic welfare-reform legislation, Children's Defense Fund (CDF) President Marian Wright Edelman harshly denounced Mr. Clinton.</p>

Over six years ago, Congress overhauled much of the nation's welfare system. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 19961 replaced the failed social program called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). The reform legislation had three primary goals: (1) reduce welfare dependence and increase employment, (2) reduce child poverty, and (3) reduce illegitimacy and strengthen marriage. At the time of the law's enactment, many liberal groups made dire predictions about the terrible effect these reforms would have on America's children. In particular, the Children's Defense Fund claimed that welfare...

More Big Good News: The left has complained for years when welfare-reform enthusiasts measure success by the sharp (more than 50%) reduction in caseloads since the mid-1990s. I agree--lower caseloads ares good but they're not everything. Yet the left's proposed measure of success, income and poverty, is equally flawed. If all the 1996 welfare reform did was take non-working single mothers on welfare and turn them into working single-mothers with exactly the same incomes, it would be a huge success.Isn't the real test whether life is getting better in America's "underclass" ghettos? Now there is powerful statistical evidence that this is in fact happening. Concentrated poverty...

<p>The good news coming out of the war in Iraq this week has crowded out another important story that should be front-page news. Landmark welfare reform legislation passed by Congress in 1996 not only worked to reduce welfare rolls but actually lifted millions of poor, single mothers out of poverty, according to a new study by two distinguished economists.</p>

<p>ORE POOR WOMEN should go to college. From great books to great connections, college is educational and a primary creator of greater earning power. Sadly, college is often assumed to be reserved for chipper 18-year-olds. Poor women on welfare are assumed to be irresponsible, causing their own troubles by having children when they were too young, too poor, or unmarried.</p>

The good news coming out of the war in Iraq this week has crowded out another important story that should be front-page news. Landmark welfare reform legislation passed by Congress in 1996 not only worked to reduce welfare rolls but actually lifted millions of poor, single mothers out of poverty, according to a new study by two distinguished economists. "Gaining Ground, Moving Up: The Change in the Economic Status of Single Mothers Under Welfare Reform," by June O'Neill and M. Anne Hill, shows that the poverty rate among single mothers has dropped by about 20 percent, even after the...

<p>Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who died Wednesday, was one of the most intriguing public figures of his time.</p> <p>Moynihan was an intellectual; most at home in the realm of ideas. He was an academic by training and published 18 books and numerous influential articles and essays.</p>

WASHINGTON, March 6 — Poor children suffer no psychological damage when their mothers move from welfare to work, as millions of women have in recent years, a major new study says. Among adolescents in such families, the researchers say, mental health may actually have improved. The research, financed by the National Institutes of Health and being published on Friday in the journal Science, provides the most extensive evidence yet to answer questions that have been swirling around one of the biggest experiments in American social policy in the last half-century. The study suggests that the 1996 welfare overhaul does not...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House Republicans were set to pass a welfare bill on Thursday that would impose stricter work rules on welfare recipients and reaffirm the welfare-to-work philosophy that underpinned the landmark 1996 welfare reform.

Washington, D.C., January 10, 2003—Today, Former Education Secretary and co-director of Empower America William J. Bennett sent a memo to the White House and the U.S. Congress urging them to embrace a true civil rights agenda based on colorblind policies and equal opportunity for all. Bennett advises that in the coming year a civil rights agenda should be crafted around three action items: • Ending the double standard of racial preferences in higher education admissions: The Bush Administration and Members of Congress should immediately file an amicus brief with the Supreme Court on behalf of the plaintiffs in Grutter v....

<p>Lydia Holguin, center, sits with family members at their North Sacramento home. In front, from left, are sons Marcus Hatch, 15; Quentin Miles, 2, and Desmond Hatch, 13; in back, son Donell Hatch, 9; nephew Shawn Smith, 17, and daughter Zhane Washington, 7. Holguin starts a new job soon.</p>

<p>A new study in two states finds that welfare reform is discouraging single mothers from having more children and encouraging them to think "more seriously about getting married."</p> <p>However, "fulfilling family aspirations is a problem for many in this population," said David J. Fein, a welfare researcher at Abt Associates Inc., which is based in Cambridge, Mass.</p>

September 25, 2002, 9:00 a.m. By Robert Rector The welfare reform Congress passed in 1996 has proven remarkably successful. The legislation required welfare recipients to work or get job training in exchange for benefits. Critics charged that it would throw millions of children into poverty. In fact, there are 2.8 million fewer poor children today than in 1996. Since then, national welfare caseloads have been cut in half. Employment among poor single mothers, who make up the overwhelming majority of welfare recipients, has soared by 50 percent to 100 percent. At the same time, the poverty rate of single mothers...

<p>First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes so-and-so with a baby carriage. Or so the little ditty goes. These days, though, love often has nothing to do with marriage, baby carriages are sometimes financed courtesy of the government and, in far too many instances, Daddy is nowhere to be found.</p>