A Decade After Welfare Overhaul, a Shift in Policy and Perception

[Herman Munster]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/21/washington/21welfare....

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 — Ten years after a Republican Congress collaborated with a Democratic president to overhaul the nation’s welfare system, the implications are still rippling through policy and politics.

The law, which reversed six decades of social welfare policy and ended the idea of free cash handouts for the poor, was widely seen as a victory for conservative ideas. When it was passed, some opponents offered dire predictions that the law would make things worse for the poor. But the number of people on welfare has plunged to 4.4 million, down 60 percent. Employment of single mothers is up. Child support collections have nearly doubled.

“We have been vindicated by the results,” said Representative E. Clay Shaw Jr., Republican of Florida and an architect of the 1996 law who was vilified at the time. “Welfare reform was one of the most successful policy changes in our nation’s history.”

But critics say it has cut adrift some single mothers who seem unable to hold steady jobs and are not receiving cash assistance — women who have neither work nor welfare. To help poor single mothers help themselves, officials used a combination of conservative and liberal policy tools. These included work requirements and time limits on public assistance, tax credits for low-income working parents, child-care subsidies and health insurance for people leaving welfare.

[Lindacooks]

1. The number of people on welfare is irrelevant, as is employment

of single mothers. This is what counts: are these people making a living wage? Is their standard of living going up or down?

With the increasing poverty rate in this country, I doubt that the results are positive.

[Stargazer99]

2. AFDC was established in the early 30's to support mothers

and their children. Not everyone is able to obtain a job..especially now days with outsourcing running rampant. The ignorant conservative neither lives near or is aware of what a poor person deals with on a day to day basis. If there were living wage jobs for everyone I could understand the conservative stance, but the reality is there is not...denial..and some of the poor are left to a living hell in comparision to the more well to do. But then again I don't think conservatives give a damn along with being ignorant of what the limitations are in being poor. What really pisses me off is the anti-abortion stance of the conservtive. After you are born apprently you don't matter a damn anymore...because the "morality" of the conservative has been preserved for appearances. There are very few conservatives among the poor for good reasons, reality.

[azurnoir]

3. Whats not being said is that

women who move from welfare to work are all too often no better off then they were. Improving the lives of women and children was not the purpose of this change, creating a forced labor group was. At the time in '96 we were in a boom economy and minimum wage companies were starting to have give employees "outrageous" perks time and half for holidays, paid holidays, vacation, and oh no health coverage, albeit minimal. Someone working for minimum wage 40 hours a week would net about the average welfare grant for a women and one child so the decision was made to make them work for it. What if you had more than one child, I asked a welfare worked (a repub) what if some people can not earn enough to keep their children fed and housed the answer "bad things happen to people that make bad decisions" compassionate conservatism at its finest.
Another thing this "reform" was to "balkanize" public assistance when it was a federal program there was a coalition of people working for change on a national level, by making it a states issue that power base was destroyed and state groups get little notice and less support.

[Odin2005]

4. Welfare deform was one of the worst things Clinton signed.

[ninkasi]

5. While I can agree that all men are created equal

in the sense that no one person's life should be more valued than another's, I do realize that not all people are born with the same opportunities. I can state, in sincerity, that the poorest woman on welfare should be equal in the law, and in whatever Deity you worship's eyes to the richest person on earth, but I dispute the notion that they enjoy or benefit from equal opportunity.

A man, or woman, can be born to a wealthy family, and be assured of a slot at a prestigious school, merely by the legacy of his or her father and grandfather going to the same school, and giving hefty donations to the school. A gifted, even brilliant child can be born to a single mom who is either on welfare, or working a minimum wage job, and can not enjoy such privileges. Regardless of that child's intellect, or abilities, the deck is stacked against that child's ability to obtain a quality education, and a well paying job. Even two parent, families, in stable marriages, if both are not paid livable wages, will suffer as well.

We can wish this were not the case, but it is. We have to deal in reality, and one of those realities, IMHO, is that some people will need much, much more help than others in order to achieve success. In order to break the cycle, we should be willing to invest in the effort to provide affordable child care, universal health care, and housing for people who are struggling to break the cycle of poverty. We might be all equal in the sight of God, and the law, but in the real world, some are more equal than others, as Orwell pointed out. We need to make all of us equal to all the rest of us.

[neoblues]

6. Lies, Damned Lies, and ... Statistics.

Forcing people off assistance and then pointing to the reduced number receiving assistance while claiming it's somehow helped or is a success (as though it magically got those 'lazy' moochers to become productive members of society), is just an example of using numbers to lie--at least, so it seems to me. Likewise pointing to increased employment numbers--when plainly the people involved had to eat... and as has been pointed out, they didn't mention whether these 'employed' people were making enough to live, who was taking care of their children while they work, whether they had medical coverage after the limits had been reached or whatever. I don't know how bad it is, or isn't, but it seems to me that was surely a misleading declaration of "success" and inevitably left out at least half the story (and more probably 90% of the story).

[Greyhound]

7. Reading about this asshole congratulating himself for literally throwing

people out on the streets with no place to go just gets my blood boiling. The fact that they were able to perpetrate this with the cooperation of a "Democratic" President just adds insult to injury. If there is a hell, I know they will suffer at least as much pain as they have brought to us.

[Erika]

8. As Christ says "how you treat the least amongst you"

is how you will be judged. I deplore the GOP worship of money.

[Greyhound]

12. Thanks, but Id rather deal with this life, rather than hoping

against hope that there is another after and that it will be better. If you're belief is incorrect then they just get away with it.

Peace Now.

[fasttense]

9. It doesn't seem to be helping the percent of people in poverty.

There was a steady decline in the percent of people below the "official" poverty level from 1993 until....(you guessed it).... the year 2000. That magical year which brought us a repuke congress and executive branch also brought us an increase in poverty for the first time in seven years. If the program was successful, it would have shown a continuing decline in the percent of people in the US below the poverty level. It didn't. We are still increasing the number of poor in this country. The percent of people below the poverty level hasn't been this bad since 1998. Yet they have the nerve to congratulate themselves on a poverty program that is increasing the number of poor? There were fewer total number of people below the poverty level in 1996 (when the new welfare program was implemented) than there are today. What a successful program, just don't let them "fix" anything else.

Up is down, war is peace, and poor is rich.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2....

[robcon]

10. Welfare reform will go down as Clinton's outstanding legacy.

The program worked: lower poverty, lower welfare rolls/payments, improved condition for kids.

This will pay dividends to the country for decades.

[Yupster]

11. Whether it worked or not, the Economist

recently had abn article about how just about every country in Europe has decided it woked and is trying to reform its systems similarly, some in big chunks, others in little bites.