re: Clinton didn't even propose these initiatives.
More bull crap. And besides, welfare reform was a minor part of Clinton fiscal legacy. He purposefully decreased the growth of government, be vetoed half a dozen spending bills from the Rep congress.
As usual, all you care about it glorifying the Rep party, without regard for reality. The truth is that Clinton was a fiscal conservative and bush spends like a drunken sailor, and at least a generation will pay dearly for Bush's lack of discipline.
Welfare Reform | Introduction
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In August 1996, Bill Clinton fulfilled his 1992 campaign pledge to “end welfare as we know it” when he signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. Upon signing this landmark law (after twice vetoing similar legislation submitted by the Republican controlled Congress), Clinton announced, “We are taking an historic chance to make welfare what it was meant to be: a second chance, not a way of life.”
Most Americans—including members of Congress—welcomed legislation ending the federal government’s unlimited entitlement program known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). The backbone of the 1996 act—time limits as short as thirty days on cash assistance to the nonworking poor—was a feature that had appeared in both Clinton’s proposed Work and Personal Responsibility Act of 1994, which Congress declined to vote on, and the Republicans’ Personal Responsibility Act of 1995, which Clinton vetoed in January 1996.
Efforts to reform America’s welfare system had been gaining momentum since the late 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan and others asserted that AFDC and other federal welfare programs had grossly failed to help the poor. These critics argued that states should receive federal waivers to create their own programs to encourage welfare recipients to find work.
In 1988, Wisconsin became the first state to pursue substantial welfare reform when it received a federal waiver of AFDC rules for its “Learnfare” program, which reduced AFDC benefits to welfare families whose teenage children were excessively truant from school. In 1994, it became the first state to deauthorize AFDC in favor of a state-designed alternative called Wisconsin Works. The new plan, taking effect in 1997, bases aid on recipients’ efforts to secure employment rather than providing recipients with unconditional entitlements. Republicans, as well as Clinton, praised Wisconsin’s pilot program.
Wisconsin’s precedent-setting plan provided a model for state and congressional architects of welfare reform. The thrust of the 1996 welfare act transfers control over welfare spending—after decades of federal oversight— to the states, granting them permission to initiate programs similar to Wisconsin’s. In addition to providing federal welfare “block grants” to states to spend at their discretion, the act permits states to halt payments to teen mothers who do not live either at home or in a supervised setting or who drop out of school. States can also deny increased benefits to mothers who have additional children while on welfare. Although many advocates argue that state control will prove more effective than the federal government in helping the poor get off welfare, critics con- tend that states will drastically cut welfare benefits and that some federal control is necessary to ensure adequate assistance for the needy.
According to proponents of increased state control, state governments are better suited to assist their poor citizens than is the federal government. They contend that, through what the 1996 welfare act terms “broad cash welfare and child care block grants” totaling no more than $16.4 billion annually, states can custom-design programs to meet the needs of the poor, including helping them find work. American Enterprise Institute scholar Douglas J. Besharov maintains that leaving welfare reform to the states “is an exceedingly good idea. The federal government doesn’t really bring very much to the program except money.” Heritage Foundation welfare expert Robert Rector writes:
By combining dozens of federal welfare programs into block grants to the states, eliminating tens of thousands of pages of federal regulations, and letting governors and state legislators take direct responsibility and do what they think is best for their communities, welfare reform can serve low-income people more efficiently.
Many commentators agree that the states will serve the poor more effectively. Indeed, welfare-reform advocates credit stricter state welfare initiatives for contributing to the 9 percent decrease (1.3 million individuals) in America’s welfare caseload from 1993 to 1996. In the words of Massachusetts governor William Weld, the federal government is correct to “get out of the way” and let the states conduct their own welfare programs. Weld notes that in 1995, the first year of his state’s welfare-reform program, the AFDC caseload decreased by almost 16 percent.
However, opponents of increased state control believe that the federal government is better situated to meet the needs of the poor. Congressmember Major R. Owens, a New York Democrat, argues that states do not have the power of the federal Treasury, “which guarantees that no matter how bad the economic conditions may be and how many people may be forced on welfare, the money will be made available to meet their needs.” Moreover, Columbia University political science professor Demetrios Caraley observes that “federal funding of safety net programs means that the cost of helping the disadvantaged can be shared by taxpayers throughout the country, as are the costs of natural disasters.”
Critics of state control insist that state programs will harm poor people. According to Owens, “Block grants place the poor at the mercy of state and local governments. [Federally funded] school lunches were created in the first place because state and local governments refused to meet [children’s] needs.” Many fear that states’ lack of accountability over welfare spending threatens to push the poor deeper into poverty. They maintain that, pressed to make budget cuts and having been given the freedom to cut benefits sharply, states could slash cash payments and services to the poor. Such action would weaken, if not destroy, the financial safety net that the poor have been guaranteed for decades, these critics contend. In the words of welfare-rights activist Betty Reid Mandell, “We know what the states do with welfare when they decide to cut back expenses—they cut it.”
Concerned that state initiatives could adversely affect some of the poor, Clinton has proposed to “change what is wrong” in the 1996 wel- fare act while retaining the basic reforms. Although the selections included in this anthology were written prior to the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, they present cogent arguments for and against measures that are contained in the act and other proposed reforms of the welfare system. The authors in At Issue: Welfare Reform debate the potential positive and negative effects of creating stricter welfare programs for America’s poor. |
