As Progressives Predicted, Clinton Welfare Reform Law Fails Families
by Randy Shaw‚ BeyondChron
Apr. 19‚ 2010
After President Bill Clinton signed legislation in 1996 “ending welfare as we know it,” many highlighted this “common sense” solution and criticized progressives for opposing the bill. Soon after passage, politicians and the media said it had not caused the downsides that activists had predicted, ignoring that the law had not been fully implemented. But troubling reports soon emerged. Jason DeParle wrote a number of pieces in the New York Times about rising homelessness among Milwaukee families denied welfare under the new law. Welfare rolls were down, but the nation had unusually low unemployment, and many leaving the rolls had become homeless. Now, a new report shows that the Clinton welfare law is performing exactly as opponents feared, as the nation’s deep recession allows states to force families off aid and into destitution. It is an American tragedy, largely ignored because the victims are primarily low-income women and their children.
After reading Robert Pear’s April 11 story on how welfare reform is playing out in blue-state Rhode Island, I wondered whether it would echo through the rest of the media. After all, the media had given extraordinarily positive coverage of the “success” of the 1996 law eliminating the federal welfare entitlement, and recall many reporters in the late 1990’s who expressed surprise when I told them I thought the bill would cause great harm to families.
Today, a decade after implementation, the Clinton-Republican “bipartisan” welfare law is a failure. As unemployment has doubled since 2007 and the number of people receiving food stamps has skyrocketed by 40%, the welfare caseload has risen only 10% — a clear indication that the nation’s poorest families are not receiving welfare grants due to the restrictive time limits imposed by the 1996 law.
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I might point out I came across this piece as the top of the Google News Clinton category that also includes Clinton’s appearance on This Week.
and neither is Obama.
How could things go wrong, when Clinton and the Democrats did exactly what the big meanie obstructionist Republicans do?
Just like the Democrats and Obama passed a health insurance bill that was exactly like what that meanie Romney did in Mass! And the Republicans have the gall to complain about it!
Bill Clinton even said “The era of big government is over”!
You aren’t asking the right question, ek, which is why, oh, why are the Republicans so mean, when the Democrats are just doin’ exactly the same thing the meanie Republicans would have done themselves!
The Republicans just need to stop bein’ obstructionist and so MEAN and stuff, when the Democrats do exactly what they would have wished to do if they were in power to begin with.
WWWW-AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!
and NAFTA combined with welfare reform created a lot of it to feel. He also deregulated the crap out of the big money gangsters and is now testifying about how he was wrong. He feels our pain from the sidelines while his henchmen still run the show and he cries all the way to the bank, unlike Elvis who laughed all the way. The ‘service’ industries got a big source of dirt cheap labor, and the jailhouses swelled and the private goons squads made our like bandits. I ask myself where’s labor when the chips are down and the free market sinks all boats and they even take away the life preservers? They are in cahoots and doing deals that create ‘the right to work’ in the land that gave us Elvis and Clinton.
mindboggling that this fabulously rich and bountiful
country was suffocated by 14th Century English Law. It is a curse that will be fatal.
The so called “independent, rugged individual who overcame all odds” is such bullshit when you consider the pristine continent thrown into their filthy, dumb as shit, laps. With weapons of smallpox and guns you don’t need to be a fvckin genius.
War after fvckin war and exploitation ain’t an iota different from where they came from. How the hell did 90% of the people living in New York City in 1900 manage to reside in crap ass tenaments, with the country screaming with “open?” land?
Private Property Keep Out——No Trespassing———–
Vagrants and Freeloaders not Welcome——————–
Weeze got this land from hard work and God————–
God Bless Our Mortgaged Home——Amen
They were responding to the fact that the vast majority of the American people did not and do not want to help the poor. Whether there is any objective truth to it or not people believe that if you are poor in America it is because you have no value since value = cash money for most Americans. This is because the ideology of American Exceptionalism is the official religion of the United States. That is why someone in public office can get away with saying we ought to cut unemployment insurance because it discourages people in finding jobs.