This is an eye-opener.
The so-called economic stimulus bill that Barack Obama is signing today is, in effect, repealing the federal welfare reform plan that was signed in 1996.
Obama never was a fan of the welfare reform that was enacted during Bill Clinton's administration.
BARACK OBAMA: Let me say one thing about this, because I've been very active in crafting, uh, the state of Illinois' welfare proposal, and thinking about how do you craft these coalitions.
Uh, I was not a wild... a huge supporter of the federal plan that was signed in 1996. Having said that, I do think that there is a potential political opportunity that arose out of welfare reform, and that is to desegregate the welfare population, meaning the undeserving poor -- black folks in cities, from the working poor -- deserving, white, rural as well as suburban. Now you've got just a bunch of folks who are struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder. And that means that, at least from my perspective, the political strategy and the political coalition to put together....
And this relates to the issues of housing that we just talked about in mixed income communities... I think is to think about where are the areas where you are not just helping welfare people, you know, folks on welfare, but how are you helping folks who are not currently making enough money in the economy to support a family and pay a mortgage and send their kids to school.
These comments from 1998 foreshadow what Obama will do by signing the stimulus bill into law.
Welfare reform is wiped out. Robert Rector, the main author of the 1996 welfare reform plan and a Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, discusses the impact of the stimulus bill on welfare reform.
ROBERT RECTOR: Well, what they've done is murder welfare reform in the middle of the night and hope that no one will know what they've done.
One of the key elements of welfare reform was that in the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, the way the program was run was that the more people a state put on to the program, the more money the federal government gave to them. And as a result of that, at the height of the program before reform, we had about 1 out of 7 children in the United States enrolled in that program. When we reformed it, we said, 'That's a really bad incentive structure.'
And what we're gonna do is give the states a flat amount of money. If they reduce the rolls they get to keep the surplus. If the rolls go up, the state will have to deal with that. What the Left has done here, which they promised to do all along, they've always hated this reform, is that they have wiped that out and they've gone back to the old funding structure so that they're now saying, 'Look, (to the states), every additional person that you put into this program and give them cash, we're going to pay for 80% of that cost.'
They're effectively bribing the states to raise their welfare rolls. It's a complete reversal of the entirety of reform and it's deliberately intended to put more people on the rolls, put more people, make more people dependent on welfare.
This is stimulating the economy? Really?
Getting more people on welfare perpetuates poverty. It doesn't eliminate it.
3 comments:
The Dems don't want to eliminate people on welfare. The more folks that they can make dependent on the government, the better for the Dems.. It keeps them in power. It keeps votes coming their way as they convince people that they can't make it on their own.. they can't make it without the government handouts.
I think the worst thing that Pelosi and Reid (and their puppet Obama) have done to the poor is destroy their dignity. They will never experience the joy that comes from being self reliant.
The Dems biggest fear is that the poor will somehow figure out that they can help themselves and consequently discover how good it feels.
Susan is so right.
The real issue is that Democrats want lots and lots of dependent people, and as much class envy as they can create against anyone who is successful or self-sufficient. I really fear for this country- we're headed for a terrible socialist future.
In the next decade, many of us are going to wake up to the realization that we've become the third world- a majority of government sponsored and created 'have nots' screaming at the few 'haves' (IE: anyone who still has two bucks to scrape together) about how "greedy" they are for not giving up EVERYTHING.
It's the liberal Democrat dream come true.
I feel that anyone who believes the welfare reform policy is a democratic or republic issue, is completely naive to the dramatic and negative effects that it has had on our society. If everyone would just take a moment to become a little more educated, take a look at both sides, and the statistics now available, welfare discrimination could slightly diminish.
Open your eyes people, women and children make up the largest impoverish population in the United States. How has this act actually helped anyone stay self-sufficient over a long period of time?
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