The Way I See It
By Joseph C. Phillips

Never Having To Say You Were Wrong

It is worth recalling that in 1996 when then President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (otherwise known as welfare reform) New Liberals predicted all manner of calamity.  We were, they claimed, cosigning our nation to third world style poverty. They shrieked that the bill was anti-child and mean spirited.  Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) called it “legislative child abuse.”  Marian Wright Edelman likened it to dropping napalm on a Vietnamese village.  It is also worth noting that they couldn’t have been more wrong.  In spite of all the hand wringing and warnings of the impending apocalypse, the dark days didn’t materialize.  The fears were misplaced and instead of hoards of children sleeping in the streets welfare reform reduced child poverty and has been in the words of the non-partisan Urban Institute “a bipartisan achievement that shrank welfare rolls and put single mothers to work.”

In the 13 years following passage of the welfare reform law, the Urban Institutes reports that welfare caseloads were cut in half; participation by welfare recipients in work activities increased sharply; income among welfare recipients increased and the percentage of recipients living in extreme poverty (income below 50 percent of the federal poverty level) declined by 18 percent. 

For once, it would seem Congress had reason to pat itself on the back but you would never know it.  Not only have Democrats never admitted that they were wrong on welfare reform, they have long resolved to end it as soon as possible.  It took Barak Obama and the Democratic Congress exactly two weeks to unravel what has been roundly recognized as a major policy achievement. 

The stimulus bill recently passed by Congress and signed Tuesday by the President begins the process of dismantling welfare as we now know it and puts us on a backward path to welfare as we once knew it. And this, we are told will stimulate the economy saving us from unimaginable catastrophe. 

One of the lynchpins of the original reform was a change in how states received their funding from the federal government.  Under the old aid to families with dependant children states received funds based on the number of recipients on the rolls.  This created a perverse incentive to increase the number of families dependent on aid.  Under the new temporary assistance to needy families (TANF), states were now funded at a flat level that did not change with increased rolls and they were mandated to move families off the dole and prepare them for work. 

Somehow the administration’s new transparency failed to reveal “the largest one-year increase in government handouts in American history.” The “change we can believe in” reverses these successful reforms and returns us to the old days when states are funded depending on how many families are on their rolls. According to Robert Rector, one of the architects of the original welfare reform bill “the new welfare system created by the stimulus bills is actually worse than the old AFDC program because it rewards the states more heavily to increase their caseloads. Under the stimulus bills, the federal government will pay 80 percent of cost for each new family that a state enrolls in welfare; this matching rate is far higher than it was under AFDC.”

Criticism of this return to welfare-as-we-knew-it is not limited to conservatives.  Mickey Kaus, writing for the left leaning Slate Magazine, laments that the stimulus bills welfare provisions are a "liberal conspiracy to expand the welfare rolls."

It is logical to ask, if the reforms enacted in 1996 led to a reduction in welfare rolls wouldn’t the rescinding of those reforms and the reinstatement of old incentives begin once again to dictate the behavior of both individuals and government.  It will give me no great comfort to say, “I told you so.”  However, it is reasonable to ask if at that time Obama, Reid and Pelosi et al. will step forward and admit that they blew it. Something is telling me not to hold my breath. New liberalism means never having to say you were wrong.

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Joseph C. Phillips is the Author of "He Talk Like A White Boy."  Now available wherever books are sold."