"Why It Matters That Hillary Clinton Championed Welfare Reform" -- no praise for Bernie, though

[loyalsister]

This article is pretty fair. This is something that both candidates should be talking about. Especially if they are champions for women and children or people who are on the losing end of this rigged economic system.

Yet, nearly two decades after the Clintons helped make PRWORA the law of the land, welfare reform remains a defining “antipoverty” policy—one that urgently needs to be discussed. Its legacy still ripples through the country, where families remain as poor as—or, in many cases, poorer than—before, but with one crucial difference: Today, the “reformed” welfare system provides little safety net, and no hand-up. Instead, it traps poor mothers into exploitative, poverty-wage jobs and dangerous personal situations, deters them from college, and contributes to the growing trend of poor mothers who can neither find a job nor access public assistance. It is our failed social policy—not simply the recession—that is responsible for crisis-level poverty in the United States.

Sanders’s “revolutionary” campaign for the US presidency has also been remarkably silent on the need to restore the social safety net. Despite his criticism of Clinton on welfare reform, Sanders has said nothing about improving means-tested public assistance, and only offered the goal of raising the minimum wage to $15. (Clinton has promised to raise it to $12, which would bring a full-time worker just to the poverty line.) While Sanders talks about expanding Medicare, he’s conspicuously quiet on matters related to TANF.

http://www.thenation.com/article/why-it-matters-that-hillary-clinton-championed-welfare-reform/