How We Ended Welfare, Together By BILL CLINTON NYT

[Omaha Steve]

Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/opinion/22clinton.html



Op-Ed Contributor
How We Ended Welfare, Together

By BILL CLINTON
Published: August 22, 2006

TEN years ago today I signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. By then I had long been committed to welfare reform. As a governor, I oversaw a workfare experiment in Arkansas in 1980 and represented the National Governors Association in working with Congress and the Reagan administration to draft the welfare reform bill enacted in 1988.

Yet when I ran for president in 1992, our system still was not working for the taxpayers or for those it was intended to help. In my first State of the Union address, I promised to “end welfare as we know it,” to make welfare a second chance, not a way of life, exactly the change most welfare recipients wanted it to be.

Most Democrats and Republicans wanted to pass welfare legislation shifting the emphasis from dependence to empowerment. Because I had already given 45 states waivers to institute their own reform plans, we had a good idea of what would work. Still, there were philosophical gaps to bridge. The Republicans wanted to require able-bodied people to work, but were opposed to continuing the federal guarantees of food and medical care to their children and to spending enough on education, training, transportation and child care to enable people to go to work in lower-wage jobs without hurting their children.

On Aug. 22, 1996, after vetoing two earlier versions, I signed welfare reform into law. At the time, I was widely criticized by liberals who thought the work requirements too harsh and conservatives who thought the work incentives too generous. Three members of my administration ultimately resigned in protest. Thankfully, a majority of both Democrats and Republicans voted for the bill because they thought we shouldn't be satisfied with a system that had led to intergenerational dependency.

[DeSwiss]

1. Right.

"we shouldn't be satisfied with a system that had led to intergenerational dependency."

And what has it led to now?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1960202

:thumbsdown:

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. I think Big Dog missed the boat on this one.

That thread you pointed out was very compelling. Inspired me to write a rant:

The newspaper articles started a few weeks back, but now it's beginning to snowball. The mainstream press's word on the street is that everybody's worst fears did not materialize and that welfare reform worked. To support their position, they've included testimonials of a dozen or so people who have "made it."

I don't argue that finding work to support your family is the better option, but the shows are slanting the stories and someone needs to make sure that everyone gets a chance to tell their own story. I have seen this pattern before of accentuating the positive and downplaying or ignoring the negative. We all have. It comes from the CEO PR handbook that this administration has been using since it came into office. The PR strategy only worked for them in the short run when they got us into Iraq but now we're dealing with a host of problems that we didn't consider before. The same thing is going to happen if we allow the pundits to continue telling one side of the story regarding welfare reform. It's dishonest reporting.

To see the other side, go to this incredible thread that will tell you what they've missed and why we need to give this topic more attention:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...


We need a Spike Lee or Michael Moore to come in and make a movie, not just to tell the story of the side we're reading in the above thread, but to also make a movie about all these shows and newspapers that are slanting the right's position on welfare reform. This is extremely harmful because this one-sided reporting will accelerate the Republican's division of the classes. This is why the poor get poorer and the rich get richer during Republican Administrations. They continue to believe that they don't have to think about the poor people they are exploiting because the slanted reports on welfare reform proves the poor can fend for themselves during these hard times. Republicans don't deserve that kind of peace of mind.

[Tellurian]

7. President Clinton was pointing out that people at the poverty level

have been given the means to be mainstreamed into the middle class.
The statistics prove what he's saying is true.

That compelling bit of a day in the life of a mother with 2 Mc jobs is very well written by someone with a limited education...More that the story is written by a right winger trying to diminish and steal credit earned by Clinton's initiatives.

Of course, I can see the rationale. Republicans are not only interested in doing an ethnic cleansing of all muslims in the US but are also interested in doing away with the middle class. No wonder they fought Clinton's welfare plan with great resolve!

They consider him the *spolier* who advocates for the people!

[The Backlash Cometh]

9. I don't think the final word on Clinton's Op-ed has been written yet.

I'm waiting for the rebuttals. And why on earth would a right-winger make up a story like, "One day in the life of a low-paid mom?" Why go through that much trouble to diminish Clinton's welfare reform bill when Republicans don't even consider it Clinton's idea?

[Tellurian]

13. Why do you ask such a foolish question?

The Champions of Chaos defy logic. <doncha know>

How many explanations have you heard of why Bush went into Iraq? hmm?

[The Backlash Cometh]

14. Trust me on this one.

Republicans will always remember Newt Gingrich's Contract on America. Its center piece was welfare reform.

[Tellurian]

15. How can I trust you...you type with forked words..

I thought Newts centerpiece was Congressional Reform..

I liked the idea of auditing Congress for waste, fraud and and/or abuse, best.

[The Backlash Cometh]

16. Congressional Reform. LOL!!!! I forgot about that one.

So did the Republicans, apparently.

:rofl:

[Tellurian]

18. Heh!

:B-)

:toast:I

[DeSwiss]

22. Backlash, in my view Clinton not only missed the boat...

...he missed the whole dock. This so-called "welfare reform" effort was all part of his and the DLC's continuing effort to pull the Democratic Party to the center after the 1964 convention when Fannie Lou Hamer caused a rift that led to a plank that year requiring "equal representation" at future conventions. Blacks had been harrassed, bombed and threatened getting to Atlantic City that year, and she got that word out. This was before video cameras and talking points. It was all live.

It was after all this when most white southern Democrats like Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Lester (Ax Handle) Maddox, John Connally, et.al., all left the Democratic Party in droves. But they decided against another debacle like they did in 1948 with Truman (to create another stupid Dixiecrat Party). Instead they went willingly to Richard Nixon and the Republicans who won the presidency in 68. Jimmy Carter's election was the result of a national backlash against Nixon's criminality (shades of what's happening now with Bush). So by 1992, Clinton's election was about moving away from the left back to the middle. An area and degree of compromise of the party's principles so as to make them become basically meaningless. Or at least indistinguishable from the Republicans. Pretty much where Hillary resides now. "Republican Lite." I hear it everyday now. Its not about what the Democrats stand for that makes them different from Republicans, its about winning elections. So be it.

The "intergenerational welfare dependency" so decried by Republicans in 1992 was their doing in the first place. When AFDC was debated and later established in the 60s, one of the major sticking points debated and ultimately accepted was to eliminate the possiblity of having "do-nothing fathers" living in the homes while the mothers collected welfare checks. So, they required that there be no "able-bodied" adults living in the household (other than the mother whom they thought SHOULD be at home), in order for poor families to qualify for assistance. This essentially created the very conditions they are now blaming the victims for.

It had been the one-two punch of Edward R. Murrow in the late 50's with his Emmy-Award winning documentary showing farm workers "picked over" daily by landowners hoping to obtain work for each day. And then later Bobby Kennedy showing the abject poverty of poor blacks in Mississippi living in absolute squalor -- which was surprising "news" to most white Americans at the time. Or so they said. They "knew" about poverty, they just didn't really know it looked quite that bad. It was embarrassing to have the bulwark of freedom, the richest nation on the planet with people living like that. The Russians had a field day with that at the UN. Not to mention Americans having to watch it all on TV while they ate their pot roasts at Sunday dinner.

Like much of the civil rights movement's successes (aside from the fear generated in the FBI and white households, when they saw Black Panthers marching with rifles in Oakland and also people burning down their own neighborhoods), can be attributed to America being shamed into the welfare legislation. It was not a decision the country made of its own volition to correct past wrongs. It was mostly designed to paper-over them and make them "look" nicer.

By the time we get to Clinton, two generations of welfare-dependent single-parented households had blossomed and with a twist, something brand new -- mothers in their teens. I grew up in poverty (although I never knew it) and lived in public housing in the 1950s. Back then, if you didn't have a job, you didn't get in. If you lost your job, you got kicked out. To where? No one knew nor cared. There was no AFDC, Medicaid or food stamps back then.

As I see it, the problem with welfare programs for the poor, unlike corporate welfare, no one ever asked the beneficiaries to testify before Congress about what THEY needed to end their own poverty. No one asked what problems they faced and what their world was really like. Today, corporations come to Congress threatening the loss of (more) jobs and damage to the economy if they don't get their welfare demands. In the end, they are basically writing their own welfare legislation.

But who ever asked the poor what they thought about in this whole debate? So it would seem that we're back to the 50s. The place where no one asks and no one really cares. In either party.

[Demeter]

2. I Prefer LBJ's Goal of Eliminating Poverty

but then, I'm just a sinlge mother with a disabled child--what would I know?

[elehhhhna]

17. THANK YOU! War on Welfare or War on Poverty? Big Difference.

[kurth]

3. A heroic victory over America's enemy - the much-feared welfare queens

with their Rolls-Royces, Mercedes-Benzes and Cadillacs.

A magnificent achievement for the ages. Ronnie would have been so proud.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. And they wonder why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

One of those things that makes you want to yell, "WAKE UP!!!!!!"

[ShortnFiery]

23. Yes, even The Big Dog insults our collective intelligence

by figuratively peeing on our legs and telling us that it's raining.

BTW I almost wished that I didn't let my hubby talk me into voting for Clinton instead of Nader. Why? Nader has ONE point that is chilling => big money runs politics. :scared:

[Totally Committed]

4. This was one of the blackest days in Clinton's administration.

Period.

If you have the time, please go to my Journal and read "In Direct Rebuttal to President Clinton's NYT Op-Ed":

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Totally%20Committed

The information there will give you pause for thought before buying into celebrating this day.

TC

[Tellurian]

8. Too much crap to process..

Say what you mean and mean what you say!

[pazuzu]

11. Agreed, nothing to celebrate

[pazuzu]

10. Governed like a Republican, and they still lynched him!

Ouch!

[The Backlash Cometh]

12. LOL! You bad.

[alvarezadams]

19. I noted this op-ed on the political board

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2792439&mesg_id=2792439

One of my responses:

For starters statistics can be made to portray just about anything. Many of the "achievements" of Bubba's "legislation" are hollow - making it more difficult to obtain welfare fudges the figures to no end.

I like some of Bubba's POV, but when it comes to his actions with regards to government responsibilities and services he was wholly DLC/GOP. There have always been well-founded arguments against government inefficiency regarding any government programs but the question has been framed with ulterior motives in order to dismiss the CAPACITY or DESIREABLITY of government intervention... because of special interest.

The problem with welfare, social security or any other government program should not be a question of the propriety of governmental action - but of the efficiency of governmental management. The rw (and the DLC) have decided that it is not the role of government to look for the common weal and that a sort of social-Darwinistic anarchy would be the best alternative, despite centuries of contrary experience. Bubba's "self-help" programs are similar to those of Victorian Britain - and equally disasterous. The only way to see any positive results is by virtue of looking at them through new criteria.

Bubba points out purported benefits yet these are only perceivable through partial observations. Some partial "poverty" statistis seem better due to Bubba's legislation yet the more telling overall poverty stats show that things have NOT improved but gotten worse. This is due to a misinterpretation (ideologically-driven) that is common amongst the believers in the "third way".

snip

[The Backlash Cometh]

20. The only statistic that matters is that the rich are getting richer, and

the poor are getting poorer. 'nuff said.

[alvarezadams]

21. Zactly

Yet the pro-DLC crowd are latching on to this op-ed like manah from heaven. Go figure.

[MISSDem]

24. Clinton was right. The bottom line is

finish high school and don't have children before you get married. These are the keys to financial success. It is really quite simple.

[The Backlash Cometh]

25. Maybe he should have just stuck to that instead of laying on all

the other bullshit? Is what he said about having children too early in life can get you stuck in a cycle of poverty true? Sure is. So the natural conclusion is that if you want to help the poor, give the kids a reason to abstain, and if they fail, make abortions safe and available to those who decide to take that out.

But of course, there's always that sticky thing that the pro-lifers will never support abortion. I suppose to stay true to their politics, they should just eat the poor BEFORE the poor can get pregnant.

[CollegeDUer]

26. One of Bill's more back-stabby moments

And he's still gloating about it in the businessy NYT. Not suprised.