OT Welfare Reform Works. Thanks Republicans!

Billy Bob Clintoon is taking credit for Welfare Reform.

How many times did the Republicans pass this bill and how many times
did he refuse to sign it?

Republicans get good things done!

---------------------------------------------------

From the Wall Street Journal


Apocalypse Not
Welfare reforms's success is a lesson in modesty.

Saturday, August 26, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

Welfare reform turned 10 this week, and more remarkable than its
near-total success is the near-total amnesia that seems to have
gripped its one-time opponents. The results and the history are both
worth revisiting today because they offer some useful political and
policy lessons for the future.

When Bill Clinton signed the bill ending a federal entitlement to
welfare, a leading liberal newspaper called it "nasty," "atrocious"
and "odious"--adding with typical nuance that "the children will
suffer the most." Three Clinton Administration officials resigned over
the bill. Georgia Congressman John Lewis not too subtly raised the
specter of fascism as he literally screamed on the House floor,
"They're coming for the children. They're coming for the poor. They're
coming for the sick, the elderly and the disabled." Even as sensible a
social scientist as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan lost his head and
called it "something approaching an apocalypse."

The real story has been apocalypse not. Welfare reform has worked so
well that its success runs the risk of going almost unnoticed. Welfare
rolls are down to about two million today from a peak of five million
in 1995. The last time welfare caseloads were this low was 1970, when
America had 100 million fewer citizens. But what about the children?
The rate of black children living in poverty in America was more than
40% in 1996 and stands at 32% today, according to the U.S. Census
Bureau. In the 25 years prior to welfare reform, that number had only
briefly ever dipped below 40% and stood as high as 47% in 1980.

That leaves an excuse often heard that the secret to reform's success
has been the booming economy. Didn't welfare reform benefit from being
passed during the longest economic expansion in modern times? Well, no
doubt growth has helped, but consider that the welfare rolls actually
shrank during the severe recession of the early 1980s, then stayed
fairly constant through the boom of the latter years of that decade.
The rolls also continued to soar well after the 1990s' expansion was
under way. The recession that began at the end of the Clinton
Administration did no more than slow the downward trend in welfare
caseloads that began in 1995.

One reason for this success is that welfare reform never was the giant
leap of faith that its opponents claimed. By the time it finally
passed in Washington, the concept had been percolating in the states
going back at least 30 years to Ronald Reagan's tenure as California
Governor. The Gipper took his ideas to Washington, proposing a work
requirement, among others things. His 1986 proposal, "Up From
Dependency," was offered too late in his term to pass a Democratic
Senate, but it advanced the debate.

Reform really took off in the early 1990s as Governors, led by
Wisconsin's Tommy Thompson, took the initiative. They battled for
waivers from the feds, and then one of their own, Mr. Clinton, decided
to run for the White House in 1992 using welfare reform as a way of
proving his New Democrat bona fides.

He quickly shelved the idea in his first two years, bowing to a
Democratic Congress. But when Republicans won the House in 1994, they
made it one of their priorities. Mr. Clinton declared this week that
the bill he signed was a "bipartisan" triumph, and in a narrow sense
it was. But 98 Democrats opposed him on the House floor, including
many of the Democrats who would chair committees in the House if they
re-take Congress in November. Mr. Clinton also vetoed reform twice
before finally signing it in 1996 after his political guru Dick Morris
told him it was the one issue that could cost him re-election. Make no
mistake: This was a conservative reform opposed every step of the way
by the political left and its media allies.

One lesson here is the familiar American one that states can play a
useful role as policy laboratories. Liberals tried to replay welfare
reform as the civil-rights movement, with an end to the federal
entitlement meaning that every state would "rush to the bottom." But
that was always a canard against state politicians, who have been only
too happy to spend money on child care, transportation and other
things to help welfare recipients get and keep jobs.

That precedent ought to apply now to Medicaid, another federal
entitlement urgently in need of reform and on which Governors are
taking the lead. Mr. Clinton vetoed a Medicaid reform in 1995 that
might well have been as successful as welfare reform in allowing
states to reform health care for the poor and force fewer of them into
emergency rooms. Florida Governor Jeb Bush and others have in recent
years received waivers that may well pave the way for a national
reform.

Another lesson is that reform takes time and persistence in the
American system. Too many Republicans think the lesson of last year's
Social Security failure is that reform is impossible. But rare in
American history has been the major policy change that passed the
first time it was proposed. Big ideas take time for a wary public to
understand. Personal retirement accounts will eventually become law in
some form, if Republicans have the tenacity to keep promoting them and
don't flinch at the first round of opposition demagoguery.

The late Senator Moynihan is famous for having said that culture, not
politics, is the key to changing most human behavior, and that the job
of politics is to help nudge the culture in the right direction.
Welfare reform worked because it was rooted in that wisdom, and in a
basic understanding of human incentives. Support life on the dole, or
reward having multiple children without a husband, and any society
will develop a culture of dependency. That is where the U.S. was
headed under the liberal ethos that compassion means sparing Americans
of their individual responsibility to work and provide for their
families.

Welfare reform was not a utopian project that promised to radically
change human nature. It sought to make Americans more responsible by
altering the incentives to remain dependent on the state. If only
government were always so modest.

--

Scott in Florida

'The Land of the Free Thanks to the Brave'