Posted by Tina
Obama bypassed the legislature again and directed the Health and Human Services Secretary to change welfare regulation that slashes the work requirement in the welfare to work program signed into law by President Clinton in 1994. This action by President Obama is described by Mona Charen of National Review as “risky and illegal”. The work to welfare program proved to be a positive program for young women with children:
Welfare caseloads declined by 50 percent within four years of the law’s passage, and by 70 percent by the time Obama took office. The overwhelming majority of those who left welfare rolls did so because they found jobs — and not just the worst jobs either. By 2001, a Manhattan Institute study found, only 4 percent of former welfare mothers were earning minimum wage. The poverty rate declined from 13.8 percent in 1995 to 11.7 percent in 2003. Black child poverty dropped to its lowest levels in history. Childhood hunger was cut in half. It was the greatest social-policy success of the past 50 years.
Extending unemployment insurance to 99 weeks, expanding food stamps to unprecedented levels, increasing the Medicaid program, and creating the trillion-dollar Obamacare have all softened the blow and masked the pain that continuing unemployment would normally cause. After three years of prolonged non-recovery allowing states to waive welfare work requirement is just another way to hide this administration’s fiscal policy failures.
Americans of all classes will be better served and experience greater satisfaction and a sense of contributing if they are given opportunities to achieve and provide for themselves and their families. This is something that is becoming more and more difficult because Obama doesn’t know how wealth is made. Greater dependency on government will not create greater opportunity, it will not result in revenue flowing to government, and it certainly won’t give those on the lowest rungs of society a chance to better their circumstances. It will ensure that more young children will see welfare and poverty as a way of life.
Mitt Romney comments:
“President Obama now wants to strip the established work requirements from welfare. The success of bipartisan welfare reform, passed under President Clinton, has rested on the obligation of work. The president’s action is completely misdirected. Work is a dignified endeavor, and the linkage of work and welfare is essential to prevent welfare from becoming a way of life.”
The longer President Obama is in office the clearer his intention…welfare, dependency on government, is the way of life he prefers. Welcome to the kingdom of Obamamerica.
Bill Whittle nails it too:
http://www.declarationentertainment.com/scribing-dependency-agenda
Thanks Zed…front page material as always.
I’m a little behind on the news lately, but I just found out that this article is yet another false attack on the president. The Obama administration has not “cut” any work requirements from welfare. The administration has simply chosen to allow states more flexibility in determining how to implement these requirements.
Politifact rated Romney’s claims on this issue “pants on fire:”
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/aug/07/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-says-barack-obamas-plan-abandons-tenet/
“Romneys ad says, “Under Obamas plan (for welfare), you wouldnt have to work and wouldnt have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check.”
That’s a drastic distortion of the planned changes to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. By granting waivers to states, the Obama administration is seeking to make welfare-to-work efforts more successful, not end them. Whats more, the waivers would apply to individually evaluated pilot programs — HHS is not proposing a blanket, national change to welfare law.
The ad tries to connect the dots to reach this zinger: “They just send you your welfare check.” The HHS memo in no way advocates that practice. In fact, it says the new policy is “designed to improve employment outcomes for needy families.”
The ads claim is not accurate, and it inflames old resentments about able-bodied adults sitting around collecting public assistance. Pants on Fire!”
Here is the actual memo from the HHS, if you want to get the facts from the primary source document:
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/policy/im-ofa/2012/im201203/im201203.html
I thought conservatives favored states’ rights? Tina, haven’t you argued that problems should be addressed at more local levels, without the federal government dictating so much of what individual states can do? Haven’t you argued that states should have the incentive to innovate and come up with new solutions? That’s exactly what this new change allows them to do, and yet still you attack the administration for it. There’s just no pleasing you as long as Obama is in office.