June 15, 2006 | By Nathaniel Ward

Celebrating ten years of welfare reform

Secretary Mike Leavitt speaks to The Heritage Foundation Tuesday about welfare reform and marriage.

“The Heritage Foundation played a highly important and invaluable role” in the 1996 debate on welfare reform, Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt said Tuesday at The Heritage Foundation. “It occurs to me how important it is that you’re still here” as an institution now that so many of the key players in the 1990s debate have moved on.

“I want to challenge the Foundation in its continued role to stand tall as you always have and you always will.”

The 1996 welfare reform initiative—whose way was paved by groundbreaking research from Heritage’s Robert Rector—has had tremendous results, the secretary said. Since it was enacted, America has seen a 57 percent decline in the number of people receiving benefits. What’s more, welfare rolls are today at their lowest level since 1969.

America should reinforce these ten years of success with welfare reform by moving individuals from welfare to work and enacting a program to encourage stable marriages, Secretary Leavitt told a full house in Heritage’s Lehrman Auditorium.

“These two policies will have great promise, in my judgment, for helping less-fortunate people in our society, and offer men and women the tools they need to escape government dependency while forming and sustaining healthy marriages,” he explained.

Sound marriage and welfare reform policies, he said, “offer the children in our country hope, hope for a better future, and that’s good for America as well.”

The importance of healthy marriages in preserving family stability and protecting against poverty and welfare dependence is at the crux of the landmark Healthy Marriage Initiative, a critical component of the recent welfare reform reauthorization.

Since the 1965 Moynihan Report, social scientists have become increasingly aware of th link between family breakdown, poverty, and social ills. Experts now agree that the benefits of marriage to children, family, and society as a whole are numerous. Strengthening this institution is vital.

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Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.