June 15, 2006 | By Nathaniel Ward

Ten years of welfare reform

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

The 1996 welfare reform initiative—whose way was paved by groundbreaking research from Heritage’s Robert Rector—has had tremendous results, Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt said Tuesday at The Heritage Foundation.

“The Heritage Foundation played a highly important and invaluable role” in the 1996 debate on welfare reform, Secretary Leavitt said. “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.”

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.

Welfare reform was reauthorized earlier this year as part of the budget reconciliation bill. “Though far from perfect, this new welfare law is a substantial step forward,” Rector explained in a February paper. “Even more important, for the first time, the new law will promote healthy marriage,” an essential part of ending welfare dependence and child poverty.

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How to win on spending: eternal vigilance

I wrote on Tuesday that conservatives had won a small victory for fiscal responsibility by cutting most pork out of a supplemental spending bill to fund the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and clean up after Hurricane Katrina. That win hardly means the fight is over, though.

Having lost that battle, big spenders quickly found new ways to keep Heritage busy. Buried in the new Transportation, Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development spending bill (known on the Hill as T-THUD) are some amazing pork projects, including a $500,000 earmark to renovate a swimming pool in Banning, CA.

Conservative lawmakers rallied to remove this egregious example of special-interest waste, but they couldn’t get enough votes together to block it. Heritage’s Ron Utt explained that in the end a substantial number of “Republicans voted in favor of adding the repair of municipal swimming pools to the growing list of federal responsibilities.” This bizarre new federal role comes, he continued, after last year’s pork-laden transportation bill “effectively federalized responsibilities for the nation’s sidewalks.”

If there’s one thing that both sides can agree on, it seems to be that frivolous spending is just dandy: 175 Republicans joined 189 Democrats in voting to keep the swimming pool funding.

Pressure on Congress from the President and conservatives around the nation ensured that the most egregious pork was stripped out last time around. We have proved that this model can work—but it’s up to all of us to voice our concerns and spread the word.

Stick to proven strategies on crime

New statistics from the FBI suggest that crime rose in the United States last year. But as Heritage’s David Muhlhausen reports in National Review, there’s reason to be wary of cries for increased federal spending on law enforcement: the numbers are preliminary; a year of crime data does not necessarily represent a trend; and many factors outside of government control can influence crime rates.

“Before we know more,” Muhlhausen explains, “we should stick with proven strategies. Pouring federal money into local law enforcement is a proven loser.”

He continues:

What does work? Creative approaches by local police chiefs, such as problem-oriented policing, in which local police devote resources to areas where crime occurs frequently.

Another winning strategy: putting violent criminals behind bars and keeping them there. In one study, researchers looked at 64 years of crime data, ending in 1994, and determined that a 10 percent increase in total prison population is associated with a 13-percent decrease in homicide, after controlling for socioeconomic factors.

In other news

• A supporter of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, a ballot proposal that would end race-based preferences in the state, was threatened with a knife by the head of By Any Means Necessary, a group that supports race-based affirmative action and opposes the initiative. Apparently, “By Any Means Necessary” was more than just rhetoric.
• Because a recent map in the magazine referred to “the Gulf” instead of “the Persian Gulf,” Iran has banned The Economist.
• Since the death of Iraqi terrorist kingpin Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, American and Iraqi forces have conducted 452 raids in which 104 insurgents were killed and 28 arms caches were captured.
• A group appointed by Congress to examine health care reform has incorrectly concluded that we need a government-run, government-financed health care system. Since many of today’s health care problems derive from government, adopting a European-style government-run system seems like no solution at all.

Coming up at Heritage

To attend these or any other Heritage Foundation events, RSVP at Heritage’s events website. Or you can watch these events live online at Heritage.org. All times are Eastern.

• On Friday, June 16 at noon, author Deborah Brezina examines the principles used by Winston Churchill to combat the evils of Nazism and applies those same principles to the War on Terror and radical Islam in a post 9/11 world.
• On Tuesday, June 20 at noon, Ambassador Ellen R. Sauerbrey, the Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration, will speak on the importance of humanitarian aid and the need to ensure that accountability and security needs are met.

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

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