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Heritage’s impact on welfare reform

August 22, 2006 | By Nathaniel Ward

Ten years ago today, welfare reform became law when President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. A new video, hosted by Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner, outlines the origins of the momentous 1996 welfare reforms—and Heritage’s direct role in ensuring that the reform was worthwhile.

A marriage reformer, vindicated

Writing in The New York Post, Heritage welfare expert Robert Rector—who spearheaded the 1996 reforms and composed much of the legislation himself—pays a tribute to the real father of welfare reform, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan, who served as a United States Senator from New York from 1977-2001, composed a groundbreaking 1965 report about the crisis in black families that served as the intellectual basis for welfare reform.

The social problems Moynihan identified, Rector explains, were not based on race but family structure. In the 1996 debate, accordingly, “At least half of the debate on the Senate floor centered on the harmful effects of out-of-wedlock childbearing, the issue for which he had been the lonely champion for so many years.” Unfortunately, governments at all levels often failed to encourage the necessary family reforms until the Bush administration recently began the Healthy Marriage Initiative.

“Kudos to the late Sen. Moynihan,” Rector concludes, “It’s too bad the government took four decades to listen to his wisdom.”

International law and the United States

Heritage’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom has released a new paper, composed by former Reagan and George H.W. Bush legal advisers Lee A. Casey and David B. Rivkin, intended to be “a short guide to inter­national law for American policymakers.” It’s important that our elected leaders understand the paper’s conclusion:

Sovereignty is not some abstract concept that can or should be redefined by an indeterminate and inchoate “international community.” It is the right of the American people, and of all peoples, to govern themselves in accordance with their own institutions and by their own consent. It is the basis of our right to make law for ourselves.

65 and going strong

Ed Feulner recently turned 65—which is far from deterring his commitment to fighting for conservative ideals. He writes that this milestone reveals much to be thankful for:

  • “The opportunity to work with a team of first-class people to conceive, build and make permanent an institution in Washington that’s really making a difference for the policies we believe in for all our fellow citizens.”
  • “The chance to participate in the changes that have occurred throughout the world; the realization government is more often a part of the problem than a part of the solution; and to observe the fall of communism as an ideology and as a governing force.”

On balance, Feulner writes, things are rather good. Indeed, there’s good reason to keep pushing forward. He explains:

As I reach 65, at the front of the Baby Boomer generation, I think it’s time to remove some of this magic number’s stigma. “Retire at 65” was a policy made long ago, when life expectancy was 67 or 70. It’s time to start pushing the retirement date back a year or two at a time. That would give talented people a chance to stay in the workplace and start addressing looming problems of Social Security.

Health care done right

With other sorts of insurance—covering automobiles, homes, life and so on—the coverage travels with the individual. But health insurance is provided by employers, and individuals without insurance, usually low-income workers often working for small businesses, either cannot or do not purchase insurance. This means, Heritage health care expert Bob Moffit explains, that when these workers “buy health insurance on their own, they get no federal and state tax breaks for the purchase, unlike workers who get coverage through their employers. This makes these workers’ health coverage far more expensive for them to buy. No wonder they don’t, or can’t, purchase insurance.”

“Treat health plans like car insurance and people will cover themselves,” Moffit writes. A good policy, he explains, would “tie health insurance to the person, not the job. That one, simple change would make a dramatic difference in reducing the numbers of the uninsured.” We should create a consumer-based system that allows individuals and families to pick the health coverage they want—and keep it. And government should stop penalizing individuals who seek to purchase insurance on their own.

In other news

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.

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