September 7, 2012
Bill Clinton says his welfare reforms weren't gutted. He's wrong.
“To hear Bill Clinton tell it, there’s no truth to the charges that President Obama gutted welfare reform,” Heritage Foundation scholar Robert Rector writes in the Washington Post.
But Clinton is wrong. “The law has indeed been gutted,” Rector says.
So why is Rector such an authority on welfare reform that the Post would publish his article? Because he helped write the 1996 welfare law in the first place:
Working closely with members of Congress, I helped draft the work requirements in the 1996 law, and I raised the alarm on July 12, when the Obama administration issued a bureaucratic order allowing states to waive those requirements.
Rector explains what President Obama really did:
The Obama administration is waiving the federal requirement that ensures a portion of able-bodied TANF recipients must engage in work activities. It is replacing that requirement with a standard that shows that the pre-reform welfare program was successful and the post-reform program a failure. If that is not gutting welfare reform, it is difficult to imagine what would be.
Be sure to read the whole article, which helps show how Heritage continues to shape the debate on this important topic. Rector’s work on President Obama’s gutting of welfare reform has already been featured in a Mitt Romney television advertisement and widely cited in the media.
Do you think liberals will ever admit to gutting this successful reform that moved millions off the welfare caseload?
mitchell - September 7, 2012
Is this a trick question????