The Stealth Repeal of Welfare Reform

It is cruel, Mr. President. It is corrupt. It is wasteful, it is unjust. And it is delusional.

What I am talking about? I am talking about the reports from Benjamin E. Sasse and Kerry N. Weems, Mickey Kaus and from Robert Rector that your stimulus bill is repealing welfare reform.

All reports agree that the provisions in the bill that remove incentives to the states to reduce welfare caseloads will result in expansion of welfare programs. The bill will result in a return to the status quo ante 1996. And that is wrong.

I think it is fair to say that nowhere, Mr. President, did you say that you would be turning back the clock on welfare reform. I am talking about the rotted, dysfunctional welfare system that had been a national scandal for 30 years before President Bill Clinton signed off on the landmark reform bill in 1996.

The Obama administration has no mandate to roll back welfare reform. None at all.

This is wrong, Mr. President. It is cruel, corrupt, wasteful, unjust, and it is deluded. Let us count how this is so.

1. Cruel: Let’s roll the Ellwood and Jencks chart from their 2004 report on welfare. Need I say more? It is cruel to destroy the low-income family in America with your welfare benefits.
2. Corrupt: Let’s face it. We know why liberals like welfare. It is about patronage, about the same as pirate captains sharing out the plunder. Liberals share the wealth because that is how they buy the patronage support of Democratic Party rank-and-file voters. And then, of course, liberals get to award themselves big administrative jobs to hand out the loot. Pensions too. This is corruption, pure and simple.
3. Wasteful: I could go on and on. There is the waste of taxpayers’ money. There is the waste of the lives caught up in the “poverty trap” of welfare. There is the waste of talent in the people who supervise and administer the programs. There is the waste, dare I say it, of scarce global resources at a time when we are trying to save the planet.
4. Unjust: It is a gross injustice to force Americans to pay for this expansion of welfare. There’s a penalty for injustice, and it catches up with you in the end.
5. Deluded: Yes, liberals. Go ahead. Make my day. If you think that this is just a cute little sweetener for your friends, you don’t understand what you are doing. Let us leave aside the record of thirty years of social science, of political philosophy, of simple decency and common sense, all of which thunders that government welfare is a terrible idea that devastates lives. There is the simple politics of it. Government welfare is very unpopular with the voters. They hate it.

There is only one thing to say about the monstrous repeal of welfare reform by the Obama Adminstration and the Democratic Congress.

This shall not stand.