Great article in today’s Wall St. Journal by Ron Haskins of Brooking’s (not a conservative think tank by the way).
The failure of many liberal ideas, initiatives, and programs has been well documented. ( public schools, “wind-fall” profit taxes, nationalized healthcare, “living wage”, Social Security, etc…)
We can now officially add their staunch opposition to welfare reform in the 90s to the list. Clinton did begrudgingly sign teh GOP sponsored legislation in 1996 in a last ditch effort to get re-elected after two prior vetos, but liberal Dems where almost unanimously opposed to Welfare Reform.
Here is a sample of what the alarmists were saying back then:
The left, led by senior Democrats in Congress, the editorial pages of many of the nation’s leading newspapers, the Catholic bishops, child advocates in Washington and the professoriate, had assaulted the bill in terms that are rare, even by today’s coarse standards. Democrats speaking on the floor of the House labeled the bill “harsh,” “cruel” and “mean-spirited.” They claimed that it “attacked,” “punished” and “lashed out at” children. Columnist Bob Herbert said the bill conducted a “jihad” against the poor, made “war on kids” and “deliberately inflict[ed] harm” on children and the poor. Sen. Frank Lautenberg said poor children would be reduced to “begging for money, begging for food, and . . . engaging in prostitution.”
Many Democrats and pundits shouted that the bill would throw a million children into poverty. Marion Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund said that no one who believed in the Judeo-Christian tradition could support the bill. Even God, it seemed, opposed the evil Republican bill.
Were they correct in their apocolytic predictions?
Uh, that would be “no.”
In the decade that has passed since the 1996 reforms, the welfare rolls have plummeted by nearly 60%, the first sustained decline since the program was enacted in 1935. Equally important, the employment of single mothers heading families reached the highest level ever. As a group, mothers heading families with incomes of less than about $21,000 per year increased their earnings every year between 1994 and 2000 while simultaneously receiving less money from welfare payments. In inflation-adjusted dollars, they were about 25% better off in 2000 than in 1994, despite the fall in their welfare income.
Over the same period, the child-poverty level enjoyed its most sustained decline since the early 1970s; and both black-child poverty and poverty among female-headed families reached their lowest level ever. Even after four years of increases following the recession of 2001, the child poverty level is still 20% lower than it was before the decline began. Similarly, measures of consumption and hunger show that the material conditions of low-income, female-headed families have improved. Although welfare reform was not without problems, none of the disasters predicted by the left materialized. Indeed, national surveys show that almost every measure of child well-being — except obesity — has improved since the mid-1990s.
Liberals like Kerry and Kennedy who fought welfare reform tooth and nail not only owe an aplogy to Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Jim Talent- the primary architects of the 1996 Welare Reform Legislation- but more importantly they owe an apology to the very poor constitituencies they claim to represent who have benefited most from the very legeslation they so fervently opposed.