Posted on 03/10/2003 7:52:57 PM PST by Utah Girl
Former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D., N.Y.), apparently was in no mood to mince words that day in 1996 when he described the welfare-reform bill that had just been enacted by a Republican Congress and a Democratic president.
Requiring welfare recipients to work and limiting the length of time they could collect benefits added up to "the most brutal act of social policy since Reconstruction," he said. "Those involved will take this disgrace to their graves."
Moynihan was hardly alone. Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund, proclaimed the legislation "an outrage … that will hurt and impoverish millions of American children." Her husband, Peter Edelman, then an assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services, resigned in protest and wrote an article for The Atlantic Monthly titled "The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done."
Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women, said the law would "place 12.8 million people on welfare at risk of sinking further into poverty and homelessness," a charge echoed in numerous newspaper editorials.
So as Congress prepares to reauthorize the law, it's time to ask: How have these predictions fared?
Fortunately, not well at all. Census Bureau data show substantial declines in child poverty in the United States, especially among the two groups most affected by welfare reform: children of single mothers and black children.
The improvement in black child poverty has been dramatic. During the quarter century before welfare reform, black child-poverty rates remained essentially flat. In 1995, the last year before welfare reform, the rate was 41.5 percent. This was slightly higher than the rate was in 1971, when it stood at 40.4 percent
After welfare reform, the black child-poverty rate began dropping at a sharp and unprecedented rate, falling to 30 percent in 2001. Today, despite the sluggish economy, black child poverty is at the lowest level in national history.
The poverty rate for single-mother families shows a similar pattern. For more than two decades before welfare reform, we saw little net change. After reform, poverty fell among these families fell from 50.3 percent in 1995 to 39.8 percent in 2001. Even saddled with a recession, the poverty rate that year for children in single-mother families was at its lowest point in U.S. history.
What about child hunger? The Children's Defense Fund said welfare reform would "make children hungrier." Peter Edelman predicted more "malnutrition." Yet the numbers here have been cut roughly in half, with Agriculture Department data showing that in 1995, the year before welfare reform, 887,000 children were hungry; by 2001, the number had fallen to 467,000. That's still too many, but it's a far cry from what critics predicted.
Didn't any numbers go up? Sure — employment figures. And they went up the most among "disadvantaged" mothers. Employment for never-married mothers has jumped by nearly 50 percent since the mid-1990s. The number of single mothers with jobs but no high-school diploma has risen by two-thirds, while employment among young single mothers (between the ages of 18 and 24) has nearly doubled.
There's a simple explanation, some critics reply — the economy. Former welfare recipients naturally succeeded while it was improving. But while a strong economy undoubtedly helped, research shows that state welfare reform policies played a much larger role.
Indeed, a recent study, by Rebecca Blank, a former member of the Council of Economic Adviseors in the Clinton administration, shows a direct link between state welfare-reform policies and rising incomes among poor families. Blank found that s tates with welfare-reform programs that offered "strong work incentives" showed greater increases in the income of single parents with children than did states with weak work incentives.
Besides, similar economic expansions before 1996 did nothing to cut welfare rolls, and our current economic woes have slowed but not stopped the progress made by reform.
But that doesn't mean the current law is beyond improvement. Congress should strengthen federal work requirements; about half of the two million mothers who get a TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) check are idle, despite being able-bodied. Lawmakers also can strengthen marriage among the poor, which a wealth of social-science research proves is the best way to cut poverty among children and boost their well-being.
If lawmakers take this advice, expect to hear more hysterical predictions among the naysayers. And count on them being just as wrong.
— Robert Rector is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
The facts of life are that most of the fathers of inner-city kids either do not have the resources to support them (minimum-wage job holder), or get their incomes in ways that cannot be seized to satisfy child-report (off the books or crime) or are dead or in jail.
The bottom line is that ( however much it might violate your sense of fairness ) the only workable solution to welfare dependency is to use disincentives on the women, so that they will avoid getting pregnant unless they have a stable husband in their lives AND have the work skills to support themselves and their kids should something happen to the husband.
The guys who are able and willing to provide child support, do. If a guy is not providing child support, it means that he's either unable (low wage, in jail, or dead) or unwilling. If he's unwilling and underclass (which most of the welfare dads are) then it's really hard to do something about it. What are you going to do, put him in jail? If you garnish his salary, this creates an incentive to work off the books or self-employ in a cash business of some sort
There is no getting around the fact that it's the women who have all the choice in whether to have sex with someone, get pregnant, stay pregnant, or keep the kid or put him up for adoption
But my bottom line is this: I have my own kids to support. I am not willing to involuntarily support someone else's kids thru welfare taxes. My desire is to discourage the welfare-types from having kids that they will then expect society to support. And I'm willing to support any means which will impliment this desire. By whatever means necessary
Well gee thanks but that rings hollow after you've basically just said that you don't think men are responsible for their part in the consequences of sex.
But my bottom line is this: I have my own kids to support. I am not willing to involuntarily support someone else's kids thru welfare taxes.
Yadda, yadda, yadda. You'll pay either way. Don't pay now, pay later in increased spending on crime deterrance, unsafe societies, keeping your family safely "gated" from the unwashed masses, more prisons, higher insurance costs... on and on. You WILL pay one way or the other for other MEN'S and women's kids, whether you are "willing" or not.
The best plan of action you have to prevent spending your tax dollars on welfare, you're not willing to take. That is creating an entire culture which REJECTS the values you just cited for men, which says, it's okay men, you can skip out on your kids ... we won't even mention it.
My desire is to discourage the welfare-types from having kids that they will then expect society to support.
See above. You contradict yourself. You're not willing to discourage welfare types from having kids but you've basically just given half of the parents a free pass to leave all the consequences of their actions on society (meaning you and me).
And I'm willing to support any means which will impliment this desire. By whatever means necessary
Now that I believe. Ends justify the means, just like China. There are plenty of people willing to rip the Constitution into little shreds and spit on it in order to exempt their own group of personal responsibility for their actions.
What I said was that a large percentage of the men who father inner-city welfare-kids are "deadbeats" because they do not have the ABILITY to pay. When women have kids by men who have no ABILITY to support them (minimum wage, criminal, low-life-expectancy gang bangers) it is stupid and futile to rant on about "how MEN should yada yada". You cannot seize assets that do not EXIST. Welcome to reality
Yadda, yadda, yadda. You'll pay either way. Don't pay now, pay later in increased spending on crime deterrance, unsafe societies, keeping your family safely "gated" from the unwashed masses, more prisons, higher insurance costs...
Gee, you mean what we have NOW under your rules?
My point is that multi-generational welfare kids are born today because the mothers do not have a strong enough disincentive to have them. If 99% of men are ethical and responsible, it won't make a difference if a bunch of women get attracted to a bed-hopping guy from the 1%. One energetic guy can impregnate a hundred women. It's a biological fact of life.
Conversely, if women have a strong disincentive to have kids they cannot support, they won't do it. They'll use better birth control, get sterilized, become celibate or lesbian, whatever it takes. There will BE no next generation of welfare-class criminals if the welfare-class women are given a strong incentive to not have kids they cannot themselves support.
Well duh. Ditto for a certain percentage of women. What you're doing is excusing the men who procreate without the "ability to pay" (as if the would if they could you imply I note). You're making excuses for deadbeat men. That's the bottome line.
You cannot seize assets that do not EXIST. Welcome to reality.
No you can't, but neither can you sieze assets from women who don't have them. Same difference, so you're point is useless.
Gee, you mean what we have NOW under your rules?
No we are living under YOUR rules not mine. You WANT men to be left out of the equation entirely. Judging from 4 articles in the last month discussing the cycle of poverty where men are not mentioned even once, I'd say it's YOUR rules, not mine that we live under. Personal accountability is not applicable to men under YOUR rules. That's why you and I wil continue to pay, one way or the other.
My point is that multi-generational welfare kids are born today because the mothers do not have a strong enough disincentive to have them.
Nor do fathers have strong enough incentive not to create more welfare kids. Same difference only you don't want to acknowledge male involvement in the problem. I note you say of women ... "disincetive to have them" .... which is code-speak for mandated or coerced abortion. This IS the goal only you and every other cowardly male apologist won't admit it. I'm calling you on it.
If 99% of men are ethical and responsible, it won't make a difference if a bunch of women get attracted to a bed-hopping guy from the 1%. One energetic guy can impregnate a hundred women. It's a biological fact of life.
More codespeak as a prerequisite for manipulating women like livestock in lieu of requiring both MEN and women to act responsibly. Your rhetoric is simply laying the groundwork for mandated unilateral sanctions against women as they have in China ... mandated abortion, mandated sterilization, sanctions on pregnancy and childbirth.
You know, there is more than one way to play your animal husbandry ends-justify-the-means game. We could (for the good of society of course) mandate that 90% of male babies be sterilized at birth. Wecould mandate that all men who father a child out of wedlock be sterilized .... we "could" abbrogate the constitutional rights of MEN only if we wanted. YOUR ends-justify-the-means logic can be applied in any number of creative ways.
Conversely, if women have a strong disincentive to have kids they cannot support, they won't do it.
Codespeak for coerced or mandated abortion or sterilization of women. Codespeak for: Men, we NEVER EVER intend to make the concept personal accountablity applicable to you. You go ahead and do whater you want, we can control things by controlling and manipulating women unilaterally.
Incidently, your plan has been tried and it hasn't worked. In countries where there is no social safety net at all, and where fathers can abandon their kids with impunity (as you want) there are MORE poor and desitute people who wreck havoc on the economy, standard of living, and crime for everyone. Also, the Victorians tried your plan with their Bastard Laws which basically exempted men from responsibility and cut off aid to women with children. It didn't work. Even the stalwart Victorians gave it up after 10 years and rescinded those laws.
Unilateral accountablity for the consequences of sex has NEVER worked one time in history, even when the punishments are as severe as death. Plus you'd have to scrap our Constitution to implement such a plan (which you seem willing to do). Go visit those countries where YOUR plan is in place. Get back to me if you want to live there.
There will BE no next generation of welfare-class criminals if the welfare-class women are given a strong incentive to not have kids they cannot themselves support.
See above. No mention of men's responsibilities to the children the co-create. Nada, zip. You are an apologist and worse you advocate unilateral sanctions against women for a mutual male/female action. You, know there are plenty of places where YOUR kind of unilateralism in sanctioning sexual behavior is carried out. I don't see you or any of the male apologists like you clamoring to live in those societies. I wonder why?
OK, then. Let's make you happy. If a couple have a kid without either having the ability to adequately support it, let's put BOTH mom & dad up on meathooks and put the kid up for adoption. Would that make you happier?
You know, there is more than one way to play your animal husbandry ends-justify-the-means game. We could (for the good of society of course) mandate that 90% of male babies be sterilized at birth. Wecould mandate that all men who father a child out of wedlock be sterilized .... we "could" abbrogate the constitutional rights of MEN only if we wanted. YOUR ends-justify-the-means logic can be applied in any number of creative ways.
You assume that I would oppose what you propose.
Actually, I wouldn't mind Medicaid offering free sterilization to any person, male or female, who has dropped out of school or otherwise demonstrates that they are unlikely to be self-supporting in their adult lives. I might go further and support offering a bonus of $1000 cash to any person who would consent to be sterilized between their 18th and 19th birthdays. Those who want the $1K to buy drugs or whatever would get their money, the rest of us would be happy to see them out of the gene pool.
We are describing the United States prior to about 1960. And, yes, I would like to live in the kind of society the US was prior to 1960 (minus the Jim Crow laws). No federal welfare. Hardly any gun control. Much less crime than we have. Hardly any drug dealers killing each other. And kids mostly growing up in two-parent families because women had an incentive to be choosy about who they spread their legs for. It was the society I grew up in
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