Here is a picture of Jesse Jackson marching with N.O.W. (National Organization of Women, a liberal feminist group) members against Welfare Reform, along with the results of the reforms they opposed. State Reform took effect around 1992-1994 and the National Bill was passed in 1996. The Republicans swept the house in 1994 promising a ‘Contract with America’. People are the same the world over. It is the political structure and governmental interference that make all the difference. Get Government out of people’s lives and they will succeed. To believe people cannot succeed without government ‘help’ is to subscribe to what President Bush calls, ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’. The reason they aren’t succeeding is BECAUSE of the government help, which only serves to subsidize poverty and single motherhood! For some reason, saying these things and passing bills that help millions of people out of poverty is said by the left to be ‘cruel’, ‘hardnosed’ and ‘racist’.
-snip- Despite what we've seen so far, if millions of poorer (especially minorities) were thrown into poverty following Welfare Reform we could not declare it a success. In the same sense, if the spending in the late 60s early 70s lifted people out of poverty then we might declare President Johnson's war on poverty a success. But, everywhere we look we find the opposite of what we might expect. In fact, the following graph suggests that the poverty rates stopped dropping as government programs to combat poverty kicked in!
(all numbers in this chart drop dramatically (following welfare reform [state reform 1992-94, national reform 1996]). http://www.neoperspectives.com/summary.htm