Posted on 03/01/2010 7:34:19 AM PST by Wolf13
Barack Obama came to the presidency promising to be America's first post-partisan president. It is, therefore, ironic that one of his signature achievements has been to roll back one of the great bipartisan triumphs of the last two decades.
Under the guise of helping unemployed Americans in a tough economy, the Obama administration and its congressional allies are reversing the 1996 welfare reforms that have been lauded as an overwhelming success by Republicans and Democrats alike for lifting millions of Americans from poverty.
Before welfare reform, under the federal assistance program called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the federal government gave the states more money for every family they added to their welfare rolls. Not surprisingly, this system gave states a disincentive to help people transition from unemployment and dependence on government to work and independence.
AFDC came under heavy criticism across the ideological spectrum for producing perverse incentives. These included out-of-wedlock births and perpetual unemployment. Recipients had little incentive to get off welfare; in fact, they had a disincentive to do so, because they could get paid indefinitely for not working.
Reforming the broken federal welfare system became a cornerstone of the Contract with America, which helped Republicans recapture Congress in 1994. Premised on reducing dependency on government, the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) passed Congress and was signed by President Clinton in 1996.
PRWORA replaced AFDC with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which drew on successful state-level innovations and emphasized, as the name suggests, time-limited financial aid. Under TANF, states got a block grant from the federal government, which gave states an incentive to cut their welfare rolls and get people into jobs.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
WOW, cool tow-bit tin pot dictator thinks he can do everything, doesn’t he.
Wasn’t this voted on by Congress and made law?
Partly as a consequence of the infusion of federal welfare funds, welfare rolls increased in 2009 for the first time since PRWORA was enacted, growing 5 percent as 200,000 more Americans were added.
Of course it grew...millions are unemployed, but this is a temporary thing (well it would have been if Obama, Pelosi and Reid hadn’t instilled all those spending spree’s)
Spreading the wealth anyway he can... control and power that’s all this is about, nothing more! I really dislike these people...
What did you expect since the CRA grab bag went tits up? The CRA was the sugar used to wean the CBC off of the welfare wagon. Once that turned ugly, expecting the CBC to stay off the welfare wagon is not an option. Isn’t post racial America great?
Obama is a disaster to a once productive nation...
bookmark.
Obama is failing and he knows it. He is in crisis. He knows his days are numbered before something removes him from office. His only instinct now is to do as much damage as he can. Typical thug instinct.
Mr. Obama’s welfare increases are not temporary. In fact, over the next decade, Mr. Obama will spend $10.3 trillion on welfare. That equals, according to the study, “approximately $250,000 for each person currently living in poverty in the U.S., or $1 million for a poor family of four.”
100k a year?
The list, ping
Remember something...
We are dealing with a President who is a Radical SOCIALIST, who comes from the Chicago Black Radical ACORN Machine, that used to be the National Welfare Rights Organiztion, who’s goal was to sign up so many people on Government assistance that it BANLRUPTED AMERICA, forcing Radical Socialist “Change”
I say the Democrats start aligning for impeachment by summer, 2010.
100k a year?
Well, not really, once you siphon off all the union bureaucrats’ salaries, perks, pensions...
CRA? CBC?
Of course, out of that $250K, the poor person will see about $25K over ten years. The rest will go to ACORN, bureaucrats, and other parasites.
i wonder if he understands this is why unemployment rate is not dropping like it has when we have come out of past recessions?
You bet.
It's because the majority of the money goes to the "poor industry", who supposedly provide "services" to the poor. If we just gave the poor the money, there wouldn't be any poor.
Assuming the "poor industry" parasites got a real job, say in the food service or housekeeping industries.
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