Nothing Bill Clinton said to defend his welfare reform is true (Required reading)

[roguevalley]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by tammywammy (a host of the General Discussion forum).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bill-clinton-welfare-reform_us_5707cbf4e4b0c4e26a227a34

Everything Bill Clinton said Thursday to defend his 1996 welfare reform law was false.

Clinton claimed that he left the program with plenty of money for poor people, suggested that it helped reduce black poverty and that it was only the mean, nasty Republicans from the George W. Bush era who gutted it and hurt the poor. Clinton’s distortions of economic history and his own record are so outrageous that — you will be shocked — it is difficult to believe he was being honest.

Here’s what he told protesters at a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia: “They say the welfare reform bill increased poverty. Then why did we have the largest drop in African American poverty in history when I was president? The largest in history. What happened was, all these Republicans got into — the Supreme Court elected President Bush 5 to 4, then all these Republicans took over state legislatures. We left ‘em with enough money to take care of all the poor people who couldn’t go to work on welfare. We left ‘em with the money they had before the welfare rolls went down 60 percent. The Republicans took it away, and [these protesters are] blaming me.”

This is not true. Poverty dropped during the Clinton years not because of welfare reform, but because the entire American economy was being juiced by a massive stock market bubble. No credible economist even disputes this. The Clinton bubble was fueled by the aggressive financial deregulatory policies of Clinton and his Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan. When the stock market bubble burst, millions of people who previously would have received welfare fell into poverty.

Welfare reform was an intentional effort to curb financial assistance to poor people, on the grounds that many were simply too lazy to get a job. Clinton turned over a federal program to states, who were effectively allowed to slash welfare funding and impose new work requirements on people who received assistance. Even Republican co-architects of welfare reform concede that the program ended up hurting the poor. “In a recession, it doesn’t work,” former GOP staffer Ron Haskins told The Huffington Post in 2012 about the welfare reform bill, which he helped shape. “Even in 2001, which was a relatively mild recession, we saw a lot of these single mothers leaving the workforce because they just couldn’t find a job and being forced off the welfare rolls.”

snip

Clinton is fabricating political history for a reason. His wife, then-first lady Hillary Clinton, was an aggressive champion of his welfare reform agenda. She is now running for president at a time when the Democratic Party is undergoing a mass re-evaluation of his presidency. Many of them are concluding that it was an eight-year disaster for progressive ideas. And they want to know whether Hillary Clinton still supports the policies that she and Bill Clinton advanced during the 1990s. When she sends Bill Clinton out on the campaign trail and he blatantly misleads his audience to defend those ideas, it’s hard to conclude that she doesn’t still support them.

[questionseverything]

1. they basically ended cash assistance, the little bit of safety net unwed moms had in place

today in illinois if a person is so desperate to need cash assistance they must "volunteer" 120 hours a month for a $359 benefit

this month somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million more people will lose their food stamps because of that welfare reform bill,these are adults without children who have no source of income....and because of the clinton's policy they are basically going to starve to death, in the richest nation in the world

btw food stamps are the best investment we can make as Americans, for every dollar spent on fs $1.79 is created in gdp

we should be expanding fs not cutting them

[Baobab]

14. This was so they could sell their global services liberalisation and the WTO

making the US model look more economically viable at a critical time - while we were and still are pushing a pie in the sky, a fake "el Dorado" of "progressive liberalisation" which means one way, irreversible global privatization of public services, education, and health care- a profoundly unwise and unworkable corporate first takeover of the future world-

We need to understand that is what they were pushing and its likely to bite us the worst if we allow that back room hijacking of the world's future to continue..

[EdwardBernays]

2. This will be ignored

By the very people that should read it.

[stupidicus]

8. that's exactly right

[SCantiGOP]

18. Required reading?

Please explain how you have the authority to assign reading.

[phazed0]

3. Bookmarking, thanks! nt

[nichomachus]

4. What? A Clinton lied? Knock me over with a feather. nt

[zentrum]

5. As I understand it….

….the program hurt the poor even before the bubble burst. The problem was that Clinton turned the decision about allocation of benefits, over to the states.

Well, not to sound too "regionist" about it—but you can guess what happened to people in the South. The conservative, often racist State officials who hate Welfare, especially aimed to penalize poor, head-of-household women with children.

How's that for feminism? This is the real definition of what Billary means by "compromise" (with the rightwing), "realism", and "getting things done".

If you really want to deal with welfare, start with income inequality, access to education and training, and reparations.

Still Slick Willy.

[Jim Beard]

6. This is difficult to say since this is really an election issue.

I remember the 1992 election when Newt Gingrich had his "Contract on America" and the Democrats became almost extinct, losing a huge majority. A lot of it was Hillary's health Care bill.

Please don't think that the Clinton's did not care about the poor on welfare, after raising taxes on the rich to counter what Reagan did, the republicans tore the Clintons and us a new one.

This doesn't make me pro Hillary or Bernie, I like both of them, its just the way I remember it.

[PatV]

7. Bill knew damn well what he was doing? And he made his bones supporting a right wing agenda. Bill

was a New Democrat and an original member of the DNC. You know, that organization that the Koch Brother funded.

He pushed legislation that he knew would make TPTB happy and felt no qualms doing so because it only affected minorities and the poor.

He's still lying a wagging his finger at people.

***

Bill Clinton Gets Into Heated Exchange With Black Lives Matter Protester
http://www.npr.org/2016/04/07/473428472/bill-clinton-gets-into-heated-exchange-with-black-lives-matter-protester
***

Hillary supporters need to tell her to make the old guy stay home. Or put his patoot back on the Lolita Express. You'd best do something about that guy. His mouth is shooting Hillary in the foot.

[AzDar]

9. K & R

[creeksneakers2]

10. He didn't say welfare reform decreased poverty

He was refuting the idea that it increased it. If you want to make what he said untrue, you have to show proof that welfare reform increased poverty.

Welfare was the most unpopular program in my lifetime. Republicans were winning election after election on it. Bill's law let people stay on for five years. If the GOP was in charge, which they could be because of issues like this, they would have eliminated it entirely.

Most of the people who don't like the Clintons mistake pragmatism for indifference or corruption.

[stupidicus]

11. color me shocked

he doesn't wanna take ownership of any of his screwups.

What for example, are/were the societal ramifications of his 1996 Telecom Act, his maintaining the illegal no-fly zones in Iraq, or littering the place with depleted uranium, etc, etc, etc....

ANd what about being a Bush by another mother? It seems HC supporters have suspended that old adage about how we're known by the company we keep.

[dembotoz]

12. did not like him then and i still don't

[Iwillnevergiveup]

13. His folksiness

continues to win over uninformed people.

[Fairgo]

15. The trouble with sticking around after the long con

is eventually, the rubes figure out that they were swindled. A good confidence man doesn't fall for his own lie.

[Stellar]

16. Bill, Bill, Bill.... smh! nt

[central scrutinizer]

17. This is why I voted Nader

In 1996 and 2000. And will vote for Bernie every chance I get.

[underahedgerow]

19. Bill Clinton hasn't held public office in 15 years. Why is he still a topic? Is he running

for something? Supreme Court maybe?

Just sayin'.

This belongs in the PRIMARIES since it's a soft target for his wife, right?

[marmar]

20. And you think his policies don't still have an impact?

[underahedgerow]

21. I supported that particular effort in fact. It had many good merits, and got a lot of

people who were trapped in a pointless, multi-generational welfare dependency off of social services and into the mainstream. It was motivating to a large number of people who needed a kick in the pants.

Assuredly, to some detriment, but it was a manageble detriment. By and large it did what was intended, and I witnessed it first-hand, being a government administrator and managing a small welfare-to-work program. Able-bodied people who beforehand, had no motivation to get up every morning and go to work finally got up off their butts and got a job. How is that a bad thing?

So what's the point in bringing it up NOW? It's been in place for decades. What IS the relevancy at this moment?

[tammywammy]

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