Hillary Is Like A Fish Out of Water When Talking About Class Issues

[wyldwolf]

287. It resembles it greatly

The 90s-era welfare reform bill was based on the plan from the 1976 DNC platform that Jimmy Carter campaigned on and embraced.

No one has said the Carter administration followed through on it. I certainly didn't. Maybe he lacked the votes in Congress.

Fundamental welfare reform is necessary. The problems with our current chaotic and inequitable system of public assistance are notorious. Existing welfare programs encourage family instability. They have few meaningful work incentives. They do little or nothing for the working poor on substandard incomes. The patchwork of federal, state and local programs encourages unfair variations in benefit levels among the states, and benefits in many states are well below the standards for even lowest-income budgets.

vs. Bill Clinton's statement:

All Americans, without regard to party, know that our welfare system is broken, that it teaches the wrong values, rewards the wrong choices, hurts those it was meant to help. We also know that no one wants to change the current system in a good way more than people who are trapped in it.

One line in particular sounds like how the GOP typically describes welfare: "The problems with our current chaotic and inequitable system of public assistance are notorious. Existing welfare programs encourage family instability."

vs. Barack Obama:

“conservatives — and Bill Clinton — were right about welfare as it was previously structured: By detaching income from work and by making no demands on welfare recipients other than a tolerance for intrusive bureaucracy and an assurance that no man lived in the same house as the mother of his children, the old A.F.D.C. program sapped people of their initiative and eroded their self respect.”

For that matter, the statements were all very Bobby Kennedy-like.

Clinton's Welfare Reforms Shaped by Predecessors' Frustrated Efforts

WASHINGTON — Richard Nixon promised "total welfare reform--the transformation of a system frozen in failure." Jimmy Carter asked Congress "to abolish our existing welfare system." Ronald Reagan called for "real and lasting emancipation" from welfare.

Now comes Bill Clinton, who will release a reform plan in Kansas City today that is intended to redeem his promise "to end welfare as we know it."

Like his predecessors', Clinton's plan begins with the assumption that the welfare system has failed both the taxpaying public and those it is intended to help. But, in both its ambitions and its modesty, Clinton's plan has been shaped by the frustrations that these earlier reform efforts left behind.... Clinton's plan envisions much more incremental change in the welfare system than the sweeping reforms Nixon and Carter offered.

http://articles.latimes.com/1994-06-14/news/mn-3972_1_welfare-reform-effort