Clinton’s Oratory Misses Truth on Work, Welfare

By Robert Rector September 7, 2012

By all accounts, Bill Clinton seemed to thoroughly enjoy delivering his prime-time speech to a rapt audience at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. In his 48-minute tour de force, ...

Politics & Policy

Not So Fast, ‘Fact-Checkers’

By Robert Rector September 5, 2012

Fact-checkers are disputing my conclusion that the Obama administration gutted the 1996 welfare-reform law by bureaucratic edict. To recap: On July 12, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) put ...

Clinton’s Deceptive Defense

By Robert Rector August 10, 2012

President Obama has announced his intention to issue waivers that would exempt states from federal welfare-to-work requirements, overturning the foundation of the successful welfare-reform law of 1996. And now former ...

Politics & Policy

HHS Can’t Waive Workfare

By Andrew M. Grossman & Robert Rector August 9, 2012

The welfare reform of 1996 stands as perhaps the most important entitlement reform in the nation’s history. Its successes stem from a core requirement that able-bodied parents must work, search ...

Politics & Policy

Obama’s Attack on ‘Workfare’

By Robert Rector August 8, 2012

President Obama has created a firestorm by overturning the work requirements of the popular 1996 welfare-reform law. Now his White House is bristling because Mitt Romney dares to point out ...

Obama Ends Welfare Reform As We Know It

By Robert Rector & Katherine Bradley July 12, 2012

This afternoon, President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an official policy directive undermining the welfare reform law of 1996. The new policy guts the federal work ...

How Obama’s ‘Other Half’ Lives

By Robert Rector December 16, 2011

Census data shows 48 percent of Americans are either “poor” or “near poor,” the Associated Press reported yesterday, perplexing everyday people and delighting the nation’s harshest critics here and abroad. The ...

Politics & Policy

Obama’s New Poverty Measure ‘Spreads the Wealth’

By Robert Rector & Rachel Sheffield November 9, 2011

On Monday, the Census Bureau released a new poverty measure created by the Obama administration. Based on this new calculation, census officials assert that more than 49 million Americans are ...

Politics & Policy

Plugged-In Poverty

By Robert Rector July 26, 2011

The Census Bureau reported last fall that 43 million Americans — one in seven of us — were poor. But what is poverty in America today? The most recent government data ...

John Edwards: Class-Warfare Charlatan

By Robert Rector June 3, 2011

Former senator John Edwards is back in the news. As a politician, Edwards’s main theme was “poverty.” He ran on this issue twice in Democratic presidential primaries and as candidate ...