Matt Weidinger of the American Enterprise Institute writes about the need to reform welfare programs:
Fortunately, there’s a path out of this maze: Policy-makers can reorient safety-net programs away from simply staving off poverty toward helping struggling families achieve a brighter future. That’s what my AEI colleagues Angela Rachidi and Scott Winship and I argue in American Renewal, a just-released book co-edited by former House speaker Paul Ryan offering a full spectrum of conservative policy solutions.
We believe there can be no real societal renewal unless we first reform our country’s labyrinth of welfare programs.
In designing such reforms, policy-makers should reject the idea that the only way to help low-income Americans with limited opportunities is to redistribute more income from wealthier Americans, as many on the political left unconvincingly suggest.
Ferguson acts as though he’s a powerless bystander in this process. He’s the president of a union that in September refused to make a tentative agreement based on the independent recommendations of the Biden-appointed presidential emergency board (PEB). Nine of the twelve unions covered by national bargaining made agreements based on it, but it wasn’t good enough for Ferguson and SMART-TD.
That refusal, along with the refusal of the BLET (the second-largest union) spurred the 20 hours of negotiations brokered by Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh that culminated in the White House Rose Garden celebration of a deal and headlines everywhere of “Rail Strike Averted” back in September. Unlike SMART-TD, though, BLET membership voted to approve the deal their president held out for.