We, meaning the liberal media, celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Watergate break-in this week. For those of failing memory or too young to remember, Watergate was the last scandal in American politics.
In the Administration’s fight to end welfare reform as we know it, the Department of Labor recently ruled that the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) should apply to welfare recipients placed in community-service jobs by state governments. This means they would receive the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, and a host of benefits that would make workfare programs prohibitively expensive for governors. In effect, this ruling guts the work requirements passed in last year’s welfare reform. Reps. Jim Talent (R., Mo.) and Clay Shaw (R., Fla.) are pushing language to restore the work provisions by exempting workfare participants from FLSA. The two have encountered resistance from both the White House and the Senate, which is not only taking a pass on workfare, but providing major new funding for a discredited CETA-style jobs program. Unexpected, however, has been the squeamishness of Newt Gingrich and John Kasich, both of whom seem so afraid of union attack ads that they have flirted with allowing the White House to gut welfare reform. Gingrich recently complained that conservatives make the “automatic presumption” that someone is about “to sell us out today.” It’s a presumption, unfortunately, that the Speaker validated this time around.
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