Bread & Circuses

LAST year, even as he heralded the changes that “ended welfare as we know it,” President Clinton promised his liberal allies that he would “fix” the welfare-reform bill he was signing. It seemed an insincere and-after the GOP held onto Congress last November-an impossible boast. Yet last week he kept his word. With Congress nodding and smiling in acquiescence, the Clinton Administration has now ended welfare reform as we briefly knew it. Among the provisions of this “bi-partisan” budget deal are the restoration of welfare benefits to elderly non-citizens, increases in food stamps for able-bodied single adults, and $3 billion in new spending on Clinton’s boondoggle public-jobs program. And on top of all that, a provision that would have prevented the Administration from gutting workfare requirements was dropped.

“The Republicans negotiated in the sense that a gnat negotiates with the windshield of a moving car,” says Robert Rector, the Heritage’s expert on welfare. Republicans fought loudly over whether low-income working families should benefit from the child tax credit (and then capitulated). They quietly went along with new regulations that make it almost impossible for states to demand welfare recipients work in exchange for benefits. And what dysfunctional focus group told Republicans that voters begrudge families that earn $20,000 a year, but condone idle, able-bodied welfare recipients?

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Kate O'Beirne

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LAST year, even as he heralded the changes that “ended welfare as we know it,” President Clinton promised his liberal allies that he would “fix” the welfare-reform bill he was signing. It seemed an insincere and-after the GOP held onto Congress last November-an impossible boast. Yet last week he kept his word. With Congress nodding and smiling in acquiescence, the Clinton Administration has now ended welfare reform as we briefly knew it. Among the provisions of this “bi-partisan” budget deal are the restoration of welfare benefits to elderly non-citizens, increases in food stamps for able-bodied single adults, and $3 billion in new spending on Clinton’s boondoggle public-jobs program. And on top of all that, a provision that would have prevented the Administration from gutting workfare requirements was dropped.

“The Republicans negotiated in the sense that a gnat negotiates with the windshield of a moving car,” says Robert Rector, the Heritage’s expert on welfare. Republicans fought loudly over whether low-income working families should benefit from the child tax credit (and then capitulated). They quietly went along with new regulations that make it almost impossible for states to demand welfare recipients work in exchange for benefits. And what dysfunctional focus group told Republicans that voters begrudge families that earn $20,000 a year, but condone idle, able-bodied welfare recipients?