The Week

At least Ed Rollins puts his own foot in his mouth.

In President Clinton’s speech to the Democratic Convention—which, for all we know, may still be going on as you read this—he proposed “to give businesses a tax credit for every person hired off welfare and kept employed,” and “to offer private job-placement firms a bonus for every welfare recipient they place in a job who stays in it.” As a welfare reform, this proposal is pretty insignificant, but still wrongheaded: all previous efforts to provide benefits to recipients for getting off welfare have ended up persuading more people to get on it in the first place. But there’s a more basic issue of fairness at stake here. Under this proposal, employers are encouraged to give greater consideration to welfare recipients than to job applicants who have “worked hard and played by the rules.” It is thus simply a surreptitious way of extending the existing regime of state-sponsored discrimination that goes by the name of “affirmative action.” This wouldn’t go unchallenged if the Republican Party were still alive.

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Presidential Election

William F. Buckley Jr.

At least Ed Rollins puts his own foot in his mouth.

In President Clinton’s speech to the Democratic Convention—which, for all we know, may still be going on as you read this—he proposed “to give businesses a tax credit for every person hired off welfare and kept employed,” and “to offer private job-placement firms a bonus for every welfare recipient they place in a job who stays in it.” As a welfare reform, this proposal is pretty insignificant, but still wrongheaded: all previous efforts to provide benefits to recipients for getting off welfare have ended up persuading more people to get on it in the first place. But there’s a more basic issue of fairness at stake here. Under this proposal, employers are encouraged to give greater consideration to welfare recipients than to job applicants who have “worked hard and played by the rules.” It is thus simply a surreptitious way of extending the existing regime of state-sponsored discrimination that goes by the name of “affirmative action.” This wouldn’t go unchallenged if the Republican Party were still alive.