What are they saying now?Terry Dashner……………………Faith Fellowship Church PO Box 1586 Broken Arrow, OK 74013
Think back to
mid 1990s. Do you remember harangue against welfare reform? Many people in powerful positions spoke against it. In fact, many went on record saying that it would create more problems then it would solve. Did it? Here are facts.
In her wonderful and well documented book entitled, Do-Gooders How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim To Help (And The Rest Of Us) (Sentinel 2004), Mona Charen records following.
“When it became clear that President Clinton was ‘going wobbly’ on welfare reform, liberals sent in reinforcements to buck him up. The National Organization for Women (NOW) organized a vigil outside White House to urge president to veto legislation. ‘Millions more will swell ranks of poor and hungry as a result of this bill,’ predicted NOW president Patricia Ireland.
“’With 4 to 10 million children scheduled to be cut from nation’s welfare rolls in next seven years through caps on AFDC and Supplemental Security Income, two major assistance programs, [Los Angeles County child welfare official Peter] Digre predicts that Los Angeles will see more than 17,000 new cases of child abuse due to poverty and family stress,’ reposted Time magazine.”
Other people “in know” carped as well. I’ll spare you agony by mentioning only names of those who spoke against this sacred cow. Here’s list: Tom Brokaw, Sam Donaldson, Dan Rather, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Representative Charles Rangel, Robert Greenstein, Senator John Kerry, and Senator Hillary Clinton. (There were many more, but I wanted to keep my comments to two pages.) So, what really happened?
Charen writes, “Welfare reform did of course become law in 1996. Since that time, every wild prediction liberals made has been proved false. Poverty did not increase by millions; instead, it has fallen precipitously. Women and children are not sleeping under bridges; instead, millions of women have found jobs that give them a sense of pride and help them reach first step on economic ladder. Since 1996, welfare rolls have been reduced by 60 percent. The poverty rate has declined from 13.8 percent in 1995 to 11.7 percent in 2003. Some 3.5 million fewer Americans are poor today than in 1995, including 2.3 million children. Poverty among African American children has reached its lowest point in history. Hunger among children has been reduced by half.” I could go on and on and on. But, I won’t.
