http://www.buildingbridgesradio.blogspot.com/...
Twenty Years of Deepening Poverty
Since Pres. Clinton Shredded Welfare Safety Net
with
Felicia Kornbluh, Professor of History and Gender, Sexuality,
and Women's Studies at the University of Vermont. Her books
include The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in
Modern America and Ensuring Poverty: Welfare Reform After
Twenty Years, (with Gwendolyn Mink), forthcoming.
August 22 marked the beginning of "welfare reform's" 20th year, signed
into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. Kornbluh says: "Playing to a
racist imagination and dealing in sexist double standards, Republicans
and Democrats came together 19 years ago to transform income
assistance for the poor into a system of regulation, deprivation and
punishment. The legislation that established Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families (“TANF”), made limiting women's choices and ending
single motherhood its goals. The nation's chief policy dedicated to
impoverished families with children did not include mitigating poverty,
enhancing opportunity, or attenuating inequality as its goals. As a result,
while welfare rolls have declined, poverty still stalks single mothers and
their children -- and extreme poverty is at crisis high levels. As we
approach the 20th year of this disgraceful program, it is time to overhaul
TANF principles and practices to support the family work single mothers
do and open real pathways to economic security.
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