Alex Pareene at Salon writes
The final triumph of welfare reform:
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor describes the new House food stamp bill as an extension of welfare reform.
“This legislation restores the intent of the bipartisan welfare reforms adopted in 1996 to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” Cantor has said. “It also refocuses the program on those who need it most.”
This is a stupid comparison that is also brilliant. The reasons it is stupid are obvious: Welfare reform happened in a rapidly growing economy with nearly full employment — the abundance of (often crappy and low-paying) jobs made it seem totally painless to restrict access to benefits received by the poor and force them into taking whatever work was available. This “reform” is happening in the midst of a prolonged period of mass unemployment, following decades of stagnating wages. People with jobs rely on food stamps to feed themselves.
Here’s why it’s brilliant, though: Cantor is exactly right to draw a direct line from Bill Clinton’s 1990s welfare reform and the modern Republican war on anti-poverty spending. He’s highlighting exactly why welfare reform was, from a liberal perspective, totally misguided and doomed to fail from the start. SNAP is massive now in part because Clinton ended welfare as we knew it. If we still provided straight cash transfers, there would be fewer people relying now on money that is only supposed to be used for food (and not rent, healthcare or anything resembling the sort of leisure activities middle-class and rich Americans take for granted). But the point wasn’t strictly to wean poor people off the government: Clinton and his Democratic allies made welfare less generous in the hopes that doing so would make Republicans stop fighting to make welfare less generous. How has that worked out?[...]
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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—Pentagon Seeks to Force Obama's Hand:
The generals are impatient with the White House. General Stanley McChrystal, who took over command of U.S. and NATO troops there in June, passed his strategic assessment seeking more resources and troops up the chain of authority to President Obama on August 30. He and Central Command General David Petraeus want a quick decision from their commander-in-chief. So far, Obama has been unwilling to give them one. Indeed, he said in an interview with CNN's John King on Sunday:
"I don't want to put the resource question before the strategy question. ... Because there is a natural inclination to say, if I get more, then I can do more. But right now, the question is, the first question is, are we doing the right thing? Are we pursuing the right strategy?" |
That point of view, which is not a new one with the President, may well be what sparked a decision by someone at the Pentagon to release a 66-page unclassified version of McChrystal's assessment to Bob Woodward at the Washington Post. Headlined McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure', the unclassified assessment does not include anything on exactly how many more troops, |
Tweet of the Day:
Dear Parent:
If your kid is too scared to be on your Insurance Plan b/c it's 'government run'...
You are wasting your money on tuition!
— @randyprine
On today's
Kagro in the Morning show, House Rs passed their ACA-defunding CR while we were on the air.
Greg Dworkin on Villager attitude, Rand Paul's insistence the Gop is "winning" like Charlie Sheen, and the cratering of R self-ID. GunFAIL tales: open carrier robbed at gunpoint; gun nut/police chief Mark Kessler suspended; road rage double shooting by concealed carriers; AR mayor accidentally shoots out police chief's window; ID gun show cancelled over insurance costs; Longwood U. student accidentally shoots another; Savannah State's guards train on the job. "How Detroit went broke."
Doctor Who's procedural CR question. Outrageous foreclosure story out of CA.
High Impact Posts. Top Comments.