Welfare Deform -- A Sad Anniversary

I’m baffled by the way the press has covered the tenth anniversary (this week) of Bill Clinton’s welfare reform – full of praise for a policy that has led to more poverty in America among single mothers and their children than before. I keep reading that welfare reform succeeded because welfare rolls were reduced. Of course they were reduced. People were kicked off welfare. How could they not be reduced?

TO be sure, the economy of the late 90s was so strong that many who were kicked off found jobs. Remember, between 1995 and 2000, some 14 million new jobs were added to the U.S. economy. That was because Alan Greenspan allowed the economy to grow fast, thereby pushing the official rate of unemployment down below 4 percent. In many cities, employers had to troll for workers – which meant a lot of people who otherwise could never find or keep a job landed and maintained one, and at a wage above the minimum.

But that was then. Now is now. Since 2001, barely 6 million new jobs have been added, and the recovery has been anemic. Large numbers of people are too discouraged even to look for work, which means they’re not counted as unemployed. As usual, it’s the poor and unskilled who are at the end of the job line. And worse may be in store: The Fed has raised steadily raised rates. The economy is slowing.

The welfare law signed by Bill Clinton allowed recipients to depend on welfare for a maximum of five years during their lifetimes. Assume they got off welfare and got a job in the roaring late 90s. During the anemic 00s they’ve been mostly out of work. If they’ve depended on welfare (now called “temporary assistance”) to keep their kids fed, their five years is about over.

Look, I’m not saying the old welfare system was a good one. I’m just saying we didn’t replace it with anything much better. The poor need health care, job training, a decent minimum wage, and income assistance while they get the training. They’re getting almost none of this. Above all, they need an economy that’s creating lots of jobs. They don’t have this, either. At the very least, the five-year limit should be suspended whenever the payroll survey of new jobs falls below the number needed to keep up with population growth (150,000 a month), as it has for months now.

The number of Americans in poverty has continued to rise during this so-called recovery. Many poor kids are in grave trouble. Instead of congratulating ourselves for “ending welfare as we know it,” we should be acknowledging that when it came to poor Americans we simply shut our eyes even tighter than they were shut before.