"In a Clinton administration, we're going to put an end to welfare
as we know it. I want to erase the stigma of welfare for good by restoring
a simple, dignified principle: No one who can work can stay on welfare
forever."
-- Bill Clinton, October 23, 1991
Ten years ago, welfare was the biggest symbol of government's failure
to reflect Americans' values. It penalized mothers who went to work, discouraged
families from staying together, and enabled fathers to shirk responsibility
for their children. Across racial, class, and party lines, Americans had
come to despise the old welfare system. And the people trapped on welfare
hated it most.
Five years ago this August, after a long battle with Congress, Bill Clinton
signed a sweeping, bipartisan law that fulfilled his promise to end welfare
as we know it. For the first time, government required all welfare recipients
to work and invested billions on child care and other supports to help
them succeed. The law marked the beginning of a new social contract based
on work, not dependence -- a contract that expanded opportunity, but demanded
responsibility in return, by both rewarding and requiring work.
These changes were controversial, to say the least. Three Clinton administration
staffers resigned in protest. One of them sold The Atlantic Monthly a
cover story on welfare reform entitled "The Worst Thing Bill Clinton
Has Done." A national columnist wrote that giving President Clinton
a second term to restore the bill's cuts in immigrant benefits was like
giving Jack the Ripper a scholarship to medical school.
Five years later, those prophecies of doom haven't fared too well, but
the people the law was designed to help are doing much better. The welfare
rolls have been cut in half -- the longest, sharpest decline in welfare
dependency in history. Single mothers have entered the workforce in record
numbers, an unprecedented 10-point increase between 1992 and 2000. Those
who question the value of caseload reduction should consider an even more
remarkable fact: Today, a welfare recipient is five times more likely
to be working than in 1992.
There will be plenty of debate about what has and hasn't worked when
the welfare law comes up for reauthorization next year. But the greatest
proof of the law's success is the debate we're no longer having. Whatever
one thinks of lifetime eligibility, the needs of long-term recipients,
or the other challenges that lie ahead in conquering poverty, the 1990s
settled the central question once and for all: Work is the most effective
and sustainable basis for social policy.
You could get in trouble for saying that 10 years ago. Of all the orthodoxies
the Clinton-Gore administration took on, liberal opposition to a social
contract based on work was the most difficult to understand and the hardest
to overcome. In a way, the old welfare system was an unfortunate compromise
between conservatives who didn't want the federal government to spend
more on poor people and liberals who didn't want government to ask more
of them. The 1990s proved we could do both. That breakthrough was important
because it destroyed the debilitating premise that the poor are irreparably
broken people and that the underclass was stuck forever outside the mainstream
of American life.
A good economy, an expanded earned income tax credit, a higher minimum
wage, and welfare reform helped 7 million people lift themselves out of
poverty. But people who've gone from welfare to work have gained something
more important than income. In ways we can't begin to measure, their children
are better off growing up in households and communities where people work.
Along the way, welfare reform has transformed the political debate by
ushering in a day when all the poor can be the deserving poor. Compassionate
conservatism may be a hollow promise, but Clinton's success in restoring
immigrant benefits -- and Republicans' hasty retreat -- suggest that it
may be a while before Republicans return to compassionless conservatism.
We have a heap of unfinished business -- health care, child care, expecting
as much of fathers as we have of mothers. The people on welfare America
had written off for generations have shown that they're willing to uphold
their part of the social contract if we do ours.
This new bargain -- helping people help themselves -- provides a philosophical
basis for activist government that could prove as enduring in this century
as the New Deal was in the last. The real Clinton legacy on the poor comes
down to one word: work.
Blueprint Keyword: Extra Welfare Reform
