RSS
TOP NAV
BOOK
BLOGS 10
BLOGS 09
BLOGS 08
BLOGS 07
BLOGS 06
BLOGS 05
BLOGS 04
| The SNL Administration | Recalled to Life |
The Stealth Repeal of Welfare Reform
by Christopher Chantrill
February 12, 2009 at 11:52 am
IT IS CRUEL, Mr. President. It is corrupt. It is wasteful, it is unjust. And it is delusional.
What I am talking about? I am talking about the reports from Benjamin E. Sasse and Kerry N. Weems, Mickey Kaus and from Robert Rector that your stimulus bill is repealing welfare reform.
All reports agree that the provisions in the bill that remove incentives to the states to reduce welfare caseloads will result in expansion of welfare programs. The bill will result in a return to the status quo ante 1996. And that is wrong.
I think it is fair to say that nowhere, Mr. President, did you say that you would be turning back the clock on welfare reform. I am talking about the rotted, dysfunctional welfare system that had been a national scandal for 30 years before President Bill Clinton signed off on the landmark reform bill in 1996.
The Obama administration has no mandate to roll back welfare reform. None at all.
This is wrong, Mr. President. It is cruel, corrupt, wasteful, unjust, and it is deluded. Let us count how this is so.
- Cruel: Let’s roll the Ellwood and Jencks chart from their 2004 report on welfare.
Need I say more? It is cruel to destroy the low-income family in America with your welfare benefits.
- Corrupt: Let’s face it. We know why liberals like welfare. It is about patronage, about the same as pirate captains sharing out the plunder. Liberals share the wealth because that is how they buy the patronage support of Democratic Party rank-and-file voters. And then, of course, liberals get to award themselves big administrative jobs to hand out the loot. Pensions too. This is corruption, pure and simple.
- Wasteful: I could go on and on. There is the waste of taxpayers’ money. There is the waste of the lives caught up in the “poverty trap” of welfare. There is the waste of talent in the people who supervise and administer the programs. There is the waste, dare I say it, of scarce global resources at a time when we are trying to save the planet.
- Unjust: It is a gross injustice to force Americans to pay for this expansion of welfare. There’s a penalty for injustice, and it catches up with you in the end.
- Deluded: Yes, liberals. Go ahead. Make my day. If you think that this is just a cute little sweetener for your friends, you don’t understand what you are doing. Let us leave aside the record of thirty years of social science, of political philosophy, of simple decency and common sense, all of which thunders that government welfare is a terrible idea that devastates lives. There is the simple politics of it. Government welfare is very unpopular with the voters. They hate it.
There is only one thing to say about the monstrous repeal of welfare reform by the Obama Adminstration and the Democratic Congress.
This shall not stand.
Sphere: Related Content |Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.
Comments:
Posted by: Angela on 03/10/09 9:37am
Hmm, very cognitive post. Is this theme good unough for the Digg?
Posted by: Tim on 03/08/09 6:04am
There can only be one logical reason why the dems repealed the Welfare Reform Act; to increase their voter base. Why else would you undo a law statistically proven to decrease dependence on government and improve quality of life? It proves beyond any doubt, that they don’t give a crap about the poor…only their hold on power.
Faith & Purpose
“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990
Mutual Aid
In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society
Education
“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State
Living Under Law
Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures
German Philosophy
The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since
1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and
philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be
inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West
Knowledge
Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its
characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then,
once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities
Chappies
“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie
that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.”
—Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison
Democratic Capitalism
I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all.
In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism
Action
The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness...
But to make a man act [he must have]
the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove
or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action
Churches
[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm
Conversion
“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh
Living Law
The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital
mysql close 0