Robert Waldmann: Facts (About AFDC, TANF, etc.) Are Stubborn Things…

Barack Obama should be glad that Robert Waldmann was over in Italy rather than in the audience during his “inequality” speech last week. Just saying:

Robert Waldmann: Obama, AFDC, TANF, EITC, and facts which are stubborn things:

I want to stress that I do no mean to criticize Obama’s speech or even suggest that it could possibly have been better. However, I do wish to note the facts that it contains a gross contradiction….

some programs in the past, like welfare before it was reformed… poorly designed, created disincentives to work, but… every citizen of this country deserved a basic measure of security, a floor through which they could not fall, we helped millions of Americans live in dignity…

The reform of welfare was changing it from a program which established a floor through which families with dependent children could not fall, to a program in which some families with dependent children have zero cash income.

Robert goes on:

It is logically possible to support welfare reform if one thinks “a floor through which they could not fall”, is bad because it creates disincentives to work. It is not possible to believe both of Obama’s quoted claims if one is even vaguely familiar with the text of the 1996 welfare reform bill…

The 1996 welfare reform that created TANF and destroyed AFDC was primarily Newt Gingrich’s idea of what welfare reform ought to be, and secondarily Bill Clinton’s and other state governors’ views of what welfare reform ought to be–i.e., give states lots of money to allocate as they would wish. But it does not fit Obama’s rhetoric of equal opportunity, as it does visit the sins of the parents upon the children: AFDC was (supposed to be) an entitlement provided of right to dependent children in unfortunate circumstances, while TANF is something provided of grace to deserving-poor single parents.

Obama, however, is trying to hold his coalition together. And confronting the dilemmas of AFDC and the somewhat-different, not clearly more attractive dilemmas of TANF is not something that would make that task easier…

December 9, 2013

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