You can tell where the Obama campaign is worried that Romney is
drawing blood, because it’s made up a fairy tale totally
disconnected from reality to address that concern. We’ve seen it
already in the Obama reaction to Romney’s tax plan, in which the
GOP nominee has proposed across the board 20% cuts in income tax
rates, similar to Reagan’s 1981 25% across the board cut in income
tax rates. Obama’s fabrication in response is that Romney’s tax cut
for everyone plan, which includes several other tax cuts for the
middle class, is a tax increase on the middle class, to
finance tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.
What a dastardly fiend the Republicans have nominated! To think
Romney would propose a tax cut for everyone that is actually
(somehow) a tax increase on the middle class, to finance tax cuts
for millionaires like himself. Too bad Carter never thought to
counter Reagan’s Kemp-Roth proposal with the argument that it was
actually a tax increase on the middle class.
Now you can see the same thing in regard to President Obama’s
announced waivers from the work requirements in the enormously
successful 1996 welfare reforms. Bill Clinton recounted the Obama
administration’s fabrications about those waivers in his speech at
the Democratic National Convention last week. Here’s the complete
truth about how brazenly dishonest Obama and the Democrats are
being on this issue.
The Astounding 1996 Welfare Reform Success
Story
The 1996 welfare reforms involved
sending the federal funds for the old, New Deal, Aid to Families
with Dependent Children (AFDC) program back to the states in block
grants. In the process, the entitlement status of AFDC was actually
repealed, to give the states maximum discretion in redesigning the
program, subject only to the work requirements in the federal
reform legislation.
Federal financing for AFDC was previously based on a matching
formula, with the federal government sending more to each state for
AFDC the more the state spent on the welfare program. The federal
government was effectively paying the states to spend more on AFDC
welfare. As a result, when Reagan as governor first proposed
welfare reforms that would reduce welfare spending in California,
the liberals and their media screamed that Reagan was going to lose
federal funds for the state if state welfare spending declined.
Reagan’s top welfare policy advisor in California was Robert
Carleson, who later served him in that role in the Reagan White
House. I worked directly for Carleson in Reagan’s White House
Office of Policy Development.
The key to the success of the 1996 welfare reforms was that the
federal financing for AFDC was changed so that it no longer matched
state spending, increasing as state spending increased. Instead the
federal financing for the program was provided to the states under
the reforms in fixed finite block grants that were the same amount
no matter how much the state spent. Consequently, if the state
spent more on its new redesigned AFDC program, the state had to pay
for 100% of those increased costs. But if the state spent less, by
getting those formerly dependent on the program out to work, or
married to someone who worked, the state could keep the savings. To
drive home the point of the reform, the program was renamed
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
This policy arose directly out of the thinking of Reagan and his
top welfare policy aide Robert Carleson going all the way back to
their experience with welfare reform in California in the early
1970s. This is explained in detail in a new study I have
co-authored with National Tax Limitation Committee (NTLC) President
Lew Uhler, “Restoring Fiscal Order: Block Grant Federal Welfare
Entitlements to the States,” published by the National Tax
Limitation Committee Foundation.
I recently
recounted here the astounding success of those 1996 reforms.
Two thirds of those dependent on the program left it entirely for
work, or marriage to someone who works. As a result, federal
spending on the program declined by 50% from where it would have
been otherwise on prior trends. At the same time, incomes for those
formerly dependent on the program have been documented to increase
by 25%, and poverty among them plummeted.
In the NTLC report, we propose extending those same 1996 reforms
to all federal means-tested welfare programs. We have identified
close to 200 of those, including all the big ones such as Medicaid,
food stamps, federal housing programs, etc. Send them all back to
the states with fixed, finite block grants, restoring the original
federalism. That would be perfectly suited to Tea Party
activists.
The best estimate of the cost of those federal means tested
welfare programs over the next 10 years is over $10 trillion. Based
on the experience with the 1996 reforms, such extended reform would
potentially reduce federal spending over a same period by $5
trillion. If the states follow our advice in the NTLC study as to
what policies they should follow with those block grants, we think
the savings would be much greater, while all involuntary poverty
would be completely eliminated.
Obama’s Waivers and Obama’s Lies
As I
recently recounted, despite the astounding success of the 1996
reforms, on July 12 of this year the Dept. of Health and Human
Services published a “regulatory guidance” that announced that the
Department would favorably entertain requests from states for
waivers from the work requirements on the TANF block grants. Romney
gamely pounced, running ads denouncing this retreat from required
work in return for welfare.
The Obama administration tried to respond that the waivers would
be granted only for states that increased required work by 20%.
Clinton elaborated on this point in his address at the Democrat
National Convention last week, saying:
When some Republican governors asked to try new ways to put
people on welfare back to work, the Obama Administration said they
would only do it if they had a credible plan to increase employment
by 20%. You hear that? More work. So the claim that President Obama
weakened welfare reform’s work requirement is just not true.
That is a complete fabrication of reality. Here is why.
The states don’t need a waiver to increase work
under the TANF block grants. Under the 1996 federal reform law,
Governors and states are already perfectly free to
increase required work in the program any time
they want. The whole point of the 1996 welfare reforms was to
empower the states with the authority and discretion to completely
reform their AFDC programs from the ground up. That is why the
entitlement status of AFDC was repealed under the 1996 welfare
reform legislation! The states could not be fully free to reform
AFDC if dependents had the legal right in federal law to specific
entitlement benefits.
Indeed, several states already have pursued and required work
under the 1996 reforms more aggressively and reduced their welfare
rolls for AFDC/TANF far more than the two-thirds national average:
Wyoming (97%), Idaho (90%), Florida (89%), Louisiana (89%),
Illinois (89%), Georgia (89%), North Carolina (87%), Oklahoma
(85%), Wisconsin (84%), Texas (84%), Mississippi (84%). By 2006,
the percent of the population receiving TANF cash welfare was down
to 0.1% in Wyoming, 0.2% in Idaho, 0.5% in Florida, 0.6% in
Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Oklahoma, and 0.7% in
Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, Texas, and Wisconsin.
The only thing that could conceptually be “waived” is the work
required under the law’s work requirements. But as I discussed in
my previous column on this issue, the 1996 welfare law
intentionally and legally provides no authority for the Executive
Branch to waive the work requirements.
Consequently, Obama’s announcement of such waivers is a
violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be
faithfully executed, and of his oath of office to uphold the
Constitution. Those violations are grounds for impeachment,
actually.
