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The Spectacle Blog
Earlier this week, I wrote about Barack Obama’s desire to return to the top tax rates of Bill Clinton’s presidency. Today his administration has distanced itself from one of Clinton’s key domestic policy successes by allowing states to opt out of the work requirement in the 1996 welfare reform law.
Obviously, the policy move is motivated by the weakness of the economy. But the politics are baffling: signing the welfare reform bill took one of Bob Dole’s last wedge issues off the table in the 1996 election and helped solidify Clinton’s New Democrat bona fides. Obama is effectively repudiating a core component of welfare reform while facing a reelection fight much more competitive than Clinton’s. He has also added to the growing list of areas where he has invoked executive authority as a way of getting around the clear intent of Congress.
Even though it is undoubtedly a response to the chronic joblessness that lingers throughout the country — itself not much of an endorsement of Obama — the optics of this look bad. The actual results of welfare reform did much more to vindicate its center-right supporters than its liberal critics.
Oldefarte| 7.13.12 @ 5:01PM
This just locks him in as the radical extremist liberal that he is. Score one for the Jarrett-Axelrod-Michelle trifecta, with a dash of Pilosi, Ayers etc. It's all about governmental welfare with these people, and of course getting the American taxpayers [the fat-cat bankers and other Romney-type wealthys] to PAY FOR IT!!!!
Jive Bomber| 7.13.12 @ 8:54PM
With one swipe of his executive order pen, Obama resurrects big government welfare. In doing so he has finally admitted what the world already knew: his economic stimulus policies were a failure.
aware| 7.14.12 @ 12:36PM
So ends the last wisp of the farce that is "welfare reform".
You don't have to know anything about politics to know we will hit the wall at a hundred MPH. It's human nature to avoid pain. To avoid total collapse would involve pain and a lot of it. Worse than the Great Depression.
So it's take the pain or just let things carry on and hope for the best. As long as that is the choice we will carry on making small adjustments that make us feel better but have no effect on the final outcome.
Until we arrive at the point where no choice is possible and the epic event of the past thousand years happens .