Word: moynihan
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...what is new about welfare reform? Three things: 1) such rhetoric now resounds across the political spectrum, from Ronald Reagan to Daniel Patrick Moynihan to Ted Kennedy, and reflects an emerging consensus that embraces just about every politician who speaks on the issue; 2) states from California through Illinois to New Jersey are experimenting with overhauls of their welfare systems, focused on work requirements, and the Federal Government is talking about giving their efforts a formal blessing; 3) as a result, and at long last, something worthwhile might actually be done. Pondering the diverse sources and remarkably similar conclusions...
...White House this month to discuss welfare reforms in which states play a greater role. Kennedy is in the game as well. Last week he introduced a bill that would give sizable federal "bonuses" to states that succeed in placing long-term welfare clients in private jobs. Kennedy and Moynihan will probably cooperate on drafting a broader reform bill; Moynihan, who chairs a subcommittee holding hearings on welfare, hopes to produce it as early as next month...
...most reformers, is that AFDC does not require recipients to do anything in exchange for their benefits. Indeed, as presently administered, AFDC actively discourages work, in keeping with the bygone society of its origin, which simply assumed that most women would devote themselves to housekeeping and child rearing. Says Moynihan: "AFDC is unable to command stable political support. A program that was designed to pay mothers to stay at home with their children cannot succeed when we now observe most mothers going out to work...
Once again, Daniel Patrick Moynihan is sounding the alarm. While other politicians talk moderately of reform, the Democratic Senator from New York wants to scrap the basic federal welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). That system, established 50 years ago to provide temporary relief for widows, was never meant to address the long-term problem of poor children in broken homes, he argues, and it certainly has proved incapable of coping with the "changed reality" of a country with 3.8 million poor, single-parent families...
...first necessity is to get people into the workplace. Family stability would be vastly greater, says Harriet Michel, president of the New York Urban League, "if black men, women and teenagers could get jobs when they needed them." When asked what would alleviate the breakdown of poor families, Moynihan replies simply, "Jobs." President Reagan defends his policies by arguing that his economic approach has led to the creation of new jobs, which he has called the "greatest social program we have...