Word: reformer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...conservatives insist that three years of welfare reform have proved what they believed all along: that the best way to get welfare recipients into private-sector jobs is to subject them to strict work requirements. Also, conservatives doubt that billions of dollars in government programs are needed to prepare the hard to serve for work. "There's a great irony to that argument," says Douglas Besharov, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Welfare reform has already accomplished a 40%-to-50% decline in the rolls without spending money on job training...
...rolls is not the same as saying everyone can. Fred Grandy, former Republican Congressman from Iowa, now heads Goodwill Industries, which finds jobs for those difficult to employ. Grandy believes that almost everyone can work. Goodwill helps the mentally retarded do just that. But he also believes that as reform proceeds, some welfare recipients will not be able to pull their lives together and will need to be protected by a safety net. "Tough love" has its place in welfare reform, he says, but it has its limits. "The work of reform is going to get a lot tougher...
...while other politicians argue about campaign-finance reform (Can you really have an election about the election?), Springer will focus on helping troubled people like those on his show. Compassionate conservatism? Practical idealism? I'm sticking with "Take Care of Yourself, and Each Other...
Arguing against welfare reform in August 1999 is a bit like arguing against the Apollo moon shot in August 1969. The Eagle has landed, and the naysayers appear to be on the wrong side of history. But at least one of them remains unmoved by the news--because nobody loves a lonely, principled fight more than Bill Bradley...
Before he left the Senate in 1996, Bradley voted against the landmark welfare bill. Today Al Gore's lone challenger for the Democratic nomination is still speaking out against that reform. Welfare is "a disastrous system," Bradley recently told TIME, "but the way to deal with it is federal commitment and state experimentation, not the Federal Government washing its hands [of the problem]." Holding that view requires courage. In a survey commissioned by the G.O.P., 60% of those polled said they were less likely to vote for Bradley after hearing his position on welfare. If there's anyplace in America...