Word: reformer
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...sets critics of welfare programs off on a rant. A single mother of four from Dallas, she left school in the ninth grade and started having children. Rather than work or marry a man who did, she relied on welfare, food stamps and Medicaid. The tough 1996 welfare-reform law spelled out in clear terms what it wanted Wells and others like her to do in the future...
These are euphoric times for welfare reform. The rolls have plunged nationwide--down 48% in the past six years, to a 30-year low. And two-thirds of those exiting the system have taken jobs, according to state studies. Last week's Welfare to Work conference in Chicago, which President Clinton addressed, was a three-day lovefest between advocates for welfare recipients and labor-strapped companies seeking to hire them. Among the most surreal moments: a session on "Finding Welfare Recipients for Your Training Programs," at which social workers bellyached that in these boom times there just aren't enough...
...more welfare reform succeeds, the clearer it is that there is an entrenched group of welfare recipients who show no sign of heading anywhere near the workforce. This is true, for example, in Dallas, where despite a frothy economy and a countywide unemployment rate of just 3.6%, 17,500 of Wells' neighbors are collecting welfare benefits as if nothing had changed...
Today the hard to serve are the hottest topic in welfare reform--and the subject of a hard-fought ideological battle. To liberals--and the Clinton Administration--the answer is greater investment in job training, substance-abuse counseling and other programs to help them overcome their various obstacles and get to work. At the same time, liberals have begun calling on the Federal Government to reconsider a central tenet of the 1996 reforms: that virtually every welfare recipient can and should be in the workforce. "It flies in the face of common sense," says University of Michigan public policy professor...
...State, a good showing could be a reprieve from bankruptcy, and a poor one likely a death blow. John McCain, meanwhile, skipped the event completely, calling it a "scam," and in the run-up to the vote it?s not hard to see why an avatar of campaign finance reform would find the event distasteful. The event itself is just a fund-raiser for the Iowa GOP, held a full six months before the state?s caucus. Candidates ply farmers with barbecue, musical acts, gold pins, luxury bus rides to the polls; they?ll even pay your $25 entrance...