Whatvever happened to welfare reform?

Bill Clinton, working with a conservative Republican Congress, eviscerated what is known as the welfare system in the United States, instituting new rules that forced the poor into a variety of programs or cut off their programs altogether.

But we’ve never really had reform of the corporate welfare system, as Gwen Rubenstein of the Washington Area Women’s Foundation points out:

The Federal Treasury is on the verge of bailing out Wall Street with an infusion of $700 billion of taxpayer dollars. Bad decisions by many actors (banks and lenders, consumers, insurers and others) have contributed to the crisis, we are told, and now it is an emergency.

What a difference a policy area makes.

In our nation’s social welfare programs, such as the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, bad decisions are grounds for sanctions and a denial of assistance–not a helping hand or a cash infusion (Just imagine!). Certainly, our leaders have not treated poverty as an emergency or a reason for government action.

If the banks and other lenders who created the economic mess that has Washington rushing to help were treated to the same kind of rules that apply to the poor, it is unlikely that this kind of bailout would even be proposed.

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet