Workers still battered by Clinton 1996 welfare cuts

BY ARLENE RUBINSTEIN

Twenty years ago President William Clinton carried out his brutal pledge to “end welfare as we know it.” The new law was aimed especially at single working-class women. Despite Clinton’s claim that the law would “help them make the move from welfare to work,” its consequence has been deeper poverty, insecurity and social crisis for millions of working-class women and children.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 was taken lock, stock and barrel —even its name — from the so-called Contract with America promoted by Republican Congressman Newt Gingrich. It was just one of several laws passed in 1996 that are part of the Clinton anti-labor legacy. For the U.S. capitalist rulers it is their biggest success so far in eroding the Social Security system.

The legislation abolished Aid to Families With Dependent Children, set up to “safeguard against misfortunes” as a key part of the 1935 Social Security Act, won as a by-product of workers’ struggles at the time and extended under the pressure of the civil rights movement and mass Black protests of the 1960s.

It was replaced with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which set a lifetime limit of five years for receiving cash assistance; states could set an even lower limit. It required that the majority of adults getting assistance work at least 30 hours a week with or without pay.

Unlike Aid to Families with Dependent Children — where the federal government allocated more money if the number of people needing aid went up — under the new law, states were given a fixed block grant. Instead of giving all the money as cash aid, states were allowed to use an increasing percentage for programs to prevent “out-of-wedlock pregnancies” and encourage the formation of “two-parent families.”

The law led to slashing welfare rolls from 4.7 million families receiving cash assistance in 1996, to 1.7 million in 2014. This was the first time an entire category of working people — single mothers and their children — were removed from the kinds of protections guaranteed since the 1935 act was passed.

In 2008 then presidential candidate Barack Obama told a forum that at first he opposed the bill, but became “absolutely convinced” that “welfare reform” has to remain a “centerpiece of any social policy.”

Hillary Clinton had no hesitations. “Now that we’ve said these people are no longer deadbeats — they’re actually out there being productive — how do we keep them there?” she said in 2002.

In a May 28 editorial this year, the Washington Post claims that the Clintons’ reform “has been broadly vindicated and enjoys wide bipartisan support” and that it has led to an increase in female employment. The Post admitted that “the national poverty rate has crept back up to the pre-reform level and much of the growth has occurred among the poorest of the poor.”

The Post doesn’t mention that this employment was mostly low-paying, nonunion jobs, or that any increase in single women working was due to an uptick in hiring in the economy.

That uptick did not last long. Women’s labor participation rate reached 60 percent in 1999, up from 59.1 percent in 1996, but by 2010 it was below the 1996 level and has since declined to 56.8 percent today.

Only 26 percent of families below the official U.S. poverty level are receiving cash assistance today, down from 68 percent in 1996.

Some state governments were not content with the five-year limit on benefits. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback shortened that state’s limit to 24 months in May. In 2015 Arizona became the first state to impose a 12-month lifetime limit. Arizona’s maximum monthly benefit is $278 for a family of three. That’s living large compared to Mississippi’s monthly benefit of $170.

The lump sum block grant assigned to states under the Clinton law is unchanged at $16.5 billion since 1996, although “inflation has shrunk the value of the money about a third,” according to the New York Times.

Under the impact of the deepening capitalist economic crisis, those receiving cash assistance declined, while the numbers of people receiving food stamps has increased. In 2000 some 17.2 million people received food stamps. By April this year it was about 45 million. The maximum for a single person is $194 a month, but in most states it’s for only three months in any three-year period, unless you’re working, going to school or training.

In June, Paul LePage, governor of Maine, following in the footsteps of Clinton, threatened to end food stamp benefits there. Recipients are wasting public money on “a steady diet of Mars bars and Mountain Dew,” he said. “It’s time for the federal government to wake up and smell the energy drinks.”

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Excerpt from ‘Are They Rich Because They’re Smart?‘

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