20 Years Since Pres. Clinton Shredded Welfare

August 22 marks the beginning of “welfare reform”‘s 20th year, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. Felicia Kornbluh, Prof of History & Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the Univ of Vermont, says: “Playing to a racist imagination and dealing in sexist double standards, Republicans and Democrats came together 19 years ago to transform income assistance for the poor into a system of regulation, deprivation and punishment.”

The legislation that established Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), made limiting women’s choices and ending single motherhood its goals. The nation’s chief policy dedicated to impoverished families with children did not include mitigating poverty, enhancing opportunity, or attenuating inequality as its goals.

As a result, while welfare rolls have declined, poverty still stalks single mothers & their children — and extreme poverty is at crisis high levels.

Kornbluh’s books include The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America and Ensuring Poverty: Welfare Reform After 20 Years (with Gwendolyn Mink) forthcoming.

Credits:

Produced and Hosted by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg, Buiding Bridges Radio, WBAI


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