Link: www.washingtonpost.com/…
Bill Clinton’s Welfare-Reform law passed during his presidency, the one where Hillary Clinton wanted a “formal role” in its implementation, has effectively doubled the extent of extreme poverty in America, Bernie Sanders has said, and The Washington Post has confirmed.
Hundreds of thousands of Southern families are living on less than $2 in cash a day as a result of legislation President Bill Clinton signed in 1996, according to new research by Johns Hopkins University's Kathryn Edin and University of Michigan's Luke Shaefer.
In South Carolina this week, ahead of that state's primary election on Saturday, Sanders brought up the 20-year-old law in a press conference. "What welfare reform did, in my view, was to go after some of the weakest and most vulnerable people in this country," he said on Wednesday, noting that Hillary Clinton, the former first lady and his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, supported the legislation.
If you review the link, you will see a chart that shows that “extreme poverty” — less than TWO DOLLARS in cash a day, has doubled in the U.S. since the 1996 welfare law. A large number of the poorest of the poor, 4 out of 10, live in the south, which, ironically is where Hillary is doing the best. Ugh.
Edin reported that about 4 in 10 households surviving on less than $2 in cash a day live in the South. The prevalence of extreme poverty there is partly a result of how state policymakers used the authority they gained under President Clinton's reform.
Clinton replaced traditional welfare with a new program called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. In order to comply with the law, states either had to place a certain number of beneficiaries in training, job-placement or community service programs, or they had to stop issuing payments to those recipients. For many states, it was easier and cheaper to reduce the rolls.
We currently have 1.6 MILLION households that live on less than $2 A DAY in cash, and 860,000 households that live on less than $2 A DAY in cash AND food stamps. Think about that.
Quit being social liberals and economic conservatives, Democrats. It’s time to move the party WAY to the left, and leave this 3rd-way Clinton-era bullshit behind.
VOTE BERNIE SANDERS.