Word: moynihan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...what is new about welfare reform? Three things: 1) such rhetoric now resounds across the political spectrum, from Ronald Reagan to Daniel Patrick Moynihan to Ted Kennedy, and reflects an emerging consensus that embraces just about every politician who speaks on the issue; 2) states from California through Illinois to New Jersey are experimenting with overhauls of their welfare systems, focused on work requirements, and the Federal Government is talking about giving their efforts a formal blessing; 3) as a result, and at long last, something worthwhile might actually be done. Pondering the diverse sources and remarkably similar conclusions...
...White House this month to discuss welfare reforms in which states play a greater role. Kennedy is in the game as well. Last week he introduced a bill that would give sizable federal "bonuses" to states that succeed in placing long-term welfare clients in private jobs. Kennedy and Moynihan will probably cooperate on drafting a broader reform bill; Moynihan, who chairs a subcommittee holding hearings on welfare, hopes to produce it as early as next month...
...most reformers, is that AFDC does not require recipients to do anything in exchange for their benefits. Indeed, as presently administered, AFDC actively discourages work, in keeping with the bygone society of its origin, which simply assumed that most women would devote themselves to housekeeping and child rearing. Says Moynihan: "AFDC is unable to command stable political support. A program that was designed to pay mothers to stay at home with their children cannot succeed when we now observe most mothers going out to work...
...others sharply dispute this notion. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of ! New York, who brought attention to the plight of the black family in a controversial report two decades ago, called the Administration study "less a policy paper than a tantrum. They're not writing from facts. This is just ideology." Indeed, there is little hard evidence to show that welfare alone encourages family breakdown. A study by Sociologists David Ellwood and Mary Jo Bane, of Harvard's Kennedy School, found no correlation between the birth rates for unwed mothers and welfare-benefit levels from state to state. They argue...
...first necessity is to get people into the workplace. Family stability would be vastly greater, says Harriet Michel, president of the New York Urban League, "if black men, women and teenagers could get jobs when they needed them." When asked what would alleviate the breakdown of poor families, Moynihan replies simply, "Jobs." President Reagan defends his policies by arguing that his economic approach has led to the creation of new jobs, which he has called the "greatest social program we have...