When President Obama gave some states waivers regarding the work requirements in welfare reform that President Clinton had signed, Republicans said he was "gutting" those reforms. No, Democrats replied, he was just giving some states flexibility. Now, if your changes make the work requirements more stringent or even just the same, you wouldn’t need a waiver, so that answer was suspect to me.

Obama had previously suspended a different part of welfare reform. How’s that working out?

Obama administration officials have insisted that their decision to grant states waivers to redefine work requirements for welfare recipients would not “gut” the landmark 1996 welfare reform law. But a new report from the Congressional Research Service obtained by the Washington Examiner suggests that the administration’s suspension of a separate welfare work requirement has already helped explode the number of able-bodied Americans on food stamps.

In addition to the broader work requirement that has become a contentious issue in the presidential race, the 1996 welfare reform law included a separate rule encouraging able-bodied adults without dependents to work by limiting the amount of time they could receive food stamps. President Obama suspended that rule when he signed his economic stimulus legislation into law, and the number of these adults on food stamps doubled, from 1.9 million in 2008 to 3.9 million in 2010, according to the CRS report, issued in the form of a memo to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.

[…]

Under the rule adopted in 1996, food stamps for able-bodied adults without dependents were limited to three months in a 36-month period unless the participant in the program “works at least 20 hours a week; participates in an employment and training program for at least 20 hours per week; or participates in a (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) ‘workfare’ program for at least 20 hours per week.”

Obama’s economic stimulus legislation suspended the rule for all states starting April 2009. Delaware continued to enforce the rule anyway, along with New York City and parts of Colorado, South Dakota, and Texas. This suspension expired at the end of the 2010 fiscal year (Sept. 30, 2010) and Congress rebuffed Obama’s requests to extend it in his fiscal years 2011 and 2012 budgets. However, Obama used his regulatory authority to effectively extend the waivers to nearly all states over the past two years.

And so instead of seeing how dumping the existing rules failed, he dumped even more. This is not going to help the economic situation. It might, though, get him more votes.

Related posts:

  1. So What Is a "Basic Human Right"?
  2. Joe Wilson Had a Point
  3. Dems Gut Welfare Reform, Other Dems Shocked
  4. The "Expiration Date" on Political Promises
  5. Paved With Good Intentions

Filed under: Doug • Economics & Taxes • Government

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