Why Didn't Clinton's 1997 Reductions in Federal Welfare Funding Cause the Predicted "Hurricane" for the Poor?

Gary North

Millions of poor people dependent on old welfare programs will soon be in desperate need of alternatives. Religious groups who haven't worked (or even spoken) with each other for years are beginning to talk and cooperate. Why? Because they believe a hurricane is coming. And when a hurricane is coming and you're passing the sandbags to the next person, you don't ask if they are liberal or conservative. -- Jim Wallis, "The Hurricane is Coming," Sojourners Magazine (May-June 1997)

I write this a little over a week after hurricane Katrina exposed FEMA and all the other government-run relief agencies as utterly incompetent.

Of course, I knew this long ago. Government relief agencies are inherently bureaucratic and self-serving. They exist mainly to pay high salaries to their employees. Their response is always the same to any disaster that they fail to deal with efficiently, meaning all of them. "We are doing a great job. Now we need more funding." This argument always works. They get more funding.

Bill Clinton's Promise

In 1997, you were looking at the one political promise that Bill Clinton made that he fulfilled. He promised to end welfare as we had known it. More than any previous President, he did this. He turned back the money spigots from Washington for local welfare payments to the poor. He cut back on Aid to Dependent Children. This left more money for invading Bosnia and to pay off corporate donors with fat contracts and to keep Social Security/Medicare going, which aid mostly middle-class voters.

He did it. You even heard him brag about it.

In his February speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Clinton made a telling remark about welfare reform, perhaps responding to the atmosphere of spiritual introspection and self-criticism. Clinton said about the old welfare system, "We didn't change it; we tore it down; we threw it away."

Democrats basically said nothing. They rolled over like a lapdog wanting his master to rub its belly. After all, Clinton was one of their own. Like Republican conservatives in response to Nixon's recognition of Communist China, the lapdogs stayed in the President's lap. They usually do.

You warned of a hurricane.

Talk to any church-based service providers, and you hear the same fear in their voices. Without national standards or the former federal safety nets -- and with major budget cuts for poor people's programs -- they can all feel the storm coming.

This storm never came. There was no disaster. The poor adjusted. The military contractors did too: to all the extra money.

You welfare State liberals got exactly what you deserved: a lesson in government-created welfare dependence and what happens after the tax money is cut off. Did you learn from this? Of course not. You still want more Federal funding, just as FEMA does. FEMA will get it. You won't.

THE STORM squall has already begun, and we're beginning to see the human consequences. Single adults looking for work have already begun to lose their food stamps. In early March, jobless people had a question for those serving them soup in a makeshift food line on the U.S. Capitol lawn. "How do they expect us to eat?" they asked.

So, what happened to the poor after the Federal money spigot was cut back? Not much, one way or the other. They found ways to cope. People are flexible. They find ways to cope.

There was no social hurricane. Privately funded charitable agencies picked up the slack, as they always do. Poor people adjusted to the new conditions, as they always do.

This should have been a lesson for welfare State liberals everywhere regarding Federal money, but it wasn't.

Welfare State liberals do not believe what they see. The see what they believe. They want back on the payroll. They want to get their hands on all that Federal money. They don't want to let taxpayers get it back. And the taxpayers won't. Military contractors get it. Every time. Liberals don't learn this, either. Franklin D. Roosevelt taught it, 1941-45. Harry Truman taught it, 1945-53. Lyndon Johnson taught it, 1965-69. Bill Clinton taught it, 1993-2001.

Welfare State liberals are not just slow learners; they are non-learners.