"Welfare Reform" is a term bandied about as though it is the answer to all our problems. In reality, it is a term used mostly by liberal politicians as a placebo to placate (note the common root for placebo and placate) the general public that something will be done to get people off welfare and into the workforce.
This concept was used to great effect by Bill Clinton during his presidential campaign to win support from moderate swing voters. He liked to quote the fact that as Governor of Arkansas, he had moved 17,000 people off the welfare rolls. What he failed to mention was that during that same period over 80,000 people were added to the welfare rolls. Does this indicate an effective program that should be duplicated at the national level. Hardly. In fact, Arkansas performed well below the national average during the 1980's, meaning that Bill Clinton was worse at creating jobs than Ronald Reagan, whom he has lambasted for his pathetic performance with the economy.
Eliminating welfare dependency will be a long and painstaking project. It will take the coordinated efforts of government leaders AND advocates for the poor and minorities to make it reality. It is easy for comfortable, middle-class people to claim that eliminating the subsidies for non-work will solve the problem. Such an approach can help with the physical addiction to welfare. However, without leaders of the underprivileged encouraging self-sufficiency for those they purport to help, then we will never end the psychological addiction that the poor have developed, seeing that government assistance as their birthright.
Until we reach that time that it becomes universally expected that each person must take responsibility for their own lives, we will always have a significant portion of our population that believe that society owes them something, when actually it is the other way around, for all of us.
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