The Case for Bernie (Part III, or: 1,846,850 Children)

Now, you may be be thinking,  Jacob, while that last section was certainly interesting, you seem to be conflating Hillary with her husband, isn't that pretty sexist? You're absolutely right, it would pretty sexist, Hillary is her own person after all!  The problem with this argument is that the Clintons were always a team. Hillary encouraged Bill's mind meld with the DLC, and is actually the more conservative of the two. A close friend of hers once noted "It’s not true that she is the liberal one... the idea is that you work for everything, she believes in personal responsibility" Therefore its totally valid for a critique of Hillary to include the skeletons of the first Clinton administration.

And what skeletons they were! The 1994 Crime bill . (Honesty forces me to point out that Sanders voted for it as a member of the House- but specifically because of its Violence Against Women provisions- and was opposed to most everything else) DADT, DOMA, Iraqi Sanctions, Economic Deregulation, but I want to focus more in depth on one aspect of the Clinton record: The 1996 Welfare Reform Act.

Via; The New Republic was a nominally liberal magazine that Bill Clinton enjoyed.

But first, a bit of history. As part of his 1941 "Four Freedoms" speech, FDR declared that there should be "freedom from want", that every nations' citizens should be economically secure. It is part of leftist economics to help bring that about. Does insurance coverage protect people? The answer is yes Did Medicare help save people money, and their lives? The answers to both those questions is yes . And does a robust welfare state keep people out of poverty, a poverty that can destroy years of their lives? Hell yes it does! (PDF) The goal of leftist is economics is to prevent suffering. And from roughly 1933-1992 that was goal of the Democratic Party as well.

Then in October 1991 Bill Clinton declared his hope to "put an end to welfare as we know it." It was a long and torturous  progress to agree on a bill in 1993 and 94' , but then Gingrich! And his Republicans pressed the issue, and Clinton triangulated. In 1996 he signed the bill into law. What did it do? It turned a major welfare program, the Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) into a block grant program,  (I.E. The money was given to the states to distribute rather then the feds).   This caused some of the states to use the money to plug holes in other areas instead of the poor. What's more, many states didn't adjust for inflation, so clients are getting fewer "real" dollars. Finally, most states put a five year limit on how long people could draw from those funds.  So what happened? 

                                                                                Via (PDF)
As you can see, poverty went down after the 1996 reform, as people were removed from the welfare rolls and tossed into the late 90's economic boom. But, as the economy slowed down, the number of impoverished grew. They were only saved from even greater poverty by the expansion of the earned income tax credit, (EITC) and child tax credit (CTC).

Via (Y Axis is Percentage of GDP; TANF= Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, AFDC replacement

Whats more, the structure of the reform meant, perversely, that the impoverished near the poverty line got more government assistance, then those further below it. 

Via

So to truly see the impact of welfare reform we need to look at extreme poverty, those making less then two dollars a day.

Via; SNAP= Situational Nutrition Assistance Program (Food Stamps)

Even if we include all the social welfare programs, extreme poverty increased 45.5% from 1996 (the last year of AFDC) to 2011. If we use cash (including AFDC/TANF) it rises 152 percent.

According to the authors of that last graph (PDF) in 1996 the ADFC was keeping 1.15 million households out of extreme poverty, in 2011 it was keeping 291,000 out. If we had kept the AFDC and added everything else there would be (not adjusting for population size or number in poverty) 859,000 less households dealing with extreme depredation. Total extreme poverty numbers were estimated at 1.65 million households and 3.55 children (PDF). If we assume those 859,000 households have same amount of children as the full sample, this means that roughly 1,846,850 children wouldn't be in extreme poverty (Assuming the other social safety net expansion) if Clinton hadn't signed the bill. 

This is what Hillary wrote of the welfare bill in 1999:

"Too many of those on welfare had known nothing but dependency all their lives, and many would have found it difficult to make the transition to work on their own."

And 2002:

"(I wanted to) substitute dignity for dependence... Now that we’ve said these people are no longer deadbeats—they’re actually out there being productive—how do we keep them there?"

And 2008:

"Welfare should have been a temporary way station for people who needed immediate assistance...It should not be considered an anti-poverty program. It (The AFDC) simply did not work."

Hillary Clinton says she loves children. I have no reason to doubt her sincerity.

And that is the paradox.

Bernie Sanders voted against the bill.