{"id":49917,"date":"2023-04-05T08:15:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-05T12:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=49917"},"modified":"2023-04-05T08:15:00","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T12:15:00","slug":"laws-have-consequences-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=49917","title":{"rendered":"Laws Have Consequences"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday,\u00a0 Stephen Moore posted an article at Townhall<\/a> about the current employment situation in America.<\/p>\n

The article notes:<\/p>\n

A policy question these days that has befuddled federal lawmakers is why so many millions of people have not returned to the workplace in the post-COVID-19 era. The labor force participation rate among employable adults is near a record low today. There are at least 2 million to 4 million employable adults who could and should be working but aren’t.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Very few people with even minimal skills can credibly say they can’t find a job. Employers report some 10 million job openings. Small business owners say their biggest problem is finding competent workers. There are many explanations for why so many people aren’t working — fear of COVID-19, the skills mismatch, more people taking early retirement, and so on. But a major factor is that the federal government is back to doing what it did in the 1970s and 1980s. The welfare state today is paying people not\u00a0<\/em>to work — even a single hour.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That problem went away in the 1990s after many states, such as Wisconsin and Michigan, began reforming their welfare systems with work requirements. Then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and the Republican Congress in 1996 passed a historic bipartisan welfare reform bill that President Bill Clinton signed into law.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article reports on the results of the passage of that law:<\/p>\n

Few laws in the last half-century have had such stunning success. Here is a quick summary of the impact, as reported by Brookings Institution welfare expert Ron Haskins:<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. 1: Caseloads declined by 60%, and the number of welfare recipients fell to its lowest level since 1969.<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. 2: Between 60% and 70% of those leaving welfare got a job.<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. 3: The child poverty rate fell every year between 1994 and 2000 because parents were working.<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. 4: The federal government saved more than $50 billion (almost $100 billion in today’s dollars).<\/strong><\/p>\n

During the Covid pandemic, the work requirements were removed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article concludes:<\/p>\n

America is a rich nation, and we should absolutely have a safety net so that those who fall on tough times, lose a job or become disabled — and that happens to almost all of us at some point in our lives — do not go hungry or homeless or suffer from deprivation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But welfare is supposed to be temporary and a hand-up, not a handout. The goal of welfare was to end poverty, not perpetuate it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-MO) said that restoring work for welfare requirements is “a top priority” of his panel. It should be a top priority for our country. Let’s make work, not welfare, pay.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let’s put the work requirement back into welfare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday,\u00a0 Stephen Moore posted an article at Townhall about the current employment situation in America. The article notes: A policy question these days that has befuddled federal lawmakers is why so many millions of people have not returned to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12849,6106,11619,1484,3913],"class_list":["post-49917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-covid","tag-stephen-moore","tag-townhall","tag-welfare","tag-welfare-work-requirement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49918,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49917\/revisions\/49918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}