Make Welfare Reform Part of the Debt-Ceiling Deal

The Clinton-era law added work requirements, but politicians since have chipped away at them

By Jason L. Riley. Excerpts:

"In the late 1980s and early 1990s, welfare dependence grew by a third as people figured out that they could receive more in public benefits than they could earn in the labor force. When Bill Clinton joined forces with a Republican Congress in 1996 to pass a welfare-reform bill that included work mandates, party leaders from Ted Kennedy to Pat Moynihan and Dick Gephardt predicted social carnage. Yet by the end of the decade, the welfare rolls had fallen by more than 50% nationwide. Poverty rates among blacks and female-headed households—groups with disproportionately high welfare-use rates—also plunged.

Since then, lawmakers have chipped away at those reforms, usually in the wake of an economic downturn. Under Democratic and Republican administrations, unemployment insurance has been expanded and work requirements have been suspended. The public is assured that the changes will be temporary, but they seldom are."

"The unemployment rate has reached historic lows, and wages have been rising, including among historically marginalized groups. A headline in Friday’s Journal read “Job Market for Black Workers Is Best Ever.” Black unemployment was a record low 4.7% in April, and the number of blacks in the labor force today is some 1.1 million higher than it was before the pandemic. “Black workers have long been at the bottom of the ladder in terms of wages and job security,” the story noted. “But the confluence of strong demand for labor and demographic shifts in the country over the past few years, when many older white workers retired, benefited Black Americans.” If now isn’t the time to rethink qualifications and requirements for public assistance, when is?

Too many healthy adults are opting out of work because public policy has made unemployment too attractive. As Mr. McCarthy has noted, Joe Biden once understood this. As a senator, he was among the Democrats who supported the 1996 welfare reform."

"Republicans say the reforms will help cut costs, and a Congressional Budget Office analysis predicted savings of more than $100 billion over 10 years."