I remember blogging about Clinton’s Op-Ed in the New York Times lauding his welfare reform measures. I’ve always thought that he bought into the right-wing Reagan lie of welfare queens when he did this. Today’s dispatch from PLAN tells us more.

It’s now ten years since the 1996 welfare law promised to end “welfare as we know it.” That goal may have been accomplished, but the results have been decidedly mixed, both for poor families and for state lawmakers coping with changing federal mandates.

As this Dispatch will detail, it was less the 1996 law than other changes in state and federal law that have given poor families any chance to thrive — and still, many lives have been made worse because of the 1996 changes in welfare law. But states are finding innovative ways to expand the anti-poverty agenda in the wake of those changes.

The two major mistakes of the Clinton administration was ramming through NAFTA and this welfare deform. There is a lot to cite in this dispatch from PLAN but i’ll close out with their conclusion.

In some ways, the greatest benefit from the 1996 welfare law was that it seems to have diminished the rhetorical attacks on the poor and encouraged the growing alternative federal and state spending to combat poverty. Instead of attacks on “welfare queens” and other racially-tinged attacks, there has emerged a real debate on the rise of economic inequality in America and how best to help all working families, including those at the bottom of the economic system.

The debate on poverty is increasingly merging into the broader debate on how to create decent-paying jobs for all Americans and how to provide the health and child care support that all families need. The recent success of campaigns to raise the minimum wage highlights the broad support by the public for promoting a living wage for the working poor, just as the growing debate on universal health coverage shows similar public support for ending the gaping hole in health access for many working families. The result is a new progressive anti-poverty agenda that links a helping hand for the poorest in our society with campaigns to assure a social safety net for all families looking for help in coping with job dislocation and loss of health care coverage in our changing economy.

Again this is an area that I’d love to see the William J. Clinton Foundation get involved in. This is a chance for Clinton to do something differently than he did has president.

Technorati : Bill_Clinton, Welfare