The good folks at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities have a nice post offering a reality check on claims that welfare reform was, in Eric Cantor's words, "nothing but a success." The context is the desire of House Republicans to slash the food stamp program (SNAP).
CBPP's criteria for success, however, seem to be different from the House leaders' criteria. CBPP judges the policy in terms of its impacts on employment and child poverty, that sort of thing. House leaders, on the other hand, sometimes talk about the same goals, but their actions suggest that they really care about punishing poor single moms and proving they are tough fiscal conservatives by taking food out of the mouths of hungry youngsters. By these standards, ending SNAP benefits for unemployed families could be a real winner!
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Its the common practice where they say, "lets reform it". Which translates to "lets cut it". I'm all in favor of reforming programs, but in a post you mentioned before, the cost of real reform is considerably higher than what the programs today shell out. Its the less fortunate who damned either way.
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