Robert Rector is a senior research fellow who worked closely with Congress to draft the work requirements in the 1996 welfare reform law.
The 1996 law required that a portion of able-bodied adults getting welfare work or prepare for work. Obama issued a bureaucratic order allowing states to waive the work requirements in the law. In spite of Obama’s claims that the work requirements are still in place, Rector said the law has been gutted.
Obama has stated any state will be free to follow the new Obama requirements “in lieu of” the written statute.
Obama has set up phony criteria to make it appear he has not ended the work requirement and fact checkers have let him get away with it.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has said that to bypass federal workfare requirements, a state would have to “move at least 20 percent more people from welfare to work compared to the state’s past performance.”
Rector points out that about 1.5 percent of the welfare caseload leaves the rolls each month because of employment. To be exempt from the federal work requirement, a state would have to raise that number to 1.8 percent of caseload. As the economy improves, this small increase will occur automatically in most states.
Obama is waiving the federal requirement that ensures a portion of able-bodied welfare recipients engage in work activities. If that is not gutting welfare reform, it is difficult to imagine what would be.
Mike Zoril,
Beloit
