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Work over Welfare: The Inside Story of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law
Work over Welfare tells the inside story of the legislation that ended ""welfare as we know it."" As a key staffer on the House Ways and Means Committee, author Ron Haskins was one of the architects of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. In this landmark book, he vividly portrays the political battles that produced the most dramatic overhaul of the welfare system since its creation as part of the New Deal.
Haskins starts his story in the early 1990s, as a small group of Republicans lays the groundwork for welfare reform by developing innovative policies to encourage work and fight illegitimacy. These ideas, which included such controversial provisions as mandatory work requirements and time limits for welfare recipients, later became part of the Republicans' Contract with America and were ultimately passed into law. But their success was hardly foreordained. Haskins brings to life the often bitter House and Senate debates the Republican proposals provoked, as well as the backroom negotiations that kept welfare reform alive through two presidential vetoes. In the process, he illuminates both the personalities and the processes that were crucial to the ultimate passage of the 1996 bill. He also analyzes the changes it has wrought on the social and political landscape over the past decade.
In Work over Welfare, Haskins has provided the most authoritative account of welfare reform to date. Anyone with an interest in social welfare or politics in general will learn a great deal from this insightful and revealing book.
Haskins starts his story in the early 1990s, as a small group of Republicans lays the groundwork for welfare reform by developing innovative policies to encourage work and fight illegitimacy. These ideas, which included such controversial provisions as mandatory work requirements and time limits for welfare recipients, later became part of the Republicans' Contract with America and were ultimately passed into law. But their success was hardly foreordained. Haskins brings to life the often bitter House and Senate debates the Republican proposals provoked, as well as the backroom negotiations that kept welfare reform alive through two presidential vetoes. In the process, he illuminates both the personalities and the processes that were crucial to the ultimate passage of the 1996 bill. He also analyzes the changes it has wrought on the social and political landscape over the past decade.
In Work over Welfare, Haskins has provided the most authoritative account of welfare reform to date. Anyone with an interest in social welfare or politics in general will learn a great deal from this insightful and revealing book.
465 pages, Paperback
First published August 31, 2006
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February 24, 2009
This guy loves legislative process. I mean loves it. He lives it, dreams it, somehow eats it.
The problem with this is that the reader of his book gets an intricate description of the third hearing by a subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee on the future potential of welfare reform: "And then Congressman Rangel seconded the ..."
The advantage is that the book gives the reader a better knowledge of the inner workings of Congress than any other book I've read. I finally understand the exact means by which the Rules Committee governs the House of Representatives, the method by which the Speaker and party conferences direct party members, the power of the motion to recommit, and the influence of the CBO.
And this book was like a travel down memory lane: all those over-the-top bromides against unwed teenage mothers from the Republicans, and all the Democrats who compared those Republicans to goose-stepping Nazis. We don't get all uppity about social legislation like that anymore. Ah, the good ole' days.
In the end Republicans (and Clinton, who joined them) where right, and perhaps the detailed description Haskins gives of this bill is warranted, because he also provides ample evidence that shows this was the most important, and successful, piece of social reform since the 1930s.
While Democrats said the bill was "something approaching the Apocalypse," which would cause thousands of starved and frozen babies to be picked up en masse off city streets (New York's inimitable Moynihan), Haskins shows that both the welfare rolls and poverty among unwed mothers went down drastically after the act, and that this cannot be laid at the feet of the booming 90s economy (welfare rolls both then and now were shockingly stable through good times and bad, demonstrating that the ability to get work has little to do with going on welfare).
In the end, almost everybody has acknowledged that welfare reform was an amazing success, and its worthwhile to have a book that tells exactly how it came about.
The problem with this is that the reader of his book gets an intricate description of the third hearing by a subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee on the future potential of welfare reform: "And then Congressman Rangel seconded the ..."
The advantage is that the book gives the reader a better knowledge of the inner workings of Congress than any other book I've read. I finally understand the exact means by which the Rules Committee governs the House of Representatives, the method by which the Speaker and party conferences direct party members, the power of the motion to recommit, and the influence of the CBO.
And this book was like a travel down memory lane: all those over-the-top bromides against unwed teenage mothers from the Republicans, and all the Democrats who compared those Republicans to goose-stepping Nazis. We don't get all uppity about social legislation like that anymore. Ah, the good ole' days.
In the end Republicans (and Clinton, who joined them) where right, and perhaps the detailed description Haskins gives of this bill is warranted, because he also provides ample evidence that shows this was the most important, and successful, piece of social reform since the 1930s.
While Democrats said the bill was "something approaching the Apocalypse," which would cause thousands of starved and frozen babies to be picked up en masse off city streets (New York's inimitable Moynihan), Haskins shows that both the welfare rolls and poverty among unwed mothers went down drastically after the act, and that this cannot be laid at the feet of the booming 90s economy (welfare rolls both then and now were shockingly stable through good times and bad, demonstrating that the ability to get work has little to do with going on welfare).
In the end, almost everybody has acknowledged that welfare reform was an amazing success, and its worthwhile to have a book that tells exactly how it came about.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review