Welfare reform worked, just not for the people who need welfare
This week marks the 15th anniversary of welfare reform, in which a Republican Congress and a re-election-focused Democratic president got together to fulfill the latter's promise to "end welfare as we know it."
Certainly the new law accomplished this: it replaced the old welfare program with a welfare-to-work alternative administered by the states, and it significantly reduced the number of people on the rolls. But has it done well by the poor?
Not so much. This short piece by Rakim Brooks does an excellent job explaining why. He begins:
