John Kasich and the Clintons Collaborated on Law That Helped Double Extreme Poverty

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Hillary Clinton was involved with publicly advocating for passage and implementation of welfare reform in her role as First Lady. In a Newsweek cover story in 1993, she weighed in on the upcoming welfare reform debate.
“How do we as a society address the 15-year-old mother on welfare? What do we owe her? Can we demand a set of behavioral standards from her?” asked the interviewer. “Sure, I’ve been talking about that since 1973,” replied the First Lady. “You know, I am one of the first people who wrote about how rights and responsibilities had to go hand in hand.”

“When you talk about moving someone to work from welfare in two years, what happens to people who don’t want to work? Would you impose sanctions?” followed up the interviewer. “Oh, I think you have to. What happened in Arkansas is that people who refused for whatever reason to participate had their benefits cut,” she replied.

Hillary Clinton continued to defend the welfare cutback over the years. “Too many of those on welfare had known nothing but dependency all their lives, and many would have found it difficult to make the transition to work on their own,” she wrote in a 1999 op-ed. In a 2002 interview she said the policy has resulted in recipients “no longer” being “deadbeats — they’re actually out there being productive.”
Hillary Clinton’s advocacy for welfare reform strained her relationship with her mentor and former boss, Marian Wright Edelman, the head of the Children’s Defense Fund. After the signing of the bill, Edelman wrote that “President Clinton’s signature on this pernicious bill makes a mockery of his pledge not to hurt children.”

https://theintercept.com/2016/02/13/john-kasich-and-the-clintons-collaborated-on-law-that-helped-double-extreme-poverty-in-america/

Zaid Jilani
Zaid Jilani is a journalist who hails from Atlanta, Georgia. He has previously worked as a reporter-blogger for ThinkProgress, United Republic, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and Alternet.

He graduated from the University of Georgia in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts in international affairs and received his master’s in public administration from Syracuse University in 2014.