Political Quotes

“I include in the Record a New York Times article titled: ``Poverty, Plunging,'' from September 14, 2022. [From the New York Times, Sept. 14, 2022] Poverty, Plunging: Child Poverty in the U.S. Has Fallen by More Than Half Since the Early 1990s (By David Leonhardt) When President Bill Clinton signed a bipartisan bill tightening the rules around welfare eligibility in 1996--and making many benefits conditional on work--critics on the political left predicted terrible effects. A few members of the Clinton administration quit in protest. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned of devastating increases in child poverty. The New Republic proclaimed, ``Wages will go down, families will fracture and millions of children will be made more miserable than ever.'' A quarter-century later, these predictions look very wrong. As my colleague Jason DeParle wrote this week: ``A comprehensive new analysis shows that child poverty has fallen 59 percent since 1993, with need receding on nearly every front. Child poverty has fallen in every state, and it has fallen by about the same degree among children who are white, Black, Hispanic and Asian, living with one parent or two, and in native or immigrant households'' How did this happen? The 1996 welfare law turned out to be a case study of different political ideologies combining to produce a result that was better than either side would likely have produced on its own.…”