Felicia Kornbluh, Prof of History & Gender, Sexuality, & Women's Studies, Univ Vermont. Her books include The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America & forthcoming Ensuring Poverty: Welfare Reform After 20 Yrs
Twenty Years of Deepening Poverty Since Pres. Clinton Shredded Welfare Safety Net with Felicia Kornbluh, Prof of History & Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at the Univ of Vermont. Her books include The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America and Ensuring Poverty: Welfare Reform After 20 Years (with Gwendolyn Mink) forthcoming.
August 22 marks the beginning of "welfare reform's" 20th year, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. Kornbluh says: "Playing to a racist imagination and dealing in sexist double standards, Republicans and Democrats came together 19 years ago to transform income assistance for the poor into a system of regulation, deprivation and punishment. The legislation that established Temporary Assistance for Needy Families ( TANF ), made limiting women's choices and ending single motherhood its goals. The nation's chief policy dedicated to impoverished families with children did not include mitigating poverty, enhancing opportunity, or attenuating inequality as its goals. As a result, while welfare rolls have declined, poverty still stalks single mothers & their children -- and extreme poverty is at crisis high levels. As we approach the 20th year of this disgraceful program, it is time to overhaul TANF principles and practices to support the family work single mothers do and open real pathways to economic security.
produced by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash
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