One 'Reform' That Worked

摘要

President bill clinton signed the person-al Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, better known as "welfare reform," on Aug. 22,1996. A decade later, it stands as a rarity: a Washington success story. It did not succeed in the Utopian sense of eliminating all poverty or family breakdown. It succeeded in a more practical way. It improved life modestly for millions of people and showed that government could orchestrate constructive change. There are small and large lessons in this. The small lessons involve poverty; the large lessons involve politics.