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Jewish World Review March 20, 2014 / 18 Adar II, 5774 The desperate need for liberal compassion By Jay Ambrose
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Rep. Paul Ryan recently said the wrong kind of welfare can breed dependency, and liberals are beating up on him but good. They are saying that he is once again showing how conservatives do not care about the poor when in fact liberals are the ones who continuously assault them. They repeatedly practice cruelty in their politics, as many so obviously did with Aid to Families with Dependent Children. This major federal welfare program was a mess, encouraging family dissolution as one way of devastating the disadvantaged, but a slew of liberals were up in arms when Democratic President Bill Clinton joined with a Republican Congress in 1996 to reform it, adding work requirements among other changes. Two members of the administration resigned as other liberals joined in arguing ferociously that the reform would throw a million children into poverty. Instead, as scholars of the subject observe, millions of children were lifted out of poverty along with poor single mothers who got jobs in record numbers and still received other subsidies as needed. Leftist commentators are getting everything wrong about Ryan, pathetically calling him a racist because of a reference to the inner city and almost making it sound in some nearly dishonest diatribes as if he is against any public aid to the poor at all. They thus help fend off further welfare reform that could be among the best things that ever happened to America’s poor, which is hardly unusual for leftists forever wreaking havoc as they strut their moral superiority. Maybe some of their intentions are indeed good, but they do not grasp the invisible-hand beneficence of free markets, they haven’t figured out that central planners don’t have the omniscience their task requires and some of their intentions are not good. Take a hard look at elected officials on the left, keep in mind how reelection and popularity are their holy grails and then contemplate the following:
You get all of these ulterior motives rolled into one in Obamacare that does do a few worthy things that could have been done more simply and inexpensively and many unworthy, hurtful, overreaching things done complexly and with massive cost. There’s a long, long list of liberal programs that contradict their stated purposes by their infamous actions, but let’s get back to welfare reform and Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the House Budget Committee. He has put together a massive report on federal welfare programs, showing how ineffective and wasteful many are. No one answer will fix all the problems, but a major answer is to emulate the reform of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, figuring out ways to help get people into jobs. Liberals somehow see it as a horrendous insult to suppose giving people free things can make them dependent on getting free things, but people of common sense know it happens and always has, sometimes even happening to the children of the rich. The compassionate thing in the case of the poor is to help them escape the trap, and someday maybe even leftists will catch on to that. Send us feedbackon this column Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.
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