Thread: Fantastic fix, Governor right to demand welfare reform

San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial

Fantastic fix

Governor right to demand welfare reform

2:00 a.m. July 15, 2009

The state budget debacle just might end up giving Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger one of his greatest policy triumphs: the overdue arrival of welfare reform in California.

The 1996 federal law putting a time limit on cash assistance to welfare recipients and pushing them to get jobs was decried as a mean-spirited assault on poor families. Thirteen years later, welfare reform on the national level stands as one of the great public policy success stories of recent times.

The number of families on welfare nationwide quickly plunged by more than half. Child poverty declined. Virtually every newspaper in the nation carried success stories about people who had prospered when finally forced off the government dole.

Except in California, where both the spirit and the letter of the federal law have often been ignored. Officials running the CalWORKS welfare program don't rigorously enforce time limits on benefits, which are unusually generous. As Schwarzenegger says, this means state policies “are actually encouraging people to stay on welfare.â€

I think they'll see a drop in their illegal alien population when they do this as well. Long over-due. Keep it rolling California Citizens. You're doing the right things. My grandfather always told me that the hardest word in the English language is "no". But you have to say it, you have to stop this nonsense of handing money out you don't have to begin with.