by Patrick Appel
McArdle, contra Klein, defends welfare reform because it has encouraged Americans to escape poverty. Among her other reasons to support it:
[C]hanging the structure of welfare has eroded much of the opposition to it. As long as people felt like welfare was a way for people to simply live off of tax dollars without working, there was bound to be a lot of opposition to the program. Restructuring it as temporary assistance for those who are overwhelmed by unexpected circumstances has essentially whittled that opposition down to nothing. When was the last time that welfare came up in an election?
In a follow up post, McArdle considers the downsides to reform:
[F]ew program changes are entirely win-win, and this was no exception. Even as many families have climbed out of poverty, some families have plunged deeper into it; as I understand it, mostly those headed by women with severe mental illness, drug and alcohol problems, or personality disorders. Before, if your mother was smoking crack, she could at least still collect her welfare check. Cutting off the check after five years, or cutting benefits as some states did, didn't mean she stopped smoking crack. It just meant there was less money around the house.
The Dish 