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Shaking the Tree Katie Hutchins |
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President Clinton turned his back on 1 million poor children when he signed the welfare bill in August, putting short-term political interests before good public policy.
But I will vote for him anyway.
Gearing up for the convention, I was disappointed - but not surprised - to learn that the president had signed the bill that his own appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services claimed would throw a million children into poverty. But I brushed the issue aside and supported the president, figuring he knew something I didn't.
Until the resignations poured in. Peter Edelman, a long-time advocate of children and families and adamant fighter against poverty, was hardly the person I expected to resign his post at HHS at such a crucial time. He and Mary Jo Bane - both assistant secretaries - resigned last week, citing the welfare bill as their reason. Their pledged departures follow a similar protest - that of Deputy Assistant Secretary Wendell Primus - by a month.
The resignations were quiet. They came more than a month after the president signed the bill. They came without public commentary from Edelman or Bane. And now the issue is nearly forgotten.
It makes me wonder what the president's really trying to do to fix that bill. With all the posturing he's been doing about how he'll make amends, I was starting to believe it. I was surprised at the convention to see HHS Secretary Donna Shalala - a behind-the-scenes opponent of the bill - defending it so strongly.
But she didn't have much to say to audience members who attacked her in a question-and-answer session. One social worker asked what she should tell her clients on welfare when they ask what they should do with their lives. Shalala's answer: "Elect Democrats."
Presumably, these Democrats we elect will somehow be able to fix a bill that kicks people off welfare after two years; that places lifetime limits on receiving benefits at five years; that turns control over welfare administration to the states. This will be a particularly daunting task because there are no jobs out there.
So the liberals are furious. The party is in an uproar. Loyal friends and appointees like Edelman, Bane and Primus are resigning when the president needs them most. The scary thing is, these are the people who were the best candidates for "fixing" the welfare bill.
But that doesn't mean we can abandon Clinton. He has placed us in a difficult position, but if we understand the logic behind it - that this was something President Bob Dole would have signed, anyway; that signing it gives him a great chance at reelection and a chance to create more jobs for current welfare recipients; that the bill can't be enforced fully for a few more years (leaving him time to fix it) - we can still support him.
The president and Shalala wanted welfare reform. They advocated getting people out of the destructive cycle and into the workplace.
It's better for welfare recipients and for this country as a whole - reducing federal spending on welfare by $54 billion in the next six years. It simply doesn't have the safety nets in place - yet.
Clinton was wrong when he risked the lives of 1 million children to get reelected. Even if he did it for the ultimate good of the country, if there are no Democrats in the White House after January it will be pretty tough to save the kids.
Polls tell us Clinton's got a great chance; but how many children's lives would you leave up to the results of a presidential election?
But it's over. Edelman and Bane - for whatever reason - abandoned the cause and gave up their positions that might have had some influence on fixing the bill. Or maybe they didn't have much influence at all. After all, the White House ignored their initial protests.
What Edelman and Bane did was admirable, not so much because of what they did but the way they did it. Resigning was the only message the president would (possibly) listen to, but it was done a month late, quietly, and without too much public embarrassment. They committed an act of conscience, sent a message to the president, and kept it silent enough that he wouldn't be hurt by it.
They obviously couldn't hold their posts and continue to enforce a policy they so strongly opposed, but they apparently saw the value in re-electing the president.
And so should we.
- Katie Hutchins can be reached over e-mail at katieh@umich.edu.