OBAMA DESTROYS WELFARE REFORM
The Obama administration, through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), quietly gutted welfare reform a little over a week ago. Chances are, you didn’t know anything about it, because the mainstream media certainly didn’t report it.
The HHS issued an “Information Memorandum” that allows states to suspend work requirements in the welfare reform law. That means a massage, or reading, or running errands for a neighbor, may now count as a work activity.
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said, “In essence, by the stroke of a pen — and against the clear intent of bipartisan majorities of the American people, Congress, and the law itself — President Obama’s administration has attempted to undo welfare reform, one of the signature bipartisan policy achievements of the last 20 years.”
Obama’s American Dream is to have each and every one of us on government handouts.
On August 22, 1996, after two vetoes, President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. The act ended entitlement welfare and gave a block grant to the states, called TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). This gave states control over their welfare programs in exchange for meeting federal work standards, designed to encourage people to work and give them the training and assistance they need in order to go into the workforce.
The philosophy behind welfare reform is to move people off the welfare rolls by helping them return to work. The goal should be fewer people on welfare, not more.
And welfare reform worked. The caseload dropped by fifty percent; child poverty rates went down, teen pregnancies decreased, and child support collections went up.
But Obama seems to want to expand our welfare state and put more people on government handouts, further killing our economy by removing incentives to work. Maybe since he has been unwilling or unable to do anything about our suffering economy, he figures he should raise taxes and put us all on welfare, where we will be safely under his guidance forevermore.
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Obama has repeatedly bypassed Congress as he imposes his policy agenda on the American people. When he can’t get Congress to do what he wants (for instance, with the DREAM Act) or when he doesn’t bother to ask (as with welfare program changes), he simply issues an Executive Order and decrees that it shall be his way.
That means your elected representatives don’t have a say, and therefore, you don’t have a say, in how America is run.
In a speech on the Senate floor Hatch warned: This executive overreach is a very serious matter with major long-range implications. The Obama Administration, through this waiver scheme, is attempting to unilaterally disarm the Legislative Branch of the Government and accomplish by Executive fiat what they never even attempted to do through the regular legislative process.
We cannot sit silently and hope he doesn’t win in November—we have to take action steps and let Congress know we are watching Obama’s destruction of our laws. We have to let them know that even though President Obama treats them as though they are not important to our republic, they are—they are the last line of defense against the tyranny that Obama is intent on bringing to this country.
Every Member of Congress needs to hear from you. Tell them you are aware that Obama has been bypassing our Constitution, tell them you support welfare to work programs, and tell them you will hold them responsible for de-funding or voiding any action Obama has taken that is not supported by law and the American people.
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) says, “I will shortly be introducing legislation to halt this risky scheme to gut welfare reform. Nothing less than the constitutional viability of the Congress is at stake.”
We will keep you posted on Senator Hatch’s legislation. But until then, we need to stay in touch with Members of Congress and let them know we will not accept a President who bypasses the law.
Hatch said, “This Administration has consistently demonstrated a flagrant disregard for the constitutionally mandated co-equal branch of Government known as the Legislative Branch. This is but the latest in a series of decisions that demonstrate the administration’s sheer arrogance in attempting to bypass Congress without legal warrant.”
And, the Heritage Foundation looked into the actions of the HHS and says their move is illegal and “completely indefensible when you examine all the relevant law.” They also state that, “Federal law expressly prohibits the Secretary from waiving the work requirements!”
Obama mistook his presidential win in 2008 as a coronation. But, we the people will not continue to let him rule like a dictator and go around our Constitution.
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Sincerely,
Tony Adkins
Conservative Daily
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