 merrie says: During the campaign, advertisements touted that Obama "passed" three bills, without identifying where they were passed (U.S. Senate, Illinois Senate?). In fact, Obama did not pass three bills. That is what a legislature does and in this case, the three bills were passed by the Illinois Senate-a far less notable accomplishment than had the bills been passed in the U.S. Senate. Newsweek details the fabrication: The first bill that's cited is the 1997 law that created the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program in Illinois. The ad claims Obama "passed a law to move people from welfare to work, slashed the rolls by 80 percent." That's going too far. First, the law in question wasn't dreamed up out of thin air by its sponsors. It was the follow-up to the welfare reform act, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, that President Clinton signed on Aug. 26, 1996. That law gave states the ability to design their own welfare programs as long as they met . . . . . . certain federal requirements, including limits on how long recipients could get benefits. The bill that Obama cosponsored was Illinois’ version. Welfare reform was successful in moving people off public assistance. There was about a 78 percent drop in the number of families receiving public assistance in Illinois between 1998 and 2006. But we don’t think Obama alone, or even Obama and the four other sponsors of the Illinois law, can take credit for all of this. It was the federal law, hammered out by Clinton and the Republican Congress, that set the wheels in motion and forced states to act. Nationwide, the number of families on welfare declined quite a bit as well, going from 3... |
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