What Bill Clinton Has Wrought

This is a first at accordingtothisjim, but I am going to say something positive about Bill Clinton. For all the issues I have with his presidency he did do some things right. One thing he did right was sign the welfare reform bill in 1996. This may be the greatest legacy of his presidency. Rich Lowry of NRO has an interesting article about the effects of that bill. Among other things Lowry writes,

Welfare caseloads have dropped 60 percent since the passage of welfare reform. Was that just the result of a strong economy? No. Caseloads didn’t decline significantly in any of the eight periods of economic expansion from the 1950s to the mid-1990s. From 1953 to 1994, the number of families on welfare dropped in only five of those years, and dropped two years in a row only once. By 2005, welfare caseloads had been declining for a stunning 11 straight years.

HT Justin Taylor