Obama, after gutting welfare reform: ‘Americans can’t be looking for handouts’

President Obama, one day after reversing the Bill Clinton-era
welfare reform by severing the connection between work and welfare
assistance, warned a Virginia crowd that “Americans can’t be looking for
handouts.”

“Americans can’t be looking for handouts,” Obama said during a
campaign stop in Virginia. “There are some folks you can’t help if
they’re not willing to help themselves.” Moments later, he invoked
former President Clinton as a model for economic leadership: “Bill
Clinton did it, and we ended up having 23 million new jobs,” Obama
added.

But he was referring to Clinton’s tax policy, not the welfare reform
bill undermined by his Department of Health and Human Services
yesterday. HHS informed states that they may “test alternative and
innovative strategies, policies and procedures that are designed to
improve employment outcomes for needy families,” rather than enforce the
work requirements attached to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

“Obama’s suspension of workfare requirements is almost certainly
illegal, a sign of the jobs failure, and a reminder how liberal [O]bama
is,” Newt Gingrich, who negotiated the welfare reform with Clinton as
House Speaker in 1996, said in a tweet.