What the Unreformers Said of Welfare Reform

The San Francisco Chronicle reports on what advocates of the Welfare State said about welfare reform 10 years ago :

At the time, most American liberals predicted disaster. As Katha Pollitt wrote in The New Republic, "wages will go down, families will fracture, millions of children will be made more miserable than ever." One frequently cited study predicted that more than a million children would be thrown into poverty. Welfare advocates painted vivid pictures of families sleeping on sidewalks, widespread starvation, and worse. The New York Times opined, "the effect on our cities will be devastating." Senator Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat of New Jersey, predicted "hungry and homeless children" would be walking our streets "begging for money, begging for food, even...engaging in prostitution." The Nation prophesied that "people will die, businesses will close, infant mortality will soar." You would have expected to step over bodies in the streets.

The religion of the Welfare State is the faith of our time.