Reply #101: It was an idea that needed this to have succeeded:

[Totally Committed]

The assurance of BOTH PARTIES that the intention of making sure those WELL-PAYING jobs and the INCREASED MINIMUM WAGE would be available to those coming off the Welfare Rolls for more than the years Clinton was in office. He got no such assurances. And then signed into effect NAFTA, which meant the beginning of the outsourcing of middle level-jobs. When the people with those jobs began having to compete with the lower income people for the jobs they were applying for, AND the minimum wage was not increased as promised, what you see happening now was the direct result: A disappearing/under-employed middle class, and poor people with absolutely no reliable safety nets in place to feed their families, pay for fuel, and in some cases -- no waty to pay for housing.

Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar, and as many of his fans like to point out (and with which I agree, btw) -- he is immensely intelligent. He was blessed with a mind that saw ten miles down the road. But, with this Welfare Reform Act, "trickle up economics" would have taken bi-artisan comittment to have any chance of success, and he thought more aboput his legacy and efficacy (read: bi-partisan support) for passing other bills instead, and let the Republicans have their way on this Bill as a trade-off, thus abandoning and SCREWING the very poor who had idolized and supported him. I repeat -- S C R E W I N G T H E P O O R. Trickle up, my ass! It was a cynical, cruel, short-sighted panacea for the Right, a crew-job for the poor, and (it appears) a lot of bullshit smoke-and-mirrors to baffle the Left.


TC