Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), a leading critic of the Obama Administration’s decision to gut welfare reform, visited Heritage to ”fact check the fact checkers” on the controversial directive from the Department of Health and Human Services. He detailed areas in which self-appointed arbiters have gotten their facts wrong.
Following Hatch’s remarks, panelists including Heritage’s Robert Rector, blogger Mickey Kaus and Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute, exploreed other areas where the “fact checkers” don’t have their facts right.
Under the Obama Administration’s new policy, announced on July 12, states could receive waivers that would be inconstant with the welfare reform law’s performance measures. Rector, who played an instrumental role in the 1996 law, has argued the waiver policy not only undermines the success these standards helped to bring about, but also violates the letter and intent of the law.
“Gutting welfare work requirements with the stroke of a pen and without congressional input is simply unacceptable and cannot be allowed to stand,” Hatch said in a statement released July 18. “Neither the Obama Administration nor any administration should have the power to unilaterally change the law as it sees fit.”
As a result of the 1996 reforms, stagnant welfare rolls experienced unprecedented declines. Millions of families left welfare for jobs.
Where are the constraints on abuses of power like this? The President takes actions against the law and all we do is get outraged about it? What are the designed protections against such abuses? What's to stop any President from doing whatever they want when nothing ever happens and the Presidents know no one or nothing can stop them? The President has already said and acted in ways contrary to the Constitution it seems yet nothing stops it from happening. As a President, they take an oath to the Constitution and they can ignore the oath. It's a dim outlook for future generations.