In discussing comprehensive immigration reform in recent days, some commentators have discussed The Heritage Foundation’s previous and anticipated work looking at the costs of unlawful immigration and amnesty. Heritage’s Robert Rector, who helped spearhead welfare reform in the 1990s and is one of the nation’s top experts on government assistance …
Now that the “Gang of Eight” has introduced a comprehensive immigration bill in the U.S. Senate, the cost to taxpayers of implementing amnesty for an estimated 11 million unlawful immigrants has come into focus. The core problem with amnesty is clear: It encourages more unlawful immigration in hopes of future …
According to a statement by the Obama Administration in March, a House bill that reinforces the welfare work requirements of the 1996 reform act equates to an “unnecessary bar to innovative welfare-to-work strategies.” What are these “innovative” strategies? Last year, the Obama Administration simply waived compliance with the already lenient …
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported last week that even with improvements in the economy, food stamp participation rates have reached all-time highs. Since 2008, enrollment has increased by 70 percent, reaching a record 47.8 million this past December. Funding for the food stamp program—or, as it’s now called the …
On March 13, the House voted to restore the work requirements that the Obama Administration attempted to gut from the 1996 welfare reform law. The Preserving Work Requirements for Welfare Programs Act of 2013 was introduced in late February by a group of conservatives to undo the Administration’s actions. The …
This past week, media outlets have been abuzz, heralding the news that poverty levels in the United States are higher than previously thought. But the numbers are misleading. The Census Bureau reported last week that, according to its new “supplemental poverty measure,” 49.7 million Americans are in poverty. This figure …
Welfare spending is at a staggering, all-time high. A new government report confirms that the U.S. now spends roughly $1 trillion a year on what has become a behemoth welfare system consisting of more than 80 federal programs. Robert Rector explains more in congressional testimony from earlier this year: “Examining …
“Obama’s Palace Guard,” Mark Hemingway’s Weekly Standard cover story exposing fact-checkers for willful complicity in the gutting of welfare reform, is a must read for anyone who cares about the state of the news media—and for those who plan to watch, cover, or participate in the presidential debates. Hemingway meticulously …
On July 12, the Obama Administration released a policy directive from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declaring that it would no longer require states to comply with the work requirements established under the 1996 welfare reform law. As Heritage experts Robert Rector and Kiki Bradley explained, the …
