Mark Schmitt further diminishes my willingness to take Mickey Kaus's word for things:
Posted by DeLong at January 30, 2004 02:32 PM | TrackBackThe Decembrist: Kaus, Kerry and Welfare Reform: If Kaus thinks that aligning himself with Senator Breaux on an amendment that passed in a Republican-controlled Senate makes Kerry a liberal, he's welcome to that delusion. Kaus says he followed the issue very closely at the time, and promises more research to find out whether these amendments would have "gutted" welfare reform. I'll do his work for him -- I spent most of this time perched quietly on the staff bench at the edge of the Senate floor, so I know exactly how this went down. Kerry was not one of the Democrats who wanted to defeat or gut the bill. (My boss, Senator Bradley, was.)
Kaus is certainly correct that Kerry was not an active leader on welfare reform.... Kerry did offer an amendment on the floor, which passed, requiring states that showed an increase in child poverty to develop a plan for corrective action. That was a good idea, one of a number of Democratic efforts to put the goal of reducing child poverty, not just welfare caseloads, into the bill. On the amendments Kaus cites: The Daschle alternative was known as the "Work First" bill. It had work requirements that were stricter than the Republican bill, and it was more honest about the funds states would need to implement Work First. Actual opponents of welfare reform, like Moynihan and Bradley, thought it did very little to improve on the Republican bill, but voted for it. I don't recall exactly what the Biden-Specter alternative did, but all the actual opponents of welfare reform voted against it, which should tell Kaus something. (There was an alternative that would have preserved the individual entitlement to AFDC, which really just means that funding for states would have continued to come as a match rather than a block grant, drafted by Moynihan, but he never even offered it for a vote.) The Breaux amendment was one of those little things that humanized the bill, and has contributed to what I would now consider the partial success of welfare reform.
Surely you jest - surely mickey kaus wouldn't possibly allow his extreme distaste for john kerry to influence how he discusses a factual issue, would it?
Say it ain't so!
Posted by: howard on January 30, 2004 03:17 PM"Mark Schmitt further diminishes my willingness to take Mickey Kaus's word for things"
This implies that you still have some, however infinitesmal, willingness to take Mickey Kaus's word for anything. Shame on you.
Posted by: Kuas on January 30, 2004 06:16 PMActually, The Decembrist doesn't really present a challenge Kaus' veracity, since the only thing Kaus seemed to be certain of was that Kerry wasn't a major player, and the Decembrist agrees.
Plus, since the Decembrist seems to be saying that reform opponents voted for an amendment which was not anti-reform, but that same senators voting against another amendment suggests that it must therefore not have been anti-reform also, I think I'll wait for Kaus to do his homework....
Posted by: Joe Mealyus on January 31, 2004 01:31 AM