We’ve been doing some historical research collecting all the crazy claims Democrats in Congress made against the historic 1996 welfare reforms signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Welfare reform was, of course, an enormous policy success with lower caseloads, the fastest decline in overall and child poverty rates since welfare began, etc.
Democrats have been reprising some of the same fallacious accusations against Republicans in recent weeks because the debt ceiling bill restored some work requirements.
Back in 1996, Nancy Pelosi seethed that the welfare reform would devastate children and was “a dishonor to the God that made them.” (Who knew she believed in God?)
In one of the most incendiary speeches on the House floor in modern times, Rep. John Lewis of Georgia likened welfare reform to sending the Jews to Nazi concentration camps as he infamously exclaimed that “they are coming for the children, coming for the poor, coming for the sick, the elderly and disabled.”
But our favorite quote came from recently retired Missouri Democrat William Clay, the first black Rep. from the state of Missouri, who seethed at welfare reform supporters: “What’s next? Castration.”
We can’t help seeing the heavy irony in that charge given that today’s LGBTQ Democrats are now all in on sterilizing kids.