As Congress begins debating the reauthorizatin of welfare legislation this month, you'll hear plenty of preaching from Capitol Hill conservatives about 'personal responsibility.' But out in the real world, the combination of a jobless recovery and draconian welfare reform is clearly becoming a prescription for poverty, notes Mark Engler in TomPaine.com. Between 1995 and 1999, according to the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, the percentage of eligible families who actually received welfare benefits dropped from 84 percent to 52 percent. Conservatives will hail that development as proof that welfare reform works, writes Engler, but 'slashing welfare rolls and reducing poverty are not the same thing.'
-- Joel Stonington

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