Policy, Race:
David Duke and Welfare Reform

In 1992, David Duke tried to win the Republican nomination for president. He proposed that we reward welfare mothers with cash payments if they stopped having kids, saying that it makes more sense to pay poor women not to have kids than to raise their welfare benefits when they did. His proposal, however, did not include eliminating benefit increases to welfare mothers who bore additional children.

Duke's opponent's attacked his proposal as an attempt at eugenics, a policy designed to decrease the black birth rate. Despite this characterization, the proposal represented nothing but a win for the welfare mother. If she wanted more kids, Duke's proposal had no effect on her benefits. If she decided to take the cash and not have kids, she'd have more money to take care of the kids she already had.

Duke's proposal was discredited in the popular media and did not become law.

Four years later, in 1996, Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. It did away with Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), replacing it with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). Unlike AFDC, TANF does not mandate an increase in benefits for welfare mothers who bear additional children (though states are free to provide these increases). The new law limits one's time on the program to 5 years, cumulative. The law has been heralded as sensible, serious reform.

Duke's proposal would have increased overall welfare benefits, and it was hooted down as coercive and racist. Four years later, welfare reform removed guaranteed increases and instead capped lifetime benefits. The harsher reform passed with broad bipartisan support.

—JoT
March 2002

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This symbol is from David Duke's web site. Is it a cross? A swastika? Gun sights?