April
2007
Get it Straight: Tommy Thompson Didn’t Pioneer Welfare Reform
Tommy Thompson has a lot of nerve to claim he is a pioneer of welfare reform.
Yes, he was the Governor in Wisconsin at the time welfare reform was first talked about but it seems that very few people have their facts straight on this one. Welfare reform was not Tommy Thompson’s baby — it was Shirley Krug’s.
Krug, a former State Assembly Representative from the Northwest side, created Wisconsin Works — a welfare reform program complete with safety nets. Essentially, all Thompson did was remove the social safety nets and change the name and he wasn’t even creative with that.
Krug’s Wisconsin Works became Thompson’s W-2.
But let’s look at the results of W-2.
Yes, there are fewer people on welfare but visits to food pantries have skyrocketed. The first year of W-2 alone saw a near doubling of visits to food pantries, and a big increase in women with children in homeless shelters such as Hope House and the Rescue Mission.
Under W-2 reform, more children went without meals. For the first time in recent history, hunger became a major problem in Wisconsin and it continues to be. The Huner Task Force has in recent years called hunger in Milwaukee a crisis. Meanwhile, Wisconsin continues to throw up roadblocks to those that want to apply for foodstamps (now called the Questcard).
This is the legacy of Thompson. Increased poverty and hunger followed Thompson’s stripped down “reform.” Had Thompson gone with Krug’s Wisconsin Works plan as she had it written prior to his hatchet job, she would have certainly backed down and let him take the credit.
Jim McGuigan
i am voting for Obama, I could not wait until somebody like him stepped up to the plate
Oh please. Krug couldn’t get out of her own way. Nice re-write of history.
She was more of an obstacle than a proponent.
Sounds like more propaganda from: Which Wisconsin Now.
If you want to talk about School Choice, that was Tommy, Jensen and of course, Polly Williams. Polly wanted it, but it took Tommy to deliver it, because Republicans from out-state would not have supported it without Tommy breathing down their necks.
Yes, School Choice is here because Polly stood her ground and Tommy backed her up, but Krug was merely a chubby domino in a reform that was knocked down by those same out-state Republicans were more than happy to topple the socialist entitlement establishment of Tony Earl and the liberals.
Is that how school choice happened, really? I think we all need history lessons on both counts: school choice and welfare reform.
Democrats controlled both houses of the Legislature when Polly slipped school choice through - actually, Joint Finance Committee co-chair Gary George slipped it through for her back in 1989. At the time it had very little support from anyone but the black community - Harambee and Urban Day schools in specific. True, Tommy and Scott Jensen expanded it in 1995 because the archdiocese and Bradley Foundation-funded PAVE had organized behind it; but the important work by Tommy and his wife and Jensen took place in state Supreme Court races. They had to make sure that the court, which had deadlocked 3-3 in its first look at religious school vouchers, would not strike the program down - so they got heavily involved in court races. By 1998 they had succeeded and only Bablitch and Abrahamson were left to vote it against it; religious school vouchers passed 4-2 (Anne Walsh Bradley abstaining, just as she did the first time).
Welfare reform? David Riemer, who worked for the Norquist administration and later Jim Doyle, had a hand in writing Wisconsin Works, along with Assembly Rep. Antonio Riley. Krug also put her name to it. Meanwhile in the state Senate, Gwen Moore crusaded to improve WW at every step. But by 1995, the Dems had lost control of the Assembly and, briefly, the state Senate - Jensen and the Republicans ruled the day. Tommy’s W-2 was cooked up at the Hudson Institute and, although the Dems had regained control of the state Senate by recalling George Petak in Racine, Tommy’s reform passed, with Chuck Chvala and other Dems voting right along with it. Remember, it was the 1990’s and the Madison pols were trying out some of that Clintonian triangulation to the middle, puffing up their chests to get “tough on crime” and even tougher on the so-called “welfare state.” … Sen. Gary George’s disdain for his colleagues festered and grew.
In spring of 1998, the tough-as-Republican Dems again lost control of the Senate, then won it back in the fall. Meanwhile, Sen. Moore had patched together a coalition of Senate women to, among other things, fix W-2 piecemeal and ensure that low income women with children had access to health care and education under Tommy’s draconian reform. Of that coalition, only Alberta Darling remains. Moore, of course, is in Congress; Republicans Peggy Rosenzweig and Mary Panzer were ditched by the ultra right that controls their party; Darling now cows to those same forces for fear they’ll go after her next.
In any case, key figures in both parties scrambled in the 1990’s to lay claim to beating-up-on-low-income-women-with-children bragging rights. Tommy can certainly lay claim to W-2, but who would want it? A federal jury says Gary George laid claim to the TANIF surpluses created by kicking women off the welfare rolls. I’d be fascinated to find out how he and Carl Gee intended to reinvest all that dough … And what about Wally Kunicki? - who when Dems controlled the Assembly in 1993-94 passed the initial legislation to “end welfare as we know it.” Wally’s a high paid lobbyist these days, still clicking his heels on the marble floors of the state capitol.