We might not expect TV’s American Idol to be out in front of most presidential candidates on issues of national importance, but that’s what happened this spring. AI‘s producers announced that they would dedicate two evenings to raising funds and awareness for children and young people in poverty, in both America and Africa. The show’s […]
Mark Greenberg
Mark Greenberg is the director of the Task Force on Poverty at the Center for American Progress. He is on leave from the Center for Law and Policy, where he is the Director of Policy.
Posted inSpecial Report
Welfare Reform, Phase Two
In 1996, welfare reform was rarely far from the headlines. across the country, states were overhauling their cash assistance programs for poor families. That summer, Congress passed and President Clinton signed a deeply controversial revamping of the federal-state system. The new law ended public assistance as a federal entitlement, in favor of a complex system […]
Posted inFeatures
Bush’s Blunder
In the last three months, the welfare-reform debate has been transformed in ways few people envisioned even recently. The change hasn’t been for the better. Early this year, many people believed that reauthorization of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 provided an opportunity to help low-income working families and the hardest-to-employ, […]