Courtesy of Michael Tanner:

One of the most important changes of the Clinton-era reform law was replacing the individual entitlement to welfare with a block grant to the states. In the old system, the more people a state signed up for welfare, the more money it got from Washington. The block grant broke this link, creating an incentive for states to help people become self-supporting.

But, as The Post’s Charles Hurt has reported, slipped into the stimulus bill is a provision establishing a new $3 billion emergency fund to help states pay for added welfare recipients, with the federal government footing 80 percent of the cost for the new “clients.”

Plus, the bill would reward states for increasing caseloads, even if the growth came because the state had loosened its requirements for recipients to work.

This is radical change. States that succeed in getting people off welfare would lose the opportunity for increased federal funding. And states that make it easier to stay on welfare (by, say, raising the time limit from two years to five) would get rewarded with more taxpayer cash. The bill would even let states with rising welfare rolls still collect their “case-load reduction” bonuses.

In short, the measure will erode all the barriers to long-term welfare dependency that were at the heart of the 1996 reform.

In other not-so-surprising news, bad policy consequences come from passing a nearly 1000 page stimulus bill that spends nearly $800 billion of taxpayer money when Representatives, Senators, and the President and his staff don’t even take the time to read the bill.

Happy Stimulus.

He brings the snark and the serious.

The latter, of course, is especially worth reading, as it lays out an efficient and responsible bank reorganization process. But far be it from me to denigrate snark directed at big-government advocates of Keynesian stimulus, who in advocating their position, have abandoned all trappings of reality.

It involves him getting thrown into the gladiatorial pit:

Last week Giulio Tremonti, Italy’s finance minister and Mr. Geithner’s host for the weekend, gave a tart review of the Obama administration’s stimulus in a local newspaper here.

“If the problem is an excess of debt, the cure is not adding more debt, whether that debt is public or private,” he wrote in the Corriere della Sera. Italy is one of the most indebted countries in Europe. Its debt surpasses its annual gross domestic product.

The national debt of the United States, by contrast, was about 40 percent of G.D.P. at the end of 2008, but Moody’s expects that to rise to 60 percent by 2010 as a result of the recession and spending tied to the federal bailout and stimulus programs.

On Saturday, Mr. Tremonti also spoke disdainfully of the “Buy America” provision in the stimulus plan, which covers iron, steel and manufactured goods, as a political slogan. He and other ministers emphasized the importance of keeping the American economy free of protectionism.

The president of the World Bank, Robert B. Zoellick, said he told ministers this weekend how crucial it was to keep the world economy open and to avoid the protectionist policy errors of the 1930s. “The Buy American provision is very dangerous,” he said.

HopeAndChange unites the world.

In a perfect world it would have been nice to have had more time to process it.

–Ilan Kayatsky, a spokesman for Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), discussing the fact that the stimulus package was drafted in haste and read not at all before it was voted on.

My thoughts over at the Arena. Concerning the Gregg issue, Andrew Sullivan–in his inimitable way–is claiming that the Gregg withdrawal is proof that the Republicans have “declared war” on Obama. Never mind the fact that other Cabinet nominees–at least, the ones that don’t have to withdraw from consideration because of obstacles like tax cheating–have been receiving overwhelming support from both parties in Senate confirmation votes. Never mind that Sullivan’s “proof” for his assertion includes spin from an anonymous Democratic Hill staffer, and self-selecting reader comments on a Manchester Union-Leader article. Never mind as well that accusations that the Gregg withdrawal has something to do with GOP malfeasance is undercut by this:

Gregg had kind words for the president, saying the administration is “doing an extraordinary job in trying to manage this financial crisis.” He acknowledged that his withdrawal now is “unfair in many ways,” but said that he could not be a “100 percent” team member.

“The president asked me to do it, and I said yes,” Gregg said. “That was my mistake, not his.”

Yeah, real declaration of war, that. I think that Gregg was right to withdraw, for the reasons I set out in my Arena post. But partisan sniping, this wasn’t.

Of course, don’t tell that to Sullivan, who will be more than glad to scapegoat anyone and everyone with an “R” next to his/her name for the vetting failures and staff blunders of the people working for his plaster-saint-for-the-moment.

With the stimulus package foundering, the President is now out to terrify the populace into rallying behind it:

President Barack Obama warned on Thursday that failure to act on an economic recovery package could plunge the nation into a long-lasting recession that might prove irreversible, a fresh call to a recalcitrant Congress to move quickly.

In an op-ed piece in The Washington Post, the president argued that each day without his stimulus package, Americans lose more jobs, savings and homes. His message came as congressional leaders struggle to control the huge stimulus bill that’s been growing larger by the day in the Senate. The addition of a new tax break for homebuyers Wednesday evening sent the price tag well past $900 billion.

Senate Democratic leaders hope for passage of the legislation by Friday at the latest, although prospects appear to hinge on crafting a series of spending reductions that would make the bill more palatable to centrists in both parties.

Obama painted a bleak picture if lawmakers do nothing.

“This recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse,” Obama wrote in the newspaper piece titled, “The Action Americans Need.”

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