A balanced article on the subject from 1996

A study from Brookings

This study concludes that welfare reform did not make a significant dent in poverty. This is one of the claims of its supporters.

And if the goal is to protect those who have lost their jobs and will likely have to wait longer than normal for conditions conducive to re-employment, then extend and expand unemployment benefits, not welfare. That makes a lot more sense.

On this one Jim, you can piss into the wind all you want. Almost no one except the truly rabid claims that Welfare Reform did anything other than over-perform and exceed expectations, in all areas.

Even the vast majority of elected officials, at state and federal levels, along with economists and sociologists agree that in hindsight it was a brilliantly successful bill. Gutting it does not stimulate the economy, and in fact it will have the exact opposite effect, and there is plenty of real-world evidence from the passing of the Welfare Reform Act to support that contention

But this is quibbling over the details of one item in the bill. I was trying to make a bigger point – that a reasonable amount of time must be set aside to do real analysis of what is in that bill, and the likely impacts of the key pieces.

They both agree on the infrastructure and unemployment benefit extensions so why not simply have a bill just for that. I am a civil engineer(roads and utilities) and deal with failing infrastructure routinely(obviously work is slow as I am on this blog). We are going to have to spend money on the infrastructure sooner or later, this I can assure you. I believe at this time we can get more bang for our buck since contractors, engineers(including me) laborers, etc are willing to work for less cause of the economic conditions. This in turn would give a lot of peope work and hopefully they would use it to buy goods and services providing people not in the infrastrucure industry jobs. I do not claim to be an Economist but why not spend money now that is certain, let me repeat, certain to be spent at some time in the near future and maybe help this economy out.

The American Society for Civil Engineers(ASCE) put out a study on our failing infrastructure that I would recommend people read.

Without that money, the recession will certainly worsen.

The very heart of the widely applauded Welfare Reform Act of 1996 is a cap on the amount of federal cash that can be sent to states each year for welfare payments.

But, thanks to the simple phrase slipped into the legislation, the new “stimulus” bill abolishes the limits on the amount of federal money for the so-called Emergency Fund, which ships welfare cash to states.

“Out of any money in the Treasury of the United States not otherwise appropriated, there are appropriated such sums as are necessary for payment to the Emergency Fund,” Democrats wrote in Section 2101 on Page 354 of the $819 billion bill. In other words, the only limit on welfare payments would be the Treasury itself.

“This re-establishes the welfare state and creates dependency all over the place,” said one startled budget analyst after reading the line.

I harbor no illusions that time for review, hopefully occurring in the Senate, would do much to make this truly bi-partisan. If however that time is used to analyze what is truly in there, and focus it towards true stimulus rather than just so much pork projects, that would still be an improvement. The downside, as Chris says, is the high likelihood of even more bloat being the result.

If it can truly be focused, perhaps that will result in at least some Republican crossover, as it won't seem like it was shoved down everyone's throats.

Also, the Package should — IMHO – have been re-tooled as an Infrastructure “Rebuilding America” sort of deal…fixing the roads, bridges, airports, and public buildings…that we are all told are falling down.
Given that these are in every member of Congress' district…it would have been hard for many GOP to vote against it, I believe.

I disagree with T-Steel to some extent, though. Obama did at least reach out and talk with GOP leaders.
Pelosi gave them the finger.

Of course, that plays well with many Democrats. Pelosi's similar actions during the Bailout debate produced a similar response from the GOP.
But it does seem to me (I may be wrong) that Pelosi is undermining Obama's strategy.

It would be unfortunate if this establishes the template for the Obama Presidency.

I don't necessarily think making the bill bi-partisan will achieve that. The House Republicans counter-proposal was 100% tax cuts with no data on the price tag. Since the bill is already 30-40% tax cuts, aren't we at that compromise point anyways?

And there's always the problem that the longer a bill stays in Congress, the more bloated it gets.