While much of the rest of the political world was watching the pugilistic debate last night between the Democratic candidates in South Carolina, I had the good fortune to listen to a speech at Dartmouth last night by Marion Wright Edelman, the founder of the Children's Defense Fund and former BFF of Hillary Clinton.
The speech was familiar, for those who have heard Mrs. Edelman before: statistics galore about the impoverished state of children in America. Even today, 35 years after the founding of CDF, which is dedicated to improving the lives of the most needy and least influential in America, its work remains unfinished. It's a sad, familiar litany, one too easily dismissed by cynics. Even in my brief campaign for county office and my time as chair of the Lyme school board, the broad truth of Edelman's statistics are undeniable: more children suffer in America today than most people realize, and the social and financial impact of their suffering is both enormous and revolting.
What's interesting about last night's South Carolina debate and the Edelman speech at Dartmouth is that Hillary Clinton dared to cite her service after college with the Children's Defense Fund as a bona fide to her commitment to change.
Last night, here is how she described her work with the Children's Defense Fund:
"Well, I respect John's commitment to ending poverty. That's why, 35 years ago, when I graduated from law school, I didn't go to work for a law firm. I went to work for Marian Wright Edelman at the Children's Defense Fund, because ending poverty – particularly ending poverty for children, has been the central core cause of everything that I've been doing for 35 years."
Interesting. Very interesting.
Because if you push even just a little bit, the story of Hillary Clinton and the Children's Defense Fund is far murky than candidate Clinton would like anyone in 2008 to understand.
First, it's important to realize the Hillary Clinton was more involved with the Children's Defense Fund than just serving as a newly minted college graduate. In fact, from 1986 to 1992, Hillary Clinton (as she was known then) was the Chair of the Children's Defense Fund. During this very same period, she also served on the board of Wal-Mart.
Moreover, when the Clinton's entered the White House in 1992, an early political appointee of Bill Clinton's was Marion Wright Edelman's husband, Peter Edelman. Another Clinton political appointee, Donna Shalala (who later become the cabinet Secretary for Health & Human Services), also served as Chair of the Children's Defense Fund from 1992-93.
You might think -- hey, the Children's Defense Fund ought to score, right? Their former Chair is the First Lady. Their next Chair is the head of Health & Human Services. The husband of the founder of Children's Defense Fund is the Assistant Secretary of Health & Human Services. That organization and more importantly children throughout the United States ought to benefit tremendously....right?
Wrong.
The sad truth is both simple and maddening. For Hillary Clinton, then and now, the Children's Defense Fund was mere window-dressing, an adornment meant to convey support for change without really being prepared to make deep sacrifices for it.
The Clintons and Edelmans were incredibly close, both personally and politically, during Clinton's first term, but it all came to end in 1996 when Clinton enthusiastically signed the so-called welfare reform bill of 1996. In anger and shock over President Clinton's actions, Peter Edelman resigned his HHS post.
In an article published shortly thereafter in the Atlantic Monthly, Edleman provided detail after detail about why this bill was a mistake. One sentence in particular haunts me from this essay published more than ten years ago: "Nonetheless, the study showed, the bill would move 2.6 million people, including 1.1 million children, into poverty."
This, from a President whose wife served as Chair of the Children's Defense Fund.
The sad fact is, Edelman was right. I was initially sympathetic to Clinton's bill (work is good, right?), but a careful review suggests that Bill Clinton's welfare reform bill has been a disaster. One quick confirmation comes from reading Ross Gitell's 2007 study for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Among other salient facts, the report says that over the last fifteen years (1989-2004), the bottom 40% of income earners in New England over the last fifteen years actually LOST money in terms of income. At the same time, the top 20% of income earners gained 20% or more in terms of income.
So thanks to a myriad of factors -- not the least of which was the removal of a social safety net as a result of the welfare reform bill -- the poor got poorer and the rich got richer. And the children suffered most of all. According to the Columbia University National Center for Children in Poverty, the number of children living in poverty grew by 1.2M from 2000 to 2006. Put more starkly, "Nearly 13 million American children live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level, which is $20,650 a year for a family of four."
I don't know about you, but $20.6K per year for a family of four is way, WAY, WAY below what ANY family should endure.
But that's what the welfare reform bill brought us, and that's part of the legacy of both Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. For more of this excerpted article go to: http://www.peterglenshaw.com/peter_glenshaw_weblog/2008/01/hillary-clinton.html