Politics & Power Quote by Robert Scheer

Scheer’s line is doing two things at once: indicting a policy choice and reframing what sounded, in the 1990s, like harmless “reform” as a constitutional and moral retreat. The verb “severed” is surgical and violent; it implies not tweaking a program but cutting a nerve. By casting welfare reform as the removal of an “obligation,” Scheer shifts the debate away from budgets and work requirements and onto sovereignty and responsibility: Who, exactly, is on the hook when poverty spikes and local politics turns punitive?

The subtext is a warning about devolution masquerading as pragmatism. Clinton’s 1996 overhaul replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children with block grants (TANF), pushing discretion down to states and tying assistance to time limits and work rules. Scheer is less interested in the symbolic end of “welfare as we know it” than in the quiet administrative rewrite: if Washington no longer has to “step in” or “monitor,” failure becomes diffuse, deniable, and politically convenient. States can tighten eligibility, underfund services, or redirect funds, and the federal government can shrug as if it’s merely respecting local control.

Context matters: Clinton-era triangulation tried to neutralize Republican attacks by absorbing their premises. Scheer’s critique bites because it suggests the real bargain wasn’t just tougher rhetoric; it was the federal government voluntarily surrendering its enforcement role. In his framing, that’s not modernization. It’s abdication dressed up as reform, leaving the most vulnerable to the luck of geography and the mood of statehouse politics.