RUSH: I’ll tell you, this guy is one sick puppy. Bill Clinton writing in the New York Times today how we ended welfare together. You know, this is the anniversary of welfare reform, and here comes Clinton on the pages of the New York Times wanting to claim credit for it, claiming that we did it together, and I want to go back and play four audio sound bites from our archives to illustrate that this is BS. Had it not been for a Republican Congress elected in 1994, there would never have been welfare reform, and Clinton vetoed it twice before signing it the third time. This is a little history lesson for you Rush Babies out there who read Clinton’s op-ed and think that he reformed welfare. We go back, the first three bites here are from Rush Limbaugh: The Television Show, July 31st, 1996, cut one.
CLINTON: We want a bill that actually is welfare reform. You can put wings on a pig, but you don’t make it an eagle. We want real welfare reform.
RUSH: And this was considered to be the brightest president in office since JFK. Here is cut two. This is after he signed welfare reform July 31st, 1996.
CLINTON: At the beginning of this very Congress, some wanted to put poor children in orphanages and take away all help from mothers simply because they were poor, young and unmarried. Last year the Republican majority in Congress sent me legislation that had its priorities backward. It was soft on work and tough on children.
RUSH: Clinton signed it anyway, right before the Democrat convention. He’s misrepresenting what it was. But I’ll tell you, when he signed it the Democrats were livid. You gotta fix this, they said, and they went to their convention fit to be tied over this. You gotta fix this. They acknowledged Clinton had to do this to get reelected. We’ve got a montage from July 31st, 1996, Senator Carol Moseley Braun, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Joe Moakley, Chaka Fattah, and Eva Clayton, Democrats, all talk about the welfare bill.
BRAUN: This day, in the name of reform, this Senate will do actual violence to poor children, putting millions of them into poverty.
MOYNIHAN: I pray God when those children end up on the streets roving in bands, out of control, threat to themselves, danger to others, that we remember what we did.
MOAKLEY: It puts another million children into poverty and doesn’t go far enough.
FATTAH: There will be members who will come to the floor today because they want to be reelected and will vote for it.
CLAYTON: We care about children too much to rob Paul to pay Peter.
RUSH: These are the Democrats that Clinton has just praised — the bill, how he switched it around, made it a great thing, can also go back and realize how wrong these people were, as they always are. Welfare reform has been a huge success in every measure. Here is how I summed it up on my television show the day Clinton announced that he was finally signing welfare reform.
RUSH ARCHIVE: A little history on this. This is the third welfare reform bill the Republicans have presented to the president. Welfare reform as presented today, part of the Contract with America. The president said as early as 1992 during his campaign that it was time to end welfare as we know it. During the first two years of his administration when he had a Democratic Congress to work with, he never proposed it. There was never one shred of movement on it. Republicans win in ’94, it becomes a focal point. The president knows the mood of the country is conservative, and he has announced that he’s going to sign the bill.
RUSH: And today, a little over ten years later, a sick op-ed in which Bill Clinton writes how “we” ended welfare together. Bill Clinton was dragged kicking and screaming to this. His party was livid over this, and they went to the convention that year demanding that he fix it. There were even resignations. Marion Wright Edelman, Children’s Workshop or whatever, big lib, Children’s Defense League, her husband — I think she quit. A bunch of libs quit over this, but it worked.
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