happy 20th birthday to welfare reform

(Bill) Clinton was easily a better president than the disasters and dumpster fires of Bush II and Obama. That said, it seems that circumstances helped him a ton (e.g., the end of the Cold War; relatively light partisanship; and a smart, cooperative GOP House), since he now recants on many of his best policies.

With the 1996 welfare reforms, policy was moved much moreso to the States, which has been a mixed bag. And necessarily so: there is no way to give people resources while they're in an undesirable state, without encouraging them to remain in that state and encouraging others to join them.

Still, the States have been a vast improvement over what the Feds were doing. On big complex social policies, let's allow flexibility and try 50 different experiments instead of insisting on one, grand, federal approach (as ObamaCare). On welfare, the states have done a far better job, en masse, than the feds did.