I’ve been seeing this Associated Press headline all over the place this morning:

The clear implication of the headline and the article itself is that the welfare reform pushed through by Congressional Republicans during the Clinton administration in the 1990’s hasn’t worked.  That it has actually resulted in the growth of enrollment in other federal entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid despite the fact that enrollment in the Welfare program itself has plummeted.  From the article:

The number of families receiving cash benefits from welfare has plummeted since the government imposed time limits on the payments a decade ago. But other programs for the poor, including Medicaid, food stamps and disability benefits, are bursting with new enrollees.

The result, according to an Associated Press analysis: Nearly one in six people rely on some form of public assistance, a larger share than at any time since the government started measuring two decades ago.

This is a pretty serious indictment of welfare reform, but unfortunately for the reporters responsible for writing it (and big-government types salivating at the chance to use this as support for increasing entitlements) it isn’t factually accurate.  The truth of the matter is that nearly all government entitlement programs have been growing in spending and enrollment for decades.

Take Medicare for example.  According to the Department for Health and Human Services there were 30,436,635 people enrolled with Medicare in 1985.  In 2004 that number was 41,729,217, and from 1985 to 2004 that enrollment number went up every single year.  So when the article above claims that Medicare enrollment is exploding, it has nothing to do with the welfare reform of the 1990’s.  Medicare enrollment has been exploding for the last two decades, and likely since it’s inception, though I didn’t run the numbers back that far.

The same is undoubtedly true of Medicaid, food stamps and pretty much any other entitlement program you want to mention.  The enrollment in these programs has been growing since their inception, and again the welfare reform of the 1990’s has nothing to do with it.

The media, as per the article above, and the left would like you to believe that this growth is the result of drops in welfare enrollment.  But that’s just not true, as I indicated above.  These programs were growing before welfare reform just as they’re growing now after welfare reform. 

The truth that’s being denied here is that these programs are abject failures.  They have done nothing to increase independence among poorer citizens but rather has made these citizens less independent.  Which means they have failed to do what they set out to do, all while costing American taxpayers trillions upon trillions of dollars.