Notwithstanding some efforts of President Clinton and some Democratic members of Congress to back away from some aspects of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, the idea that welfare recipients should be nudged, or pushed, into self-sufficiency through employment is widely applauded.
Impatient taxpayers are eager to dismantle most of the traditional welfare state.
For example, the federal government subsidizes commercial ads by companies like MacDonalds and Gallo Winery in foreign countries. The state of California recently sold the real estate that used to be Agnews State Hospital to Sun Microsystems Computer Co. for less than one-half of its fair market value. Both Oakland and San Francisco have given subsidies to privately owned professional football teams for the construction and up-grading of stadiums and shopping malls. First, this is an issue that forges strange alliances. There are not too many questions on which Congressman Kasich and Ralph Nader agree.