Marta
Marta Russell wrote:
> Tom Waters wrote:
>
> > I think that it would be a good parlor game and probably something much
> > more useful to come up with a list of Clinton's more historically
> > significant crimes and put them in Starr-like form.
> >
> > Tom
>
> Here is a crime of OPPORTUNISM at the expense of disabled children
> to start the Significant Crimes list:
>
> When Clinton signed the last version of welfare "reform," the Work
> Opportunity and Personal Responsibility Act contained a provision unrelated
> to traditional welfare (AFDC) which redefined what consitutes "disability"
> for children. It did away with the individual functional assessement (IFA)
> test which allowed Social Security to go beyond the formal listing of
> impairments in order to evaluate an individual child's combined impairments
> to determine whether s/he was eligible for SSI.
>
> The neoliberal Clinton did not insist that the misplaced provision be
> dropped because it was part of the Social Security disability regulations
> for children. Instead Clinton remarked that the Personal Responsibility Act
> "had serious flaws that are unrelated to welfare reform" but he believed it
> was his "duty to seize the opportunity it gives us to end welfare as we know
> it."
>
> The result of restricting the definition of disability: SSA has thrown some
> 500,000 children off SSI and in many cases, they have lost their only form
> of health care, Medicaid. The American Bar Association has been working to
> see that some of the children get reinstated.
>
> Marta Russell