I was quoted in this article, but the quote did not accurately reflect my article's discussion of the ideological underpinnings of welfare reform on both sides of the aisle. Although my article certainly criticized the "sky is falling" rhetoric of some liberal organizations, it was also critical of the willingness of reformers to plunge into a social experiment that could be devastating to families, especially children. Fortunately, the economy was booming when welfare reform was implemented, making it possible for many unskilled workers to find jobs, but even so the percentage of children in dire poverty (half the poverty level or less) increased dramatically. That's because the welfare reform law did not have enough flexibility for welfare recipients who were depressed, disabled, or had other problems that made finding or keeping a job virtually impossible.

Here's an example of a more representative quote from my article that Kay Hymowitz cited: "Although data were quoted in the welfare reform bill, there were no convincing data to predict what would actually happen if the bill passed. A "natural experiment" was taking place, however, that could have answered those questions. Between January 1987 and August 1996, 46 states had received approval for waivers to experiment with AFDC and welfare-to-work programs (GAO, 1997). Since welfare reform represented such a dramatic change in policies, with many lives at stake, it would have been logical to delay a federal welfare reform law until the data were analyzed from those programs. For example, by May 1997, the General Accounting Office, which is a research branch of Congress, had published a report entitled Welfare Reform: States' Early Experiences with Benefits Termination, based on a study conducted at the request of Senator Pat Moynihan. The study found that the benefits of 18,000 families were terminated under waivers through December 1996, most of them in Iowa, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin. More than 99% of these families failed to comply with program requirements...(GAO, 1997). These findings could have been used to design a welfare reform process that protected some of these families, but the bill was passed before the data were available."