The Magic Bureaucrat

The Uncertain Hour

Marketplace

Government, News

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2016

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the summer of 1996, on the lawn of the White House Rose Garden, President Clinton signed a bill that would dramatically transform the country’s welfare system.

Twenty years later, what the heck is welfare anyway? And we should make it clear — we’re talking about cash assistance to poor families, not food stamps or medicaid.

Welcome to “The Uncertain Hour,” the Wealth & Poverty desk’s new podcast hosted by Senior Correspondent Krissy Clark. In the first episode, we’ll introduce you to the “Magic Bureaucrat” — the former director of a suburban county welfare office. You’ll hear about his foray into synthpop music production and how he launched the welfare reform movement.

Because the things we argue most about are often the things we know the least about.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm holding in my hand a CD produced in the early 1990s.
0:04.4	It's called Work Makes the Difference.
0:07.5	The cover of the CD is Hot Pink and Purple,
0:10.6	very 90s geometric patterns on it,
0:13.2	and the people behind it, the producers,
0:15.2	the songwriters and the performers.
0:17.2	Well, let me just read a couple of the credits for you.
0:20.8	First off, there is Lawrence E. Townsend,
0:24.2	director of the Riverside County Department of Public Social Services,
0:29.5	and below that, there's just a credit line for the Income Maintenance Division staff.
0:34.6	Now, if you're unfamiliar with the jargon of government safety net agencies,
0:38.6	basically these people all worked for a county welfare office.
0:43.2	They made the CD. Here's just a taste.
0:46.2	Well, fair, just a temporary way of a lie.
0:52.5	You don't have to stay there for the rest of your time.
1:02.8	I'm going to tell you the strange story of why this CD got made,
1:06.8	who made it, who its intended audience was,
1:09.8	because it says so much about the mindset at a moment in our history
1:14.4	that we're still grappling with as a country.
1:17.3	The moment when we as a nation scrapped the system we'd been relying on for 60 years to help families
1:28.8	in poverty, the welfare system, and entirely rewrote the rules about who deserves what kind of help and why.
1:37.6	Now, I know when you think about welfare, you probably do not think of 90's synth pop.
	...

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