A new minimum: $10 and hour.

• Author: Reed, Adolph, Jr.
• Position: Class Notes - Column

President Clinton got his comeuppance at one of his recent welfare-reform dog-and-pony shows. Clinton's penchant for staging photo-ops at black churches to add credibility to his nasty social policies has always struck me as particularly offensive. So it seemed especially fitting that he was attacked at what he presumed was a routine public-relations gig at New York's Riverside Church. The attack was led by Earl Graves, publisher of Black Enterprise magazine.

To applause from the 100 or so people in the church meeting room, Graves took Bipartisan Bill to task for his "unrealistic and unfair" expectation that the private sector will "do the government's job" and make up for the massive cuts in social services this Administration has endorsed. Graves pointed out that the private sector cannot absorb all the people who are about to be tossed off the welfare rolls. Certainly, private employers are not about to give them all jobs that will make it possible for them to support their families.

Nilda Roman, a welfare recipient from New York, joined Graves in criticizing Clinton, pointing out that the new welfare law forces people out of educational programs and into employment that is often demeaning and brutalizing. That is, if they can find any employment at all.

Clinton's response was worse than lame. It was repugnant. He ignored the truth - that the private sector does not provide adequate employment for everyone who is already in the labor market. His own reappointed head of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan, insists that keeping a minimum of eight million people officially unemployed is essential to a "healthy" economy.

Instead, Clinton conjured up the invidious, bogus imagery of a permanently dependent welfare population that is alien to the rest of us. "When you consider that the welfare population is different than it used to be, and that there are some people who are on it perpetually, I think it is a good thing - not a bad thing - that we did that."

In other words, welfare recipients aren't like you and me. They're defective - otherwise they'd have no trouble joining the middle class.

This statement is particularly galling because Clinton knows it's a lie. He is, after all, the policy-wonk President, pals with Marian Wright Edelman and William Julius Wilson. And he hired liberal poverty researchers Mary Jo Bane and David Ellwood. All of these people have debunked the myth of widespread, long-term welfare dependency.

Well, what...