"It was largely lost amid the glut of post-election news, but last week an important political figure called for a major cutback in social-welfare benefits. In doing so, he denounced welfare as a program that created “a cycle of generational poverty, government dependency, and economic disparity.”
It was not a newly elected Republican or a leader of the Tea Party movement, nor was it a conservative talk-radio host or a Fox News commentator. It didn’t even come from analysts at the Cato Institute. Instead that pronouncement, and the legislation to back it up, came from former Washington mayor Marion Barry, currently a city councilman, who has introduced a bill to impose a strict five-year time limit on welfare benefits in the District of Columbia."
