If only there were jobs — that’s been the liberal lament for decades on why so many of the poor linger on welfare. Sociologist William Julius Williams created a cottage industry with books and articles blaming the bulging welfare rolls on the absence of jobs. But President Clinton, visiting New York’s leftie Riverside Church, found there’s more to the story. Take a low-level job? Not a chance, welfare recipient Nilda Roman told Clinton. Making people work for benefits is “like a form of slavery,” she said. Those sent to work in mental hospitals face the “most treacherous, most horrible places in the world.” Worse, some must work as janitors. “I’ve seen women clean the toilets, and it’s horrible and demeaning,” she said. Clinton was thunderstruck. The best he could come up with was that students on welfare shouldn’t be pulled out of college.
