Rudy Giuliani on Welfare & Poverty Former Mayor of New York City; Republican Candidate for 2000 Senate (NY)

FactCheck:Hillary never proposed giving $5000 to every child

It is an exaggeration to say Clinton was going to “give $5,000 to every child.” She never formally proposed such a plan, though she did flirt with the idea for a few days. She told the Wall Street Journal this month that she wouldn’t propose the idea.

Giuliani also exaggerated when he said Clinton’s new proposal would cost $5 billion more than the $5,000-per-baby idea. She estimates that the new retirement plan proposal would cost about $20 billion to $25 billion each year. There were 4,289,000 live births last year. The cost of giving each of those kids a $5,000 bond is $21.4 billion, which is actually more than the low end of Clinton’s estimate for her new plan.

FactCheck: 640,000 off welfare in NYC below national average

The number is correct. Between Dec. 1993, the mont before Giuliani took office, and Dec. 2001, the month he left, the number of people receiving welfare benefits declined from 1.1 million to 462,000, according to statistics compiled by the city’s Independent Budget Office. That total is actually 650,000. While mayor, Giuliani’s welfare reforms were dramatic and wide-ranging.

Whether Giuliani can claim that he personally removed those folks is highly debatable, though. NYC’s reductions occurred during a fall-off in the national welfare rolls, which accelerated when Pres. Clinton signed a comprehensive national welfare reform bill in 1996. In fact, while NYC’s welfare rolls declined by 58.5% under Giuliani’s tenure, the number of recipients nationally dropped by 62.2% between 1993 and 2001.

Moving people off welfare reduces crime

A: There’s a great deal that I learned and a great deal that I regret during the time I was mayor, and a great deal I was very, very satisfied with. I tried very, very hard to treat everyone in New York City the same. We reduced crime by 67 percent. Some of the biggest beneficiaries of that would have been in the poorer neighborhoods of New York City, not necessarily the African-American community but a lot of the communities of New York City. And I worked very, very hard to try to move hundreds of thousands of people out of welfare. We actually followed Tommy Thompson’s program, and we had the most successful welfare-to-work program in the country. We moved 660,000 people off welfare. And I think one of the reasons that crime is still down in New York today.

Sold 80% of city-owned abandoned homes to developers

The policy of selling off the buildings to private developers had begun in previous administrations. But the increases in property values across the city, coupled with the Clinton-era tax breaks, gave investors an incentive to rehabilitate buildings in low-income neighborhoods. Giuliani didn’t pioneer the process, but he injected it with new vigor, pushing for the transfer of buildings as fast as private landlords and community-development organizations could structure transactions to patch up the properties.

Moved 600,000 people off welfare during mayoral term

It was undeniably an impressive statistic. By moving 600,000 New Yorkers off the rolls--more people, the mayor liked to point out, that the population of Buffalo--the city was doing its part to create a new social contract that would move poor people from dependency on government handouts to self-sufficiency. “The city gives more help than any city in America presently does and will continue to do that,“ Giuliani said shortly after taking office. ”The city is going to be asking for something in return for giving that help.“

While the number of families leaving welfare each year had remained fairly constant under Giuliani, the number going on welfare was plummeting. At the same time, the number of families poor enough to qualify for welfare had dropped, but only slightly, from 21% to 19% between 1996 & 2001.

NYC welfare reform focused on workfare assignments

Giuliani portrayed his Work, Accountability, You--WAY--as a descendant of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration. Critics labeled it “slavefare,” pointing out that WAY workers were paid barely minimum wage and were not offered the right to sick days, health benefits, or protections from sexual harassment or capricious dismissal. Early in his second year of office, Giuliani announced that, thanks to what he termed “fraud detection,” more than 10,000 applicants to the Home Relief program for single adults had been rejected.

America Works: pay company for jobs for welfare recipients

The liberal world was incensed about the fact that America Works would “make a profit from welfare.” The company was tying its profit to getting people a job, though, and the concept appealed to me immediately. Those who were not able or willing to find permanent jobs were expected to participate in the Work Experience Program, spending 20 hours a week doing work like cleaning parks and answering phones at various agencies.

Welfare offices as job centers

The homeless need special attention: reach out & help

Change welfare offices into job centers

460,000 moved off welfare rolls during Rudy’s tenure

• More than 460,000 have moved off the welfare rolls since March 1995.
• There have been more than 250,000 participants in the City’s Workfare program since it began in March 1995.
• In November, Mayor Giuliani toured the Hamilton Job Center in Harlem to celebrate the completion of New York City’s eighth Job Center.
• The Human Resources Administration continues the transformation of Welfare Centers into Job Centers to bring more New Yorkers from welfare to work

Do whatever it takes to get the homeless off the streets

Govt stabilizes business; businesses provide jobs