This began with welfare reform, especially the quite succesful one of '96. Now, before Clinton reluctantly signed it through there had been two instances where both reps and dems had lamented a proposed reform. Reps because the only way they govern is to make every public institution so shitty and ineffective that it has to be stripped cold turkey, and the dems because they are rigid and whiny. Now, the reps tried attaching poison pills to the reform twice before Clinton finally made it through, and the country is now reaping the benefits. It would have been better still if Clinton could have made the reform he actually wanted. There was nothing bipartisan about it, it wasn't the best possible reform and it sure as hell wasn't grace of the right. The reason so many welfare rolls have declined is because people have been kicked off, and now they can't get jobs because Bush hasn't handled the economy as much as he has given it incompetent backrubs. I try to see things from a libertarian perspective but I believe in a marginal, steady dismantling of government and its extensions. Kicking people off without giving them a way to climb on by themselves is not conscionable.
http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2006/08/welfare-deform-sad-anniversary.html