Businessweek Archives  Commentary: Ending Welfare As Europe
Knows It (Int'l Edition)  International -- European Business:
COMMENTARY   When Bill Clinton first arrived in the White House,
Europeans who had been shocked by the social imbalance brought
about in the U.S. by Reaganomics felt reassured by the new
President. More than any recent American leader, Clinton looked
like a European social democrat: a champion of free university
education, national health care, and reforms to strengthen labor
unions. Three years later, Clinton has not only abandoned such
ideas, but he has gone conservatives one better by doing in
America's national welfare system.  Europe's belief that it had
a social soulmate in Washington has thus ended with a sharp
reality check. "The two Democratic Presidents who were the
founding fathers of welfare, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B.
Johnson, must be turning over in their graves." said France's
leading daily, Le Monde. "The federal government is abandoning
an essential role--that of