OAS Suspends Honduras; Zelaya's Vow to Return Stirs Controversy

JOSE DE CORDOBA PAUL KIERNAN

Associated Press

The Organization of American States meets in emergency session, in Washington, to consider suspending Honduras' membership because of the coup that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.

TEGUCIGALPA -- The stage was set on Sunday for a dramatic confrontation in Honduras, with plans by ousted president Manuel Zelaya to return to the country to take up his post despite threats by the provisional government that he will be arrested and jailed upon arrival.

Mr. Zelaya's plans to return, however, could be upended by the new leaders of this small Central American country. On Sunday, the Tegucigalpa airport was closed, according to eyewitnesses.

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• Discuss: Was it really a coup?

Honduras has continued to defy the international community. Late on Saturday, the Organization of American States voted to suspend the country from the multilateral body, which has 34 active members. Earlier, Honduras' provisional government said it would rather be kicked out of the OAS than allow Mr. Zelaya to return to the presidential seat.

Mr. Zelaya, a Stetson hat-wearing leftist who is close allies to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, told Venezuela's state-run Telesur TV network that he planned to fly to Honduras on Sunday along with Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner and Ecuador's Rafael Correa, also leftists.

"We will arrive at the international airport in Tegucigalpa, Honduras with several presidents, (and) members of international organizations," Mr. Zelaya told Caracas-based station Telesur, according to the Associated Press.

The country's acting leaders, however, don't appear to be bluffing about arresting the president if he returns. In the days after he was sent packing to Costa Rica by Honduras' military, the provisional government has accused Mr. Zelaya of multiple crimes, from treason to drug trafficking.

If Mr. Zelaya returns, the chances of a violent confrontation appeared high. Responding to a call by the ousted president, thousands of his supporters turned up at the Tegucigalpa airport to show their support.

Honduras' influential Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez, the highest ranking Catholic Church official in the country, went on national television to urge the exiled president not to come back. "We think that a return to the country at this time could unleash a bloodbath in the country," Cardinal Rodriguez said. "To this day, no Honduran has died. Please meditate because afterwards it would be too late."

The prelate also criticized Mr. Zelaya, suggesting the Church was throwing its weight behind the provisional government. "The day of your swearing in, you clearly quoted the three commandments of the sacred law of God: Not to lie, not to steal, and not to kill," said the Cardinal, who was seen as a leading candidate to succeed the late Pope John Paul II.

Mr. Zelaya, the son of a wealthy farmer who ran for office as a centrist, sharply polarized the country when his politics took a left turn and he aligned his government closely with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Honduras joined Mr. Chavez's trade pact, received cut rate oil from Venezuela, and embarked on an attempt to rewrite the constitution that critics say would have let Mr. Zelaya extend his term.

To that end, Mr. Zelaya wanted to hold a referendum on whether voters wanted to change the constitution. The vote was declared illegal by Honduras' Supreme Court, but the president vowed to press on. Last Sunday, the day the referendum was set to take place, soldiers stormed the presidential residence and seized the leader at gunpoint. Congress later swore in Roberto Micheletti, the president of Congress.

So far, attempts at diplomacy have failed. OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza arrived on Friday for talks with leading politicians and figures like Cardinal Rodriguez. But Mr. Insulza left soon after, saying the interim government didn't want to budge. "The break in the constitutional order persists and those that did this don't seem to have any intention of reversing that situation," he told a news conference late on Friday.

Mr. Insulza said that officials on Friday presented him with a large quantity of charges against the former leader but that the diplomat still wasn't convinced the coup plotters took the right course of action. "If someone has an accusation against a president, they make them," Mr. Insulza said. "There are mechanisms to force him out of office. They have to do it in a legal way."

Some in Honduras, however, criticize Mr. Insulza and the OAS for suspending Honduras from the group while at the same time pushing to allow Cuba back in despite that country's Communist dictatorship.

The provisional government insists there was no coup and that the ouster of the president was legal, saying Mr. Zelaya had ignored court orders to stop the referendum, and that his arrest was ordered by the Supreme Court. But the new leaders have so far been unable to explain several key questions: Why was a court arrest warrant carried out by the military instead of the police? And why was the president exiled instead of jailed? Since Mr. Zelaya's ouster, the army has taken responsibility for exiling him, saying it did so to avoid the bloodshed and instability it thought would take place had Mr. Zelaya been taken to prison to await trial.

Making matters worse, the provisional government has also decreed that individuals can be arrested with no charge for up to 72 hours, extended a nighttime curfew, and cracked down on media outlets that oppose the coup. The army also appears to have limited freedom of movement. According to local media and emails sent to The Wall Street Journal, soldiers have shot out the tires of several buses packed with pro-Zelaya supporters to prevent them from coming to the capital from rural areas, where Mr. Zelaya's support is higher.

Return of Le Car

• By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.

"When you buy a car, I hope it will be a Democratic car."

Oops. We have misquoted the president. He said last week he hoped you would buy an "American car" -- though apparently not one built in a red state in a plant owned by Japanese or German investors. He meant a car built by a company headquartered in Detroit, even if the car itself is assembled in Mexico or Canada. How confusing.

AP

Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne.

Hundreds of shoppers certainly understood him to mean a Chrysler car. They rushed into dealerships last weekend. Never mind that Chrysler isn't technically making cars in the U.S. at the moment -- it shut down its factories -- and when it reopens it will be on a path to ownership by a company based in Turin, Italy.

A year ago, Fiat Chief Sergio Marchionne's big play in the U.S. was to begin reintroducing the Alfa Romeo brand. He fretted about where to get the $100 million to fund the marketing effort. Now, with a global auto depression descending, he gets $6 billion of American and Canadian taxpayer money to lean on.

Don't underestimate the appeal of that cushion for Fiat.

As for Chrysler -- well, you could call this merger made in Washington George Bush's baby as much as Barack Obama's.

Chrysler would be in deep yogurt in any case amid the market collapse, but its other problem is a decent franchise in Jeeps, muscle cars, minivans and pickups -- and nothing to meet Congress's stiff new "corporate average" fuel economy rules, and nobody to supply the billions to develop such vehicles and (inevitably) bribe customers to drive them off the lots.

Daimler, its previous parent, certainly had no desire to fund such profitless extravagance. The Germans took a lot of guff but they're the ones laughing now. They sold their majority stake in Chrysler just months after Democrats took over Congress, and just weeks after President Bush began blathering about "oil addiction" and echoing Democratic demands for stringent new fuel-mileage rules (after opposing them for years).

It's no exaggeration to say the rest of the story is told in Chrysler's bankruptcy filing. In search of a partner to underwrite development of fuel-sipping hybrids and electric cars that would be almost certain to lose money in the U.S. marketplace, Chrysler's Tom LaSorda spent two years seeking alliances with Nissan, GM, Volkswagen, Tata, Magna, GAZ, Hyundai, Honda, Toyota, Beijing Auto and others -- efforts that were "uniformly without success." Fiat, he said in an affidavit, was "Chrysler's last best hope."

Not since Renault teamed up with AMC to bring you Le Car has an odder pairing been seen -- or a less promising one.

Credulous media accounts insist the only challenge now is whether Chrysler can hang on for two years until Fiat begins churning out U.S. versions of its popular European models in U.S. factories. Goodness.

Unless gasoline prices go to $5 a gallon, Mr. Marchionne certainly is not so foolish to believe making and selling teensy eurocars in the U.S. is anybody's route to salvation.

Even in Europe, he has noted, a move to bigger, more powerful cars is underway. Motorists are getting fatter and older -- and unwilling to contort themselves to get in and out of a car.

He also understands that trying to beat Toyota at its own game is a nonstarter. Toyota sets a standard of quality and technology that all must meet -- that's the price of admission. But "what we have that Toyota does not have -- and I say this with all modesty -- is the great historical heritage of the brands."

Look at the Ford Mustang, VW Beetle, Dodge Charger, Chevy Camaro, BMW Mini -- for all the talk of the Toyota way, the real path to success for many lately has been making and selling evocative cars that mean something to consumers. Fiat's own Audrey Hepburnesque "Cinquecento" has been a hit for exactly this reason -- but in southern Europe not northern Europe, which ought to caution against any hope that the pixie car will sell particularly well in the U.S.

About one thing Mr. Marchionne has been unfailingly clear: He sees an auto Armageddon coming and believes survivors must produce at least 5.5 million units a year (Fiat produced just 2.2 million last year).

He's already turned his attention to Opel, GM's European arm, which is on the market. Notice, though, that he's committed no money to Chrysler, only a promise of vehicle technology. As a New York Times story recently trailed off, ". . . at some point, some [Obama auto] task force members acknowledge, the drive for profitability is likely to collide with Mr. Obama's fuel-efficiency and low-emission goals."

Yup. Mr. Marchionne has kept his skin out of the game for a reason. Don't expect him to reach for Fiat's modest checkbook until Team Obama can explain exactly how Chrysler is supposed to make money building the "green cars" Mr. Obama wants it to build. But you already know the answer: You, the taxpayer, have not finished chipping in to keep Fiat-Chrysler alive.

Return of the money snatchers?

Return of the money snatchers?

Foreboding of a new round of inflation

By Richard W. Rahn

When will the next round of inflation hit, and how can we protect ourselves? Many economists and commentators, including yours truly, have warned about the potential of a new round of high inflation due to the great expansion of government spending. But does an increase in government spending necessarily translate into higher inflation? The answer is "no," but it most often does, and this is why.

An increase in government spending must be financed by increasing taxation, or increasing government borrowing, or creating more money by the central bank (the Federal Reserve), or all of the above. Increasing taxation or government borrowing does not directly increase inflation, but if the central bank creates new money faster than goods and services are increased, inflation will result.

President Obama and a majority of the Democrats have promised they will only increase taxes on the rich, which, by their current definition, includes about the top 5 percent of taxpayers who pay 60 percent of the federal income tax. The problem the Obama Democrats face is that it is precisely this group that already pays the highest tax rates (in many cases around 50 percent combined federal, state and local income taxes), and this group is both the most sensitive to tax rate changes and has the greatest ability to either legally or illegally avoid or evade paying more taxes (even by choosing not to work).

Collectively, this group does not have enough income to pay for all of the new government spending, even if the government could collect it - which it can't!

The United States has been fortunate in recent years because the Chinese, Japanese and many other non-American individuals and institutions have been buying U.S. government debt and investing in U.S. businesses. This inflow of capital has not only financed the government deficits, but has provided inexpensive capital for the U.S. private sector, allowing it to grow very rapidly.

This is now changing. Because of the global recession, every significant economy, with the exception of Norway, which has a small population and lots of oil revenue, is running a government deficit. Thus, collectively, governments around the world will issue many trillions of dollars of new government bonds in the next few years.

In order to sell all of this government debt, higher interest rates will be offered to induce people to save more rather than consume and to divert their investments from corporate stocks and bonds and venture capital to government bonds.

If people save more and consume less, the demand for goods and services will grow more slowly and fewer new jobs will be created. If people invest more in government securities and less in the private sector, there will be less research-and-development spending, lower productivity growth and less business expansion and job creation.

As interest rates rise, fewer people will be able to afford new homes, and businesses will find fewer profitable investments, all of which will keep unemployment rates high. The Federal Reserve will be under tremendous political pressure to create more money - largely by buying its own government debt - which in the short run can temporarily decrease interest rates, but over the long run will cause interest rates to rise steeply as inflation comes roaring back. The Fed will then have to stomp on the monetary brakes again, which will lead to another recession. This is precisely what happened during the late 1970s and early 1980s until there was the switch in economic policy under former President Ronald Reagan.

The Obama administration is forecasting higher rates of growth, and lower inflation and unemployment than the consensus forecast (Blue Chip Economic Indicators) of private sector economists, while at the same time proposing a series of laws and regulations that, if enacted, would make it impossible to achieve its own forecasts. Specifically, the Obama Democrats are proposing (among other things):

• Massive environmental regulations and taxes, which would depress incomes for most Americans and increase business costs, both of which would depress employment.

• Costly increases in labor regulations, including card check, which would make it much more costly for employers to hire workers and, therefore, fewer workers would be hired.

• A series of truly foolish laws and Treasury regulations whose purpose is to try to get a few billion dollars in additional tax revenue from businesses and individuals who operate outside the United States, but whose real effect would put at risk trillions of dollars of foreign investment into the U.S. at a time when it is most needed. This, in turn, would cost the U.S. hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of new jobs.

Unless the Obama Democrats suddenly get religion and start applying real cost-benefit analyses to their proposals before they leap, the United States is doomed for a repeat of the late 1970s - higher taxes, higher inflation, slower growth and more unemployment - when productivity growth was less than half the level of the last decade. Individuals can partially protect themselves by buying inflation-indexed U.S. government bonds (as long as they remain available), reducing their debt loads, particularly nonfixed-interest-rate debt, diversifying their assets across the globe, and - perhaps, praying for a new Mr. Reagan.

Richard W. Rahn is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth.

Will Islam Return Obama's 'Respect'?

Will Islam Return Obama's 'Respect'?

• By DANIEL HENNINGER

Today is Holy Thursday for Christians and the start of Passover for Jews. This week was an opportune time for President Barack Obama to visit Istanbul's Hagia Sophia, which has been both a Byzantine church and Islamic mosque. In Turkey he spoke of seeking engagement with Islam based on "mutual respect."

Getty Images

Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left) take a guided tour of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

The subject of this column is the status of minority faith groups, mostly Christian, living inside Islamic countries. That status is poor. In some cases it verges on extinction, after centuries of coexistence with Islam. So it is useful to review what Mr. Obama said of his goals for living with Islam:

"I know that the trust that binds the United States and Turkey has been strained, and I know that strain is shared in many places where the Muslim faith is practiced. So let me say this as clearly as I can: The United States is not, and will never be, at war with Islam. . . .

"We seek broader engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect. We will listen carefully, we will bridge misunderstandings, and we will seek common ground. We will be respectful, even when we do not agree. We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith. . . . Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country. I know, because I am one of them."

Islam must show respect for Christian minorities, says Wonder Land columnist Daniel Henninger. (April 9)

This is an eloquent description of ecumenical civility. In reality, the experience of Arab Christians living now amid majority Islamic populations is often repression, arrest, imprisonment and death.

Coptic Christians in Egypt have been singled out for discrimination and persecution. Muslim rioters often burn or vandalize their churches and shops.

In Turkey, the Syriac Orthodox Church (its 3,000 members speak Aramaic, the language of Christ) is battling with Turkish authorities over the lands around the Mor Gabriel monastery, built in 397.

Pakistan's recent peace deal with the Taliban in the Swat Valley puts at risk the 500 Christians still trying to live there. Many fled after Islamic extremists bombed a girls' school late last year. Pakistan has never let them buy land to build a church.

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Listen to Daniel Henninger's Wonder Land column, now available in audio format.

In 1995, the Saudis were allowed to build a mosque in Rome near the Vatican, but never reciprocated with a Christian church in their country. Saudi Arabia even forbids private worship at home for some one million Christian migrant workers.

In Iraq, the situation for small religious minorities has become dire. Reports emerge regularly of mortal danger there for groups that date to antiquity -- Chaldean-Assyrians, the Yazidis and Sabean Mandaeans, who revere John the Baptist. Last fall the Chaldean-Assyrian archbishop of Mosul was kidnapped and murdered. Some Iraqi Christians believe the new government won't protect them, and talk of moving into a "homeland" enclave in Nineveh. Penn State Prof. Philip Jenkins, author of "The Lost History of Christianity," calls the Iraq situation "a classic example of a church that is killed over time."

In short, the "respect" Mr. Obama promised to give Islam is going only in one direction. And he knows that.

Candidate Obama last fall sent a letter to Condoleezza Rice expressing "my concern about the safety and well-being of Iraq's Christian and other non-Muslim religious minorities." He asked what steps the U.S. was taking to protect "these communities of religious freedom." Candidate Obama said he wanted these groups represented in Iraq's governing institutions. Does President Obama believe these things?

A Bush official who worked on this problem in Iraq told me there is a school of thought that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki understands that these ancient groups are Iraq's "connective tissue," and that weaving them formally into the system could be a basis for binding together his fractured nation. If these harmless peoples can't coexist, who can?

Mr. Obama's designated ambassador to Iraq, Christopher Hill, has been criticized for subordinating human-rights issues with North Korea. That would be a mistake in the Middle East. The willingness of Islamic governments to formally protect these small Christian groups should be a litmus test of their bona fides on larger political issues.

If Islam won't let its leaders give basic rights to a handful of ancient Christians, there is no hope for what Mr. Obama proposed this week in Turkey. What his special envoy for Middle East peace, George Mitchell, wishes to achieve with Israel and its neighbors will also fail, again.

An established network of smart people exists to help Mr. Obama here, starting with the Vatican of Pope Benedict XVI and its diplomatic outreach efforts to senior Islamic clerics. The widely connected Anglican Vicar of Baghdad, Andrew White, also happens to be director of the little-known Religious Sectarian project for the U.S. Department of Defense. There are many others.

Mr. Obama should make formalized tolerance of Christian sects in the Middle East the basis for arriving at what he called "common ground" with Islam. As will be noted in churches in the rest of the world this weekend, that "common ground" was first walked in the Middle East 2,000 years ago.

Neoconservatism: The Return

Neoconservatism: The Return

A new incarnation, a new name – and the same old warmongering

by Justin Raimondo

It was a neocon moment: there they were, the organizers of the Foreign Policy Initiative, the new neoconservative think-tank – Bill Kristol, Dan Senor, and Robert Kagan, with Clifford May, Randy Scheunemann, and junior neocon James Kirchick in tow. It was the occasion of FPI’s first public event – their Washington coming out party, so to speak – and who should show up but I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. A more fitting symbol of the neoconservative tendency in American politics – its history, its methods, and its essential criminality – could hardly be conceived.

While John McCain was ostensibly the main attraction, the real focus of the conference was a celebration of the man who defeated him. As David Weigel put it, the FPI conference turned into a "Neocons for Obama" festival, as super-hawkish foreign policy maven Fred Kagan hailed President Obama’s Af-Pak offensive as the best thing since the Iraqi "surge": "He’s definitely saying no to pulling back. It was a gutsy and correct decision." Yet all is not rosy: "Kagan worried/predicted that Obama’s base would bristle at the plan, so ‘he will be counting on some significant amount of support from his political opponents.’"

Not to worry. The brain-dead Obamaites are shamelessly eager to grant their Glorious Leader a pass, no matter what he does. So far, there is not a peep out of Obama’s liberal supporters, except a few voices raised at the Nation, even as the president mounts a major escalation of the Long War. Not only that, but his supporters are rallying around their commander in chief, now that we’re fighting the "right" war in the "right" way. And take a good look at some of his supporters…

FPI is the latest in a long line of neocon front groups, all of them – the Committee on the Present Danger, the Committee for a Free World, the Project for a New American Century [.pdf] – aimed at whipping the country into a militaristic frenzy. There is not only an ideological legacy here, but a genealogical one, as the catalytic role of a member of the Kristol family has always been instrumental in organizing these groups – Irving back in the day, his son William more recently. The one and only aim of this ideological Mafia is to conjure enemies and agitate relentlessly for a more aggressive foreign policy. The neocons may shift from Left to Right and back again when it comes to economic issues, but what they really care about – where their hottest passions lie – is in maintaining and expanding America’s overseas empire.

They are ecstatic that Obama is launching a major offensive on the Afghan-Pakistan front, and they are urging him to do more. Their latest campaign is undertaken in cooperation with the "progressives" over at the Center for American Progress and the Center for a New American Security, both conduits for recent and future administration appointees.

The Af-Pak popular front means an alliance of convenience between the neocons and the White House, not at all a surprising development if one knows the history of these former Scoop Jackson Democrats turned "conservative" Republicans. They can function quite well no matter which party is in power, and they always have a prominent public forum, no matter how discredited their views are in the public mind. Of one thing we can be sure: the infiltration of the Obama administration has already begun, with Dennis Ross – who signed on to more than one PNAC letter urging war with Iraq – now ensconced as a envoy dealing with Iran.

First on the program, John A. Nagl, the Center for a New American Security’s president. CNAS is enormously influential in the foreign policy councils of the Obama administration, and Nagl is a key figure among the so-called national security Democrats. He is the chief theoretician of the "nation-building" counterinsurgency doctrine espoused by Gen. David Petraeus, architect of the Iraqi "surge" that now is backfiring in our faces.

Nagl is paired with Robert Kagan, a second-generation neocon, co-founder, with Kristol the Younger, of PNAC, and a tireless cog in the War Party’s propaganda machine. The topic under discussion: "Internationalism vs. Isolationism." Yes, the "internationalists" of both parties can put aside their differences and unite against the dreaded isolationists, those fearsome, anti-social troglodytes who insist on minding their own business and wish that the American government would, too.

Moderating this anti-"isolationist" hate-fest was Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial page editor at the Washington Post, a newspaper that serves as the voice and guardian of the bipartisan "internationalism" that rules out any real debate when it comes to foreign policy.

Rep. Jane Harman, noted Democratic hawk and chair of the House intelligence subcommittee, also spoke, alongside Republican John McHugh of New York, who was on the House floor the other day demanding that Congress "ensure the [president's Afghan-Pakistan] strategy is fully funded, resourced, and executed."

It doesn’t matter to these people that the nation is sick of war and near bankruptcy: they live inside the Washington bubble, the Imperial City, where hubris permeates the air. It doesn’t matter how many times the neocons have been repelled, they just keep bouncing back. This is a crew of respected "analysts" and policy wonks that has never been right, not about anything. From their gross overestimation of Soviet military power in the Cold War era, to the "domino theory" that kept us in Vietnam, to their willfully erroneous assumption that Iraq possessed "weapons of mass destruction," their foreign policy prognostications leave behind them a trail of uninterrupted error. It is a record unequaled in the history of ideas, yet the neocons’ influence, while it is currently waning, never disappears altogether. The neocons always make a comeback, and a well-funded one to be sure.

The innocuous-sounding Foreign Policy Initiative is just the sort of camouflage the neocons need in the age of Obama: no more proclamations of a "New American Century," but rather more sober-sounding, "pragmatic" slogans. Together with their newfound liberal and "progressive" allies, they beat the drums for more military spending, a rising confrontation with Russia, and, of course, a showdown with Iran.

Having exhausted their previous host, the GOP, the neocons have no qualms about moving on. The Democrats will do just as well. Whoever’s in power is the object of their affection. Their role is to whisper in the ear of the prince, to make sure he gets the "right" information – and then sabotage him if he fails to respond to their ministrations.

As the neocons hail Obama, their new conquering hero, the irony of all this underscores the difficulties of instituting real change in our foreign policy. The same old faces turn up no matter which party is in power, and the same old ideas – shopworn "internationalist" bromides – dominate a consensus that never questions whether an empire is good for the American people.

The Return of Welfare As We Knew It

The House stimulus bill endangers Clinton's biggest reform.

BENJAMIN E. SASSE KERRY N. WEEMS

Twelve years ago, President Bill Clinton signed a law that he correctly proclaimed would end "welfare as we know it." That sweeping legislation, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, eliminated the open-ended entitlement that had existed since 1965, replacing it with a finite, block grant approach called the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program.

TANF has been a remarkable success. Welfare caseloads nationally fell from 12.6 million in 1997 to fewer than five million in 2007. And yet despite this achievement, House Democrats are seeking to undo Mr. Clinton's reforms under the cover of the stimulus bill.

Currently, welfare recipients are limited to a total of five years of federal benefits over a lifetime. They're also required to begin working after two years of government support. States are accountable for helping their needy citizens transition from handouts to self-sufficiency. Critically, the funds provided to states are fixed appropriations by the federal government.

Through a little noticed provision of the stimulus package that has passed the House of Representatives, the bill creates a fund for TANF that is open-ended -- the same way Medicare and Social Security are.

In the section of the House bill dealing with cash assistance to low-income families, the authors inserted the bombshell phrase: "such sums as are necessary." This is a profound departure from the current statutory scheme, despite the fact that, in this particular bill, state TANF spending would be capped. The "such sums" appropriation language is deliberately obscure. It is a camel's nose provision intended to reverse Clinton-era legislation and create a new template for future TANF reauthorizations.

Most liberals have always disliked welfare reform; critics of TANF believed Mr. Clinton supported it only to get re-elected. Some asserted it was racist or intended to punish the poor. Others claimed that the funds to assist single mothers with child care, transportation and job training were never as generous as were allegedly promised. Today, the fact that disqualification from the program is based on failing to secure a job within two years seems especially harsh given this economic crisis.

There are legitimate objections to the program that are worth debating. But this is not an open debate: It is a near secret provision buried deep in a more than 600-page piece of legislation.

The TANF provisions of the stimulus bill, like the nearly $100 billion Medicaid provisions, are less about stimulating the economy, and more about the federal government absorbing the states' budget problems. State budgets may be swamped with those needing temporary relief, and a contingency fund could help. But it should be a definite amount, not a precedent-setting, open-ended amount. (If the initial TANF allocation is not sufficient, Congress could appropriate another definite amount.)

The offending language is not in yesterday's Senate version of the bill, but that provides little comfort. The attempt to undo welfare reform has not been transparent, and the conference committee provides the perfect closed-door environment for slipping in "such sums" language into the final bill without public scrutiny.

Welfare reform was arguably the most important legislative development of the mid-1990s. It is bad policy to jettison it with five words during an economic crisis.

All who are concerned about our nation's unfunded obligations should be on guard against attempts to slip "such sums" language into any conference committee bill. Welfare policy is too important to change with a stealth maneuver.

Mr. Sasse, former U.S. assistant secretary of Health and Human services, teaches policy at the University of Texas. Mr. Weems, former vice chairman of the American Health Information Community, held the position of administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services until last month.