Transcript
JASON DEPARLE: The overview of the book is its two competing and ultimately colliding narratives. They both start in October 1991. The first one is that a talented young speechwriter named Bruce Reed is sitting in an office in Washington, D.C. crafting a campaign speech for a long-shot candidate for president named Bill Clinton. And he's trying to craft his welfare message and tries a few lines that don't work and hits on one that does: "We should end welfare as we know it."
The line comes out to no acclaim. The New York Times doesn't cover the speech, the Washington Post focuses on something else. But soon this pledge gathers momentum and ultimately sends nine million women and children from the rolls. One of them is a woman named Angela Jobe, and she's the main character of the book.
In October 1991, just as Bruce [Reed] was writing a speech, she was getting on a bus from Chicago to Milwaukee with her best friend and sister-in-law Jewell Reed. Their boyfriends had gone—I say "sister-in-law," it was really "sister-not-in-law" but the sister of the father of her children. They called each other cousins. They get on a bus to move to Milwaukee because their boyfriends have gone to jail in Chicago, and their boyfriends were paying the rent. So without the help from the men, welfare alone wouldn't cover the rent in Chicago. But in Milwaukee, they could use the welfare check to rent an apartment and have money left over. That's all they knew about Milwaukee when they got on the bus. They'd never been there. They get off the bus in Milwaukee to start a new life on welfare just as Milwaukee is poised to be the end-welfare capital of the world.
So these two stories—their move to Milwaukee to get welfare and the Washington attempt to end welfare—come together in their lives.
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