THE ENIGMA OF WORKING-CLASS CONSERVATISM A HOUSE DIVIDED How Welfare Reform Pits Working Families Against

work; in this way, it was a profoundly visionary piece of social legislation. Through pushing welfare reform, the Right not only acknowledged that moth-ers work, but they also exploited the growing contradictions between the anxi-eties facing the working class in a declining economy, and the lack of assistance offered to the working poor as compared with aid to the nonworking poor. The Right’s agenda avoided any expansion of social policy to include working families; instead it sought to limit aid to nonworking, poor families. Welfare reform (The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996) was the cornerstone of this agenda. AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE ECONOMIC REALI-ties facing working families groundedthe Right’s attack on welfare. The work-ing poor—families who are attached to the la-bor market, but are still unable to afford basics like housing, health care, and child care—re-ceive little if any help from the government’s patchwork of social programs. In practice, mos