By Obama's Standards, He's America's Biggest Child Abuse Facilitator

By President Obama’s own standards, he just might be the nation’sbiggest child abuse facilitator since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

What does that mean? Let’s hop in the wayback machine – all the wayback to April 8, 1997, when young State Senator Barack Obama did aninterview with Chinta Strausberg of the Chicago Defender. There, hereportedly explained that “the flurry of child abuse cases could reduce drastically if more jobs could be created but only those payingliving wages.”

In other words, if you spread the wealth around, those abused kidswill all be better off. As Obama puts it, “We have to make sure thatfamilies are intact and have some order. If the parents don’t havetheir lives together a lot of times they’ll take it out on theirkids.”

Obama even stated that the new welfare reform law would increase childabuse: “We’re going to have some real problems placing thesefolks–welfare recipients–into jobs, particularly those paying a livingwage. If people aren’t making a living wage, if they don’t have meansof support, it’s more likely that we end up seeing some of the childabuse cases.”

Obama, of course, was wrong on all counts. The increase in labor forceparticipation led to one of the greatest periods of economic expansionin American history.But the broader Obama point remains: If only President Obama had founda way to alleviate poverty, perhaps he could have stilled StateSenator Obama’s fears about increases in child abuse.

As we’ve seen,deaths per day due to child abuse have risen from 4.77 in 2008 to wellabove 5 as of 2010. If that’s the fault of America’s leadership notdoing enough to help the poor, Obama has only himself to blame.