Bernie Sanders Takes on Clinton Welfare Legacy as He Woos Iowa Unions
Senator Bernard "Bernie" Sanders, an independent from Vermont and possible presidential candidate, pauses before speaking during an interview in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, April 15, 2015.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/BloombergBernie Sanders says both Clintons made a mistake on welfare reform.
In an phone interview Thursday with Bloomberg, the Democratic presidential candidate said that history will not look kindly on the 1996 overhaul of the New Deal anti-poverty program, which then-President Bill Clinton enacted over the objections of many liberal Democrats, including Sanders, who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives at the time. Sanders' chief rival for the Democratic nomination, front-runner Hillary Clinton, wrote in her 2003 book, Living History, that she supported the bill, despite some concerns, because she “felt, on balance, that this was a historic opportunity to change a system oriented toward dependence to one that encouraged independence.”