As the junior senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum shepherded welfare reform through the U.S. Senate in 1996. Given his limited tenure — he’d been elected to the Senate only two years before — the fact that Majority Leader Bob Dole selected Santorum to lead the effort is nothing short of remarkable, Santorum’s former colleagues say. It also is a testament to an overlooked virtue of the ex-senator’s: his pragmatism.
Santorum first entered the House in 1991; two years later, he became ranking member of the subcommittee on human resources. “How I got to be ranking member of that subcommittee does say a lot, I’m afraid, about how Republicans used to view welfare — and too many still do,” Santorum wrote in his 2005 book, It Takes a Family. “Something like five Republican members more senior than I on the committee chose to claim a regular seat on either the Health or Trade subcommittee instead of taking the ranking position. . . . None of my Republican colleagues saw this subcommittee as particularly important to them or their constituents.”
Keep reading this post . . .
