Government Assistance For Needy Families

The welfare system first came into action during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Unemployed citizens needed federal assistance to escape the reality of severe poverty. The welfare system supplies families with services such as: food stamps, medicaid, and housing among others. The welfare system has played a vital role in the US, in controlling the amount of poverty to a certain level. Sadly, the system has been abused and taken for granted by citizens across the country. The welfare system was previously controlled by the federal government until 1996; the federal government handed over the responsibility to the states in hope of reducing welfare abuse. However, this change has not prevented folks from scamming the system. The

When most people think of the average welfare recipient they most likely imagine someone who is a slacker; unambitious and one who is not a hard worker, someone who lazes around waiting until their welfare check comes in so that they can spend it all on whatever frivolous thing they want, and wait until the next check arrives. Sometimes people think of a mother and her children in a poor neighborhood, who wants more money to spend on expensive clothes and electronics, so she gets her welfare checks and buys the expensive yet unnecessary items without using the money to get out of a bad financial situation, contented to live this way without working towards anything better. Nobody would be in support of a system that gives undeserving people their own tax money. However, that is not what welfare looks like. Welfare looks like overworked parents who are doing the best they can, but still don’t have enough to put a meal on the table. Welfare looks like people afraid to lose their homes and willing to do almost anything to just keep living. Welfare looks like the mentally disabled, who despite trying their hardest, need more help. This is what welfare looks like; people in need who strive to live a better life. Welfare helps families in need not only by giving them money but by aiding them with every aspect of their lives such as food, shelter, and more to improve the quality of their life.

Welfare has been around for than six decades. Since the beginning of its creation people have question whether the programs offered is helping the community. As American taxpayer's, your funds contribute to welfare for others. Due to the large number of members who receives government assistants, it is not that simple to monitor every individual. But, I propose that welfare should be reformed. Society is abusing the access to social welfare and to change the downfall sure to come, the government needs to reform the accessibility and ownership of welfare because it defiles the reason why it was formed, it is creating a dependent nation, and effects taxpayers and people who really need government assistance.

The government in the United States needs to realize that the welfare program is only a burden to our country. Welfare is only shown to be fiscally unsustainable the total amount the government spends on welfare comes out to nearly six hundred sixty eight billion dollars per year. That is sixteen times the amount they spent in the 1960’s and yet the poverty rate still remains almost the same. For those people who are using this program or for the people who support it this number may not mean anything but for all the hard working Americans that work hard for a living it must place a lot of pressure and anger on them. To think

The welfare system was originally created to help people who were temporarily out of work or in need of assistance, but “total welfare spending has nearly doubled since 1996” (Donovan and Rector). Through the years, this program has evolved into a system that still offers assistance, but also does not encourage it recipients to find a way out. The welfare system is dishing out millions of dollars each year to recipients who are putting forth zero effort into supporting themselves and their families. Instead, they rely on tax-payer 's money. The weight of supporting these programs is on the shoulders of middle class workers. As a result American society is getting into deeper poverty. “Unless Congress acts, it will drive the nation into bankruptcy” (Donovan and Rector). The welfare system was at once a good idea to help others get off their feet, but it has changed dramatically over the years due to people abusing the system.

Welfare abuse is a severe problem across the country. Each year, millions of Americans receive government benefits such as housing assistance, food stamps, telephone service, and other funds. Welfare is a kind of system that is being set by a government to help and assist families and individuals who are having a hard time providing for themselves such as food, clothing, education and health assistance. This program helped many families survive during The Great Depression and still helps families survive today. Welfare, which was once meant to help individuals re enter society, has been abused and manipulated. The abuse of the Welfare System has become a serious problem. Many dependent persons rely mainly on welfare for their sole source of

When welfare was originally created, the point of welfare was to help people who were struggling to get back on their feet. Whether it be due to a medical emergency, job loss, or other unexpected problems. But that is not the case anymore. Although, welfare fraud often goes unnoticed in our society, the United States is going further into debt due to the amount of people who abuse Medicaid, food stamps,

In the United States there are “over 100 million people receiving some form of federal welfare” (Munoz#7). The purpose of creating the welfare system was to provide aid to those families with “little to no income” (article 1). Back in 1996 Clinton passed the welfare reform act; allowing state full control of the welfare system. The Welfare Reform Act was to help steer welfare

Sometimes life hits you hard, one day you are living paycheck to paycheck, the next day you lose your job and you wonder how you are going to live at all. So you gather your pride and stand in line to ask for assistance. For some, this process is humiliating, for others it is a way of life. Welfare was developed to help Americans suffering through the Depression. At some point it went from providing assistance to becoming a crutch to those who did not want to work. The government decided I was time to put an end to the abuse of the welfare and the Republicans pushed for reform of the system. In many ways the reform did more harm than good and there is a fine line between reform and the edge of poverty. With that being said, many Americans still

As I talked about previously there are certain stereotypes of welfare recipients, some true, many not. A lot of American citizens believe all those stereotypes to be true, and therefore, a great majority of public opinion is against welfare programs. In return, this drives political officials away from helping people who rely government aid and in a lot of circumstances when officials are involved it is to reduce that aid, not give them a voice. “Policies that have determent impacts on, or are ineffective in solving important problems for, certain types of target populations may not produce citizen participation directed toward policy change because the messages received by these target populations encourage withdrawal or passivity” (Schneider,

I believe that everyone has the right to health care, especially if health conditions calls for it. I do not think income level or the type of insurance should dictate the eligibility or quality of care. By using that criteria, we are implying that certain groups of people deserves to be taken care of and have good health while others do not deserve it. I believe healthcare should be accessible to all as a basic human right.

United States Government Welfare began in the 1930’s during the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt thought of this system as an aid for low-income families whose men were off to war, or injured while at war. The welfare system proved to be beneficial early on by giving families temporary aid, just enough to help them accommodate their family’s needs. Fast forward almost 90 years, and it has become apparent that this one once helpful system, has become flawed. Welfare itself and the ideologies it stands on, contains decent fundamentals; furthermore, this system of aid needs only to be reformed to better meet the needs of today’s society.

Throughout history, there have always been people willing to work for what they want, and those who expect things to be handed to them as if it was a natural-born right. While the welfare system does positively impact some families in need, many people take advantage of it. With this being a well known fact, the government still continues to use ten percent of the federal budget on welfare (“Budget” 1).

Historically, social welfare programs were created to alleviate the burden of social problems that society was facing. Some examples of social problems include food insecurity, health insurance, and homelessness among many others. I feel that the premise behind the social welfare programs is good; however, the social welfare programs are not enough. The programs do aid low income families with the necessary aid they need; nonetheless, they aid is not enough. Until recently, my family received SNAP benefits monthly of $120. Although the amount was not a lot, it did help our family purchase food for the month. Two months ago, my husband got a .25¢ for his yearly evaluation which pushed our family income past the “poverty line”; thus, we did not qualify for the renewal.

assistance to low income individuals and families. An estimate of 1.8 million New Yorkers and a total of 46.3 million Americans participate in the SNAP program. Despite the large number of individuals on food stamp the Census Bureau reports in 2010 3.9 million people were lifted above the poverty line and 5 million in 2012 all because of the assistance from SNAP. However the federal government has threaten to cut back on the budget for SNAP. In January 2014 the Farm bill was proposed which included an 8.7 million cut to the SNAP program for the next 10 years. Obama later signed the bill into law on February 7, 2014 saying that the Bill would help create more jobs, move the economy forward and give Americans more equal opportunity (Resnikoff 1). Despite the government’s reasons for the budget cut 850 thousand households would be losing an average of 90 dollars per month (Resnikoff 1). This is unfortunate because reports have shown that SNAP is not only an effective federal program but it also has a positive outcome for individuals. Even in the previous statistics, going from 3.9 million to 5 million people lifted above the poverty line in only a two year difference is a significant breakthrough for low income individuals. It is often easy to find yourself falling under the poverty line, but harder to pick yourself back up. Many individuals who are against the program believe that being on food stamps makes an individual more government dependent and takes away the drive for