The Policy Behind the Welfare Reform Act

The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 was an attempt by the government to get people to be more efficient and less reliant on the government. There was a sort of “exchange” between the government and citizens. Citizens work and in return they receive financial assistances. This is referred to as the TANF, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. It was supposed to motivate people to work, or that was the goal. Recipients were required to work at least 20 hours a week. This was actually successful in decreasing the number of Americans who were dependent on welfare systems. As diversity greatly increased, the need for welfare also increased. Welfare reform efforts were attempted because of the various changes occurring. Welfare in the United States is

Social welfare policy that is seen throughout America today has roots that are hundreds of years old. The modern policy in America has been based on five fundamental traditions that were brought from Britain when they colonized North America. Those five traditions are Calvinism, Localism, controlling the mobility of the workforce, reliance on poor houses and work houses, and less eligibility. These traditions will be defined and then connected to the influence they have had on the modern American social policy.

Welfare started as a temporary response to the economic crash in the 1930s. Its primary goal was to provide cushioning to the families who lost the ability to be self-sufficient during the Great Depression. Yet, as America slowly rose back to becoming prosperous and wealthy, a significant chunk of America's population stayed below in the transitioning social system. The welfare system started to become counterproductive to the government so that, in the 1990s, Clinton hastily came up with legislation to end welfare, more famously known as the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. This road that Clinton led ended in a downfall as more people than ever before are now dependent on the federal government for food, housing, and income. Our current welfare reform may need another reform before welfare can truly end.

America spends an annual amount of 131.9 billion dollars on welfare alone (Department of Commerce). So many facts about welfare are overwhelming, such that over 12,800,000 Americans are on the welfare system. The entire social welfare system is in desperate need of a complete reform. In order for a proper reform to ensue, the people of America must combine efforts with the U.S. government to revitalize the current welfare system. This reform would involve answering two important questions. First, how has today’s welfare system strayed from its original state and secondly, how is the system abused by welfare holders in today’s economy?

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

The effects of the 1996 welfare reform bill helped declined caseloads on the social and economic well-being of fragile families, single mothers, and children. Although, the welfare reform was documented for making several positive changes such as reducing poverty rates, lowering the out of-wedlock childbearing, and formulated a better family structure, it is undeniable that poverty remained high among single mothers and their children. The reality of the matter was that most welfare recipients experienced serious barriers to maintain a stable employment due to their lack of skills, not having anyone available to take care of their young children when they leave for work as well as not gaining long-time employment with decent pay to help foster the family. As a result, most poor women and children were faced with the instability of economic and social future as welfare eligibility exhausted their efforts of supporting their families.

Thousands of people are signed up to receive welfare in America, this program is designed to aid poor and needy families. However, it has become some people’s way of earning an income. Several argue against and say that welfare is not destroying our country and creating a dependent people who have learned to abuse certain privileges that come with living in this nation.

What would happen if the government made changes to the welfare system? There are approximately 110,489,000 of Americans on welfare. Many people benefit from what the system has to offer: food stamps, housing, health insurance, day care, and unemployment. Taxpayers often argue that the individuals who benefit from the system, abuse the system; however, this is not entirely true. Many of the people who receive benefits really and truly need the help. Even though some people believe welfare should be reformed, welfare should not be reformed because 40% of single mothers are poor, some elderly people do not have a support system, and college students can not afford to take extra loans.

Several states have recently begun to enact legislation that requires welfare recipients to submit to drug tests before they are eligible to receive any public assistance. The purpose of mandatory drug testing is to prevent the potential abuse of taxpayer money, help individuals with drug problems, and ensure that public money is not subsidizing drug habits (Wincup, 2014). While these are noble intentions, current programs are not meeting these standards.

The Welfare reform act of 1996, is the most significant piece of welfare legislation since Franklin D. Roosevelt implemented the Neal Deal. The goals of this act were to move people of the welfare, limiting the amount of time on public assistance, and requiring that recipients work and inquire personal responsibility. However, this proposed about as many questions as it answered. For many it was unclear how people would find employment but nonetheless, what would happen to children once their family was no longer eligible for the system. Overtime, the reform did just as it was established to do; it made personal responsibility and work central to the welfare agenda, shifting welfare to the states.

Welfare was designed to reduce poverty, yet the poverty rates have only increased. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (welfare) was designed to help families struggling with financial hardships for a short period of time. It is not a lifelong program like so many assume it is. President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “Continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit” (Gaiser 3). What he meant by saying this is that we are enabling people to become dependent on others which is detrimental, not only to the recipients of welfare, but to the nation as a whole. We are not doing any good to anyone by continually supporting the poor and underprivileged with welfare systems because they are not doing their job; they are not helping people out of poverty. In fact, the Libertarian Party says they are doing just the opposite, and now that officials have realized this, they are trying to make up for it. However, they are doing so in the wrogn ways. The welfare reform has pushed

Welfare Reform: Promoting Personal Responsibility and Serving the Needs of the PoorIntroductionDuring Bill Clinton’s campaign for Presidency in 1992, he promised Americans that he would make it his priority to end welfare as we know it (Clinton). This goal was made in response to the increase of public pressure to reform a system that many believed had become wasteful and ineffective. In response to this criticism, Clinton called attention to the importance of work instead of dependency on the government. He followed through with his promises and effectively transformed welfare programs unlike any other president. He took a system that was known for its long-term dependency and transformed it to help people become self-supporting. In this

Welfare reform sparked a great deal of interest in the 1990’s when President Clinton called together a speech calling for dramatic changes to the welfare policy. In his speech he stated “No one who works full-time and has children at home should be poor anymore. No one who can work should

The welfare reform signed by President Clinton in the United States on August 22, 1966. This reform’s objective was to cause a change in the State’s Welfare system because of the increased level of poverty within the country. It was to offer a personal work opportunity and responsibility and was to offer support to many needy families and children within the country. This program had a focus on accountability and work to provide a state with the flexibility in addressing poverty challenges (Chan & Moffitt 2018). This direction undertaken by the UK Coalition government was in line with its plan towards a radical reform for the benefits associated with welfare that began at the establishment of the welfare state. One of the aims associated

In 1935, Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the Social Security Act which, among other things, provided for the financial, medical, and material needs of the poor (Komisar 125,128). Since then, there have many additions and reforms to the bill, none of which has served to quell the controversy surrounding the effectiveness of the welfare system in the United States. The main concerns of the distribution of welfare dollars and resources can be answered by the questions ?Who gets assistance?? and ?How much do they receive??. The U.S. welfare system is administered by the Department of Health and Human Services, which attempts to answer these questions through a system of minimum incomes, government-calculated poverty levels, number of children, health problems, and many other criteria. This complicated system leads to one of the critiques of the welfare system?that it is too large and inefficient. President Lyndon Johnson declared a ?War on Poverty? in 1964 designed to alleviate the burden of the poor and established the Food Stamp program the next year (Patterson 139). In 1996, a major welfare reform bill was passed that placed time limits on welfare assistance, required able participants to actively seek employment, and implemented additional services for the needy (Patterson 217).