The Pros and Cons of Welfare Reform Essay

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

People generally enjoy working and being productive members of society. The positive effects of the Welfare Reform Act is moving to eventually end poverty in America and promote economic growth. According to the 2005 report measuring welfare dependents “Poverty in 2003 remains much lower than in 1996, the year of passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. The official poverty rate for 2003 was 12.5 percent, compared to 13.7 percent in 1996.” ( Gil Crouse, Susan Hauan, Julia Isaacs, Kendall Swenson and Lisa Trivits, 2005 ) States that design welfare-to-work policies that emphasized getting recipients into jobs by shifting to “work-first” welfare systems can modify program rules to allow more earned income,

First, if the government were to make welfare eligibility stricter it would impede on the attempts of those below the poverty line trying to find a job. TANF ?can free up additional dollars for work related expenses and other basic needs and thus aid families? efforts to move from welfare to work? (Sard and Daskal). It is needed to help pay for those ?necessities that often accompany employment, such as additional clothing and food costs, child care, and transportation to and from work? (Sard and Daskal). The program does not just hand out money, but provides the aid needed to ?achieve self-sufficiency? through employment (Cohn). Without the additional money for clothing, food costs, child care, and transportation, an individual would not be able to maintain employment and abide by the TANF requirements. It is evident that TANF is necessary for those individuals that live in poverty and are seeking employment. If the requirements were to become stricter, the number of the employed and those living below the poverty line would increase simultaneously.

The current US welfare reform comes with time limit that on benefit together with the work activity requirement (Weil & Finegold 20). An adult can only get federal welfare fund within five years. Moreover, if the beneficiary is not participating in any income generating activity, the assistance that the beneficiary receives from the government should be cut after two years. There is also a research that shows that the welfare reform has recast programs that have low incomes such as health insurance and work support to ensure that the citizens leave the welfare.

The purpose of my research is to discern how welfare spending, healthcare spending, defence spending, and pension spending impacted vote choice in the 2013 Australian election in comparison to the 2012 United States election, 2013 German election, and 2012 France election. I expect that as support for welfare spending, pension spending, and healthcare spending, decreases, support for right wing parties will increase. I expect that there will be a positive effect on voting for right wing parties as support for defence spending increases. I expect that of these issues, welfare spending will have the largest magnitude and that pension spending will have the lowest magnitude. I do not believe there will be an additional effect in Australia and that the impact will be similar to that of other industrial democracies.

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.

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.

Whose interests are best served by the current welfare requirements? TANF encourages states to provide assistance to those welfare recipients who are most likely to succeed at employment, ignoring individuals who are harder to place. In order to show increases in employment and wage rates, the most attention is

The greatest impetus, however, for the political movement away from the entitlement credo was the perceived wide-spread abuse of the welfare system. The “Welfare Cadillac and Mink Coat” motifs were used so often that they became part of the pantheon of “Urban Legends”. Faced with public outcries and indignation, the Federal Government completely overhauled the welfare system in 1996. However, even with the 1996 overhaul, the welfare system is often perceived as being abused. The questions become:

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.

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

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).

Welfare has been a safety net for many Americans, when the alternative for them is going without food and shelter. Over the years, the government has provided income for the unemployed, food assistance for the hungry, and health care for the poor. The federal government in the nineteenth century started to provide minimal benefits for the poor. During the twentieth century the United States federal government established a more substantial welfare system to help Americans when they most needed it. In 1996, welfare reform occurred under President Bill Clinton and it significantly changed the structure of welfare. Social Security has gone through significant change from FDR’s signing of the program into law to President George W. Bush’s

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.