The State of Welfare Essay

The United States is often referred to as a ‘reluctant welfare state.’ There are various reasons for this description. One of the primary reasons for this is the differences and diversity of the political parties which are the motivating forces that control government. The Liberal Party, for instance supports government safety nets and social service programs for those in need. “Liberals believe in government action to achieve equal opportunity and equality for all.” ("Studentnews," 2006) They believe it is the responsibility of government to ensure that the needs of all citizens are met, and to intervene to solve problems. The responsibility of government is to alleviate social ills, to protect civil liberties and sustain individual

Can a single mother of three working full time for minimum wage afford to pay ' by herself ' for food, clothing, transportation, childcare, occupational training and medical care? Without government aid, the obvious answer is no. Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), as described by Robert Kuttner, is a government aid program designed 'to help all of the working poor rise out of poverty.' It includes tuition reimbursements, wage supplements, and above all, childcare? (Kuttner). It creates a more equal opportunity for those at a disadvantage to improve themselves and their situation. TANF, 'which limits the time families can remain on welfare, appears to be a smashing success' (Cohn). First, if eligibility were to become stricter, seeking

The welfare system has been controversial throughout U.S. history. It is constantly under attack and is often the chosen topic of political debates. In 2015, 35.4% of Americans were on welfare (Boyd). Welfare is a government ran program, where the government gives benefits to people who cannot afford to take care of themselves or their family (“Brief”). The benefits that the government gives to the people are money and the necessities they need to live a normal life (“Welfare” 825). The welfare system is an interesting topic and has many layers. Although it is necessary, at the same time it is frustrating for many politicians and U.S. citizens. Numerous people abuse the welfare system everyday. People have found many ways to take

The current (US) welfare reform consists of more than cash payment that the poor US citizen could bank on. There is a monthly payment that each poor person received in spite of their ability to work. The main people who received this payment were both mothers and children. Moreover, the payment does not have time limit and those people could not remain on the welfare for the rest of their live.

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 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.

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

Under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) replaced AFDC, ending some Federal responsibility to welfare assistance. States operate their own programs; determine eligibility services to be provided to needy families, within Federal guidelines. The Federal government cannot regulate the conduct of states except to a few requirements, and states have a wide latitude in administering the program to "provide assistance to needy families so that children can be cared for in their own homes; to reduce dependency by promoting job preparation, work and marriage; to prevent out-of-wedlock pregnancies; and to encourage the formation and

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.

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.

The history of welfare reform reveals that the question of personal responsibility versus assistance to those in need has been a constant in the debate over welfare. In the 1950s and 1960s, welfare reform was limited to various states' attempts to impose residency requirements on welfare applicants and remove illegitimate children from the welfare rolls. During the 1970s advocates of welfare reform promoted the theory of

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).

109,631,000, that is the number of Americans that lived in households that received benefits from one or more federally funded "means-tested programs" — also known as welfare — as of the fourth quarter of 2012, according to data released by the Census Bureau.( Jeffrey 1) This is my objective to tell the history and statistics of the welfare system in the U.S. There is no lack of information on the topic of welfare due to it being a topic of politics in the nation. Accordingly most information I have is from databases and news reports or speeches over it. However a lot of these areas of information can be biased which is something to avoid. To evenly space the information I will supply you with I am going to split it up into two halves. The first half will be the history of welfare and how it affects the country. The second half will be over the statistics and who all is eligible for welfare.