The U.S. Welfare System Essay

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

However, US citizen begun to be uncomfortable with the old welfare system by the 1990’s because it did not offer incentive for the beneficiaries to seek for employment. The welfare became both rewarding and perpetuating even though it did not reduce the level of poverty in the United States.

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?

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 systems are based on the principle of public responsibility on equitable wealth distribution and equality of opportunities to citizens who are unable to afford minimal levels of quality and good life, through provision of universal education programs, health care and subsidised housing. In most of the states, welfare systems are not used in the right manner they are intended to. Although the systems are meant to reduce the poverty level and at least assists individuals to get decent jobs, many recipients develops news ways every year to prolong their dependency in the system. Statistics show that women easily abuse the welfare system by simply having more children each year since this means that more money will come in their mails. Most of the recipients on welfare are able to work

"The U.S. Congress kicked off welfare reform nationwide last October with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, heralding a new era in which welfare recipients are required to look for work as a condition of benefits." http://www.detnews.com/1997/newsx/welfare/rules/rules.htm. Originally, the welfare system was created to help poor men, women, and children who are in need of financial and medical assistance. Over the years, welfare has become a way of life for its recipients and has created a culture of dependency. Currently, the government is in the process of reforming the welfare system. The welfare reform system’s objective was to get people off the welfare system and onto the

Welfare should not be reformed because it helps single parents. 40 percent of single mothers are poor, 12 million single parents-mother-headed families are poor (Freeman). Welfare can help keep these single parent families stay stable to be an effective families. 12 million single parents mothers headed families can be reduced to less underachieving families with the assistants of welfare. Also with single parents they never had an significant other.

According to Ronald Reagan, “Welfare’s purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for it’s own existence.” Welfare was originally created to provide help for struggling Americans that need food, healthcare, and education (Calonia). Over the years, welfare has become a dream come true for the people who “need assistance”, and a nightmare for taxpayers. Lethargic citizens of this country have found new ways to abuse welfare by taking advantage of federal student aid, food stamps, and even emergency room care. What happened to having a work ethic? Our generation wants everything handed to them on a silver platter. Americans need to understand that welfare has been abused for far too long and freeloaders need to stop treating

The intentions of welfare reform is simply to reduce dependency, reduce child poverty, and to strengthen marriages (in line citation website). However, taking away a low income families chance for help is not going to help their poverty. The idea of getting rid of the help a family needs, in order to help the family end their poverty is contradictory. This is more likely to leave families stuck in poverty, or even send them below if their aid gets removed.

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.

First of all, people who are on welfare usually do become dependent on assistance because it gives them an incentive to avoid work. Many generations of families have been living on welfare assistance and have not made any reasonable efforts to prosper within our society. According to the article Welfare in the United States, “Some people get on welfare because they were laid off or relocated, but whatever the reason, some get stuck on welfare much longer than necessary and no one has the ability to remove them” (Redyns, 2007). Welfare was designed to give a boost to the poor, and help struggling families make it through the year,

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).

Welfare was created as an amendment to the social security act of 1935 in 1939. Before this many things were being implemented already as a form of welfare. Such as Medicaid, food stamps, and SSI (Supplement Security Income). During this time was the great depression which extremely affected the American economy, causing thousands of people to become unemployed. These established many of the programs that built the way welfare is shaped today such as the AFDC (Aid to Families with Independent Children). Due to these being created there had to organizations and agencies to supervise