Welfare Programs Essay

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,

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 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?

While welfare reform did benefit many people, welfare reform ended up costing the government more in "tax credits, food stamps, and Medicaid," according to CBO (Washington Post). This was essentially welfare all over again wrapped in a less conspicuous packaging. Moreover, most families in poverty do not receive welfare. Just a little above 23 percent of all families with children living in poverty receive aid, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. This is because of the strict policies and hidden limitations that the new reform set. Education and training were required to get a mandatory job which then allowed for one to receive welfare. Also committing a crime would void welfare, even if it was done to feed one's family according to the article, Picture this: Images and Realities in Welfare to Work (italicize), by Olson, Muhammad, Rodgers, and Karim. The reality is that many of the ads for the new welfare system were "misleading...[as many realized] that they would need education and training to get jobs that would allow them to support their families" (Karim). It was like asking someone to commit to two things separately in separate places. It was almost impossible to keep track of one's family and train and go to school at the same time. Hence, about 67% of families in poverty did not receive welfare. In fact, most of the job opportunities that were shown did not "pay enough to really

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.

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

"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

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

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).

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,

Living in different countries, we always wonder if everyday life routines are the same. Some of these routines, would include education, social life, and most important of all career perspectives. Rules and procedures vary from the different business you apply to however do the different rules and procedures vary from the countries that business thrive from? The purpose of this essay is to describe the differences and similarities from the National Association of Social Workers and the International Federation of Social Workers.

Small businesses are contrived to give all of their employees health care due to Medicare. Through the terms of ObamaCare, small businesses are compelled into closing their doors because of all the hand outs they have to get to their employees. When small business begin to become more successful and make more money, Medicare takes their profits away and gives it to people who don't really need it. ObamaCare and Medicare have both taught ignorant Americans to not get a job because they can get the same amount of money in the form of a hand out instead of actually working for it and contributing to the economy. The tax breaks for small firms and other factors are reliant by how much small businesses spend on health coverage (Harrison). Tax