Welfare Reform Is Needed in New York Essay

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

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.

A great number of those who reside in New York find the current U.S welfare reform to be very exhausting, humiliating as well as fraught. According to New Yorkers, this welfare will fail them. These simply because they are not poor enough, most of the citizens are already working (De Mause & Lewis Pp 1). The centerpiece of this welfare reform demanded that every citizen to work. There is a need that the state should ensure that almost half of the citizens get public assistance from the government. The beneficiaries should be working for at least thirty hours a week since working for more hours is one of the necessary in welfare reform (Eaton 7)

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

As societies evolve, so do the problems they face. As America entered the 1990’s, more single women than ever were struggling to support their children. From 1970 to 1993, the number of recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children increased 91 percent (Hombs 52). Single mothers that had children as a result of a rape or wedlock could not partake welfare programs that demanded job participation because for fearing of leaving their children unattended. The Presidential Election in 1996 was largely influenced by each candidate’s plan to provide single mothers with proper benefits. Upon election, President Bill Clinton radically changed welfare by lowering the requirements for eligibility for programs such as AFDC, increasing the amount of aid a recipient could get, and allowing the recipients to keep more of the wages they had earned (Hombs 7). Unfortunately, these alterations made it easy for recipients to abuse the system by encouraging many to simply rely on welfare checks to sustain them financially. Looking back on Robert Rector’s disturbing study that one third of welfare recipients are taking illegal drugs, something must be done to hold those receiving aid accountable.

Welfare in the United States has its roots in FDR’s Great Depression era policies of the New Deal. As part of the Social Security Act, cash transfers were made from the Federal Government to families with children and little-to-no income. In 1996 the system of welfare in the United States was drastically transformed under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). One of the biggest changes that came about from this reform was how welfare was paid out. Instead of being a federal program, the administration of welfare payments was shifted to the states and funded through block grants.

The examination of the 30-year crusade to change and at last to end welfare, the book Gwendolyn Mink wrote is a burning arraignment of against welfare government officials' ambush on poor moms. Mink charges that the fundamental components of the welfare approach subordinate poor single parents in a different arrangement of law. Mink focuses to the racial, class, and sexual orientation inclinations of both liberals and preservationists to clarify the odd yet strong agreement supporting welfare changes that constrain the poor single parent to surrender fundamental rights and propel her to discover financial security in work outside the home. The reconsidered and upgraded version, the creator has supplanted the past conclusive part with a completely

Welfare is a government program that provides food, money, housing, medical care, and other things people need in order to survive. These programs are designed to help elderly, children, disabled individuals who cannot support their families on their current income. In order to qualify for assistance the individual’s income must be below the poverty line. There are about sixty assistance programs, however most people receive help though Social Security, Medicaid, food stamps and Temporary Assistance of Needy Families also known as TNAF. I would like to reform welfare because welfare has become a way of life for some its recipients and has created a culture of dependency. The welfare reform system’s objective should be designed to get

Since the Welfare reform law was introduced in 1996 it has impacted American society greatly. The new welfare policy, named the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), replaced the Aid to Family and Dependent Children (AFDC) program; they have five known differences that only affect the ones who need the assistance. Critics argue that the TANF has negatively impacted the society while some argue that it has not. Linda Burnham, author of “Welfare Reform, Family Hardship & Woman of Color,” asserts that “welfare reform has increased the hardship faced by many women leaving welfare for work and their movement into low-wage jobs, exposes them to higher level of housing insecurities, homelessness, food insecurity, and hunger.” She also

Various research have been conducted surrounding the effects of welfare on families and individuals. Welfare may not seem like a big deal in America, but we are spending millions of taxpayer dollars on welfare a year. The many programs inside welfare do have some benefits as well as shortcomings. Education declines and work incentives are just some of the major issues that surface from being on welfare. Although advocates of welfare believe it is supporting the poor, the programs within welfare are decreasing the positive numbers of education and work while raising questions of whether or not reform has been beneficial. Welfare reform has been an issue since the 1970s (Moffitt 2015). Regardless of the new programs put into place, the wanted

It was documented that reform legislation paves no easy road to helping people out of the welfare system. Some welfare recipients felt like they were just being put out without the appropriate guidance and support to be successful. Welfare recipients talked about receiving bus tokens for transportation and childcare assistance for their children and being told to report to a work-site and look for employment. The states were able to put up to 30 percent of its’ TANF grant into its child care and social services block grant. The funds moved to social services has to be spent on children whose families earn less than 200 percent of the poverty level, but "this provision is cosmetic," says a searing analysis by the nationally respected Center

The Reforms of public benefits for needy families in the U.S. and specifically single mothers, which took place in August of 1996, was an important step since its inception with FDR in 1935. Many requirements were imposed onto public benefits eligibility, such as work and income requirement and establishing a time limit for public aid. Effects of the reform were hard to ignore as it resulted in decreasing governmental expenditure and heavy program caseloads. However, the big debate about public benefits is of which welfare discourages work and it provided a golden plate those who built comfort in it. Although many researches show the reform has a positive effect on employment, earnings, and income of single mothers, but generally negative

The welfare programs need to reform and focus on helping all of the lower income class get out of that class and remove those who are abusing the system. They need to stop the process of homelessness before it happens because it’s hard to give an address when someone no longer have one and now living on the streets. Which will make the process cost more than it should have to begin with had welfare step in and help before one becomes homeless. They need to remove abusers from the system and take into the concentration of the ones who are prescribed medication by a doctor and none abusers. Welfare, though it can be good, is abused by many lower class people and is too easily obtained for those merely looking for a way to be lazy and are avoiding getting a job. Welfare needs to create a way for those using the service to feel like they are a part of helping by working for it to stop laziness and feeling of it being a free hand out because that will not help them in the long run. “Low and irregular employment is a major reason why low-income men

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 has been a controversial topic for a long while now, some say its good, and others say “It's a waste of time and money” (Donald R. Richberg). Welfare started in 1935 to help the U.S citizens get financially stable while out of work. Since then people have used it two ways, for the good and the bad. Hilary Hilton reported that a lady who wanted to be called “ Mis. Ortiz claimed that “I'm looking for a little help for me and my four children, we are living month to month.” While others show how the system is being abused, according to Whitman D, ”A few years back we sent out 100,000 letters to welfare recipients in New York for voluntary work, only one percent of the recipients signed up for the job offers.” Either way People have a very