Welfare Reform : Promoting Personal Responsibility And Serving The Needs Of The Poorintroductionduring Bill Clinton

The social welfare system in the United States can be a controversial topic especially now with the new presidential elect. For this paper I was assigned to look into two different peoples perceptions and attitudes on the social welfare system. I looked into how they perceived the system and whom they believed benefits from this system. Throughout this paper the identities of the two people I interviewed will not be revealed. I will simply refer to them in pronouns. My goal during this interview was not to educate my two interviewees so some of the information contained in this paper may not be accurate. Throughout this paper the two interviewees opinions will be stated and their opinions will then be compared and discussed. Although the whole population of the United States is experiencing the same welfare system each individual perceives and has different beliefs about the system.

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

Bill Clinton was on of the best presidents of all time. Mr. Clinton did a great job in supporting our neighborhood police force. The crime rate during his presidency was very low. President Clinton signed a bill that kept assault weapons out of the hands of the wrong individuals. Which created a low forty percent drop in crime in 2001. President Clinton was the inventor of the three-strike law. The law gave criminals three time to commit a crime but after the third time they were going to incarcerated for numerous years. I would say that is very well needed today. Mr. Clinton also opened doors to correcting our environment issues. President Clinton also implemented welfare reform. I think this was amazing. Helping citizens to get off welfare

The call to reform the welfare system of President Clinton has been heard but though faced with numerous hurdles and bureaucracy, the welfare reform is a relative success. After rejecting the two previous reforms concocted by the Republican-controlled Congress, the House and Senate came back with a third bill that President Clinton adamantly signed even after fair warnings that it could cost him the 1996 election. Nevertheless, the president was quoted as saying that signing the bill was a “historic opportunity to do what is right”.

Throughout modern human history there has been an ongoing struggle of whether to help the poor and how to help them. In today’s political scene in the US mostly only extremely staunch conservatives feel that we should offer no aid to the poor of America. So, then the argument becomes how to best help them. Welfare is widely considered to be the main way that America helps the poor. So what is welfare exactly? Welfare can be defined as aid in the form of money or necessities for those in need distributed through an agency or program. In general liberals feel that America should offer a large amount of aid and pull people out of debt with government funds while still trying to get them back to work. In general conservatives feel that the poor should have to already have a job before we help them and many also call for drug testing before offering assistance. To try to create these scenarios, parties use welfare reform. Welfare reform is a bill that alters the current program so that it operates in a different way. The most recent welfare reform was in 1996 by Bill Clinton and was called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. This act in general aimed to hand over

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,

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

“Welfare epitomizes America’s basic bargain, providing opportunity and in return, demanding responsibility” (Clinton). When President Lyndon B. Johnson enacted Welfare in 1966, it was a system envisioned to be an aide for the common man; a support structure that would prevent financial disasters for the individual. Since that time, Welfare has been reformed, deformed, and become abused by the very people it was created to empower. Welfare has been manipulated into a way of life for over 40 million Americans through outrageous benefits and unearned paychecks being supplied at an endless rate. This issue harms not only the economy as a whole, but also the individuals who receive such benefits. Welfare checks have become free handouts to

Everyone has their own opinion about the welfare system in the United States. Some feel it is well-designed and other find it to be valueless. Some say it is an excuse for “the lazy” to not have to contribute to society, and use it as a source of income. Some even say the program isn’t utilized in the manner in which it was meant when established. Regardless of opinions, the welfare system was established to help those in a time of need. The United States, “The land of opportunity”, is simply trying to help give those less fortunate the opportunity to succeed. In the following paragraphs we will discuss the history of the welfare system; why it was created; and how the conflict theory impacts it.

The Welfare system can be divided into two different classes these would be social and economic classes. The social aspect includes any plan brought forth to help poverty level members of the community and asset in there need with financial support. Then there is economic support it is a class because it is there to aid the society that can sustain themselves and their children due to circumstance such as adversities, untrained labor ability, and disabilities. In so many situations the older public and the single this includes the divorced parents may also qualify for assistance. To be given benefits, most programs require that there be verification of needs that has been evaluated and set at a basic state to state standard. This is because welfare misuse in the past has made it more difficult and threatened the reliability of the system. A frequent thing that is used is what is called the means test, which estimates income and compares individuals to the set standard of living. When a

To understand the “Welfare System” one must know its history. The American welfare system has changed dramatically over the past 80 years. A 100 years ago, families, local communities, and charities; typically religious based, served as the safety net for those who had fallen on hard times. The Great Depression of the 1930s would see a change in social policy with the passing of President Roosevelt’s “New Deal” establishing Social Security and Aid to

The United States welfare policy is designed to aid sick, aging, and disabled Americans through programs consisting like SNAP, Social Security, and Medicare. While these programs have a simple mission of helping those in need, they are muddled by a complex and sometimes inefficient bureaucracy. This intensive analysis will seek to address each of the following:

The welfare system of the United States began when the colonies adopted the British Poor Laws. The British Poor laws made a distinction between those who were able bodied and could work and those who could not work, due to age, health or disability. Those who were able to work were given public service employment in work houses and those who could not work were provided with assistance, which included money or other forms of assistance. (Moffitt, 2015)

2 par. 1). The basic plan of the reform was to make welfare recipients more responsible for their families and require them to go out and find a job. Bill Archer summed up the reform in this way, " The time has come to replace this failed system...a new system that turns the social safety net from a trap into a trampoline, a new system that rewards work and personal responsibility in families" (Clinton 25).

The role of welfare within our society has always been controversial. This problem emphasizes the need to understand the roles of variable factors when pertaining to the subject of welfare within our society. The proposed analysis will address the phenomenon of welfare assistance and several factors which may contribute to the increase or decrease of welfare assistance to the poor in 4 ways: (1) by defining major concepts and any other concepts about which there is likely to be misunderstanding, (2) by further examining the past history pertaining to the subject of welfare assistance within the United States, (3) by developing the formulation of