Welfare Reform : The United States

Welfare has been an arguable topic throughout United States history (“Brief”). Some people agree with it and others do not like it at all. Welfare did not exist until the 1930s during The Great Depression (“Brief”). With millions of people unemployed, Franklin D. Roosevelt developed the welfare system to help these people during the Great Depression (“Brief”). After the Great Depression was over,, the government came up with new programs to help assist the welfare program and help more people in poverty (“Brief”). Some of those programs were Medicaid, public housing, food stamps, and Supplemental Security programs (“Brief”). Theses programs helped and hurt the country at the same time (“Brief”). By having these programs, many people would not look for jobs because they knew they were better off living on welfare (“Brief”).

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.

Changes within the welfare system as a result of policy shifts and by new thinking, more generally in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), have had many methods, but the one that seemed most important, was that welfare recipients were required to do much more to justify their income support payments than before. The foundation of this new idea is that income support programs should allow individuals to maximise their participation in work. Due to the general shift in welfare administration, the number of activity test requirements an individual in Australia must meet in order to receive unemployment benefits, has expanded significantly since the early 1990s. This complex, overly bureaucratic process means that disadvantaged individuals cannot access the income support payments they require.

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

I found that after reading this article that a lot of different reasons why the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Post-Secondary Reform movements have been so successful. We always hear about students dropping out of college or not going to college because they can’t afford the tuition. The two case studies that we will talk about are Kentucky and Maine and how they succeeded in getting this reform to work.

Thesis: The President knew that there was no truth behind the accusations that he was responsible for the changes to the welfare reform; the United States Congress had a meeting and discussed rather or not they would allow changes to be made to the requirements for citizens receiving welfare assistance; in a close decision, the United States Supreme Court said that it was not fare for the lawyers to be able to challenge the current welfare cases.

What would happen if the government made changes to the welfare system? There are approximately 110,489,000 of Americans on welfare. Many people benefit from what the system has to offer: food stamps, housing, health insurance, day care, and unemployment. Taxpayers often argue that the individuals who benefit from the system, abuse the system; however, this is not entirely true. Many of the people who receive benefits really and truly need the help. Even though some people believe welfare should be reformed, welfare should not be reformed because 40% of single mothers are poor, some elderly people do not have a support system, and college students can not afford to take extra loans.

"Welfare 's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence." Ronald Reagan said this statement on January of 1970 when the "Los Angeles Times" interviewed him (Williamson). Federal government funded welfare in the United States started in the 1930s during the Great Depression. Because of the vast numbers of people out of work and with insufficient funds to buy food for their families, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved a program to give money to state governments for the purpose of making jobs so that unemployed people could work (Bill). This start of federal aid was the beginning of what we know welfare to be today. This paper will show whether or not welfare works in our society, whether or not the U.S. should reform it, and if this nation should even have welfare for those who cannot work.

Historically government of the United States always made an attempt to provide support to its people, especially those struggling. One-way government support its people is by providing welfare. Webster dictionary defines welfare as “money paid by the government to those who are in need of financial assistance, are unable to work, or whose circumstances mean the income they require for basic needs is in excess of their salary.” Welfare was established under the President Franklin D. Roosevelt, by Social Security Act of 1935, and administered by individual states and territories for the government to help poverty. President Roosevelt implemented this program because of the Great Depression. When the Great Depression

A.) Statement of problem: Welfare programs continue to be a controversial issue because Welfare programs are usually targeted for federal budget cuts. The U.S. welfare system was created to provide benefits to low-income citizen. however people tend to abuse the system which has caused stricter regulations for eligibility and use. We have to ensure that recipients use the system correctly. So therefore we can help to ensure protection over the programs that so many people use.

For centuries, nations, cities, and individual families have dealt with the problem of poverty; how to remedy current situations and how to prevent future ones. For most of history, there have been no government controlled poverty assistance programs. The poor simply relied on the goodness of their families or, if they did not have a family, on the generosity of the public at large. In the United States, this situation changed in 1935 with the passage of the Social Security Act. The Social Security Act has seen many successes, but it also faces many critiques of its structure and function. In the past, most governments did little to actively aid their poor population. This duty was

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.

Social Security is the prime example of a social welfare program that is all but impossible to eliminate. Created by the passage of the 1935 Social Security Act, money was to be provided to 35 million elderly American citizens who, at the time, faced a bleak, penniless future. Franklin Roosevelt was one of the staunchest supporters of this legislation: