Discuss the history of welfare reform based on your reading of chapter 2. Discus
ID: 403450 • Letter: D
Question
Discuss the history of welfare reform based on your reading of chapter 2. Discuss some of the historical aspects and your opinion about how these changes were implemented and whether or not the changes were effective. Discuss your opinion on the current state of welfare. Is it working? Should more be done or less? Why? * Link your answers back to the text and clearly explain your opinions. (i.e. don't just make a broad statement without explaining why you feel the way you do). Lastly, remember to wear your human services "hats" while thinking about this discussion. Referenced and cited.
Explanation / Answer
No one likes the current welfare system. Governors complain that federal law is overly prescriptive and are willing to take less federal money in return for more flexibility. The public believes that welfare is anti-work and anti-family although polls show that the public wants welfare reformed in ways that do not penalize children. Welfare recipients find dealing with the system degrading and demoralizing; most would prefer to work1. Experts note that welfare has done little to stem the growth of poverty among children. In all but two states, welfare benefits (including food stamps) are insufficient to move a family above the poverty line2.
In short, the current indictment against the welfare system has four particulars:
The chapters in this volume address how much truth there is in these propositions and assess the ability of current proposals to deal with the complaints. To summarize the findings at the outset:
PROVIDING STATE FLEXIBILITY: States already have substantial flexibility; they could be provided more without eliminating the current federal role in securing a safety net for the poor. Block grants will lead to new inequities and to insufficient public accountability.
ENCOURAGING WORK: Encouraging work among welfare recipients necessitates that funds be provided for this purpose. But, according to several authors, what is required is not so much major new investments in education and training as resources devoted to helping people find jobs in the private sector.
One way to encourage work is to cut off cash assistance. A set of proposals similar to the House-passed Personal Responsibility Act (PRA) ultimately would deny benefits to about 42 percent of the current caseload and reduce benefits for an additional 30 percent. But because of their poor education and other characteristics, most of those denied assistance would have difficulty finding and holding jobs. Based on the experience of those terminated from General Assistance in Michigan, as many as two-thirds could remain unemployed.
REDUCING OUT-OF-WEDLOCK BIRTHS: The majority of women on welfare had their first child as a teenager. Most of these births now occur outside of marriage and are unintended. However, there is little support in the research literature for the proposition that denying benefits to this group will prevent such pregnancies from occurring. Modest impacts on marriage and abortion are more likely.
REDUCING CHILD POVERTY: Moving more children out of poverty requires that income from a low-wage job be combined with child care, health insurance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and support from both parents. Child support reform in particular could reduce poverty and welfare costs as much as anything else that recently has been proposed.
At the same time, for budgetary reasons the broader safety net is predicted to shrink. The PRA alone provides 13 percent of the total five-year savings in the House budget resolution. Thus, even if no other low-income program such as Medicaid were affected by attempts to balance the budget, the poorest fifth of the population (which receives 4 percent of total U.S. income) would bear a disproportionate share of the burden.
In sum, measured against the objectives of providing adequate flexibility to the states, encouraging work, strengthening the family, and reducing poverty, most current proposals are found wanting.
While there is considerable consensus that welfare needs to be reformed, there is less agreement about exactly what needs to be done and a long history of past attempts that have proved less than satisfactory or had little staying power.
The most recent round of reform occurred in 1988, when Congress enacted the Family Support Act. It combined an emphasis on moving people into jobs with increased funding for the education and training believed necessary to make this possible. The education and training were to be provided by a new program called Job Opportunities and Basic Skills (JOBS) in which most welfare recipients would be required to participate. Many states are only now beginning to implement fully the philosophy and work-oriented programs contained in the Family Support Act. Nationwide, about 23 percent of able-bodied welfare recipients without a child under age 3 are now participating in JOBS.
As a governor, President Clinton was a strong proponent of the Family Support Act, but he campaigned for the presidency on a pledge to "end welfare as we know it." Legislation embodying the details of his plan was introduced in 1994 as the Work and Responsibility Act. It built on the Family Support Act philosophy by investing still more in education and training but set a two-year time limit, after which welfare recipients would either have to work or lose their benefits. With appropriate assistance and the push of a time limit, it was hoped that most recipients would find jobs before their two years were up, but for those who did not, subsidized work opportunities were to be made available. The two-year limit was to be phased in slowly, starting with those born after 1971. This phase-in had three advantages: it sent a message of personal responsibility to the younger generation; it gave states time to expand their ability to provide the necessary training and work opportunities; and it made the budgetary costs of the plan more manageable.
The Clinton plan was eclipsed, first by the focus on health care reform, and later by the 1994 election which led Republicans in the House to propose a new plan, the Personal Responsibility Act, which differed sharply not only from Clinton's plan but also from their own earlier reform proposals. The PRA, enacted by the House on March 24, 1995, goes far beyond simply reforming welfare. It creates a number of new block grants focused on cash assistance, child nutrition, child protection, and child care. It also contains fundamental reforms of the Food Stamp program, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for the low-income disabled, and the major means-tested programs serving legal immigrants. Overall, it saves almost $70 billion over the next five years (see figure). Its more narrowly defined "welfare" component not only turns the current Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and JOBS programs into a block grant with flat funding for the next five years, but also contains a number of prohibitions. Notably, no federal funds are to be used to pay benefits to unwed minor mothers, to children born to mothers on welfare, or to those receiving welfare for more than five years.
Most governors strongly support the increased flexibility inherent in block grants but are unhappy with the prospect of new federal prohibitions and privately nervous about the implicit cost shifting to lower levels of government 3. As this goes to press, the Senate Finance Committee has endorsed the block grant approach adopted by the House but has omitted some of the prohibitions most disliked by governors.
Whatever the outcome of the legislative process, the chapters in this volume make one thing abundantly clear: the issues are much more complex and reform much more difficult than is generally recognized. Predicting the consequences of reform is equally difficult, a problem with which all of the authors of this volume have had to grapple.
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