<"http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USARsocial.htm"

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USARsocial.htm>

website used

another website

LEGISLATIVE HISTORY

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

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USARsocial.htm

America's social safety net has expanded dramatically over the past 100 years. At the turn of the last century, Americans still viewed themselves as "rugged individualists." Families, local communities, and charities (often religiously based) formed the backbone of the social safety net of the time.

The Great Depression of the 1930s changed much of that. President Frankin D. Roosevelt's New Deal established Social Security in 1935 and inaugurated the modern day federal welfare program with a modest small program called Aid to Dependent Children (ADC). The next great expansion came during the Johnson administration in the 1960s, when Medicare, Medicaid, public housing, and other programs were established.

Much of America's welfare state remained largely unchanged after that until August of 1996, when a Republican Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, a sweeping welfare reform law that is still the subject of much controversy in public policy circles. Conservatives celebrate its sweeping work requirements and the dramatic decline in welfare caseloads that occurred in its aftermath. Liberals counter that most of the positive changes that occurred have been due to an improved economy and low unemployment. They point out that national poverty rates have not declined as much as welfare rolls, and express concern about what will happen when the economy loses steam.

Such programs, including welfare, Social Security, public housing, hunger and nutrition programs, childcare and child support, and others, are the focus of this section.