Welfare Reform

When President Bill Clinton reluctantly signed the Personal Responsibility and
Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, he had an idea of what the critical responses would be. The hope was to induce a program that would bring significant benefits to the needy and hungery people of our country.
However, the response and criticisms are equivalent to what our president expected, very negative.

Mary Jo Bane believes the new welfare law poses serious dangers to poor children and families. As assistant secretary for children and families in the Department of Health and Human services, she supported the administration 's efforts to refocus the welfare system on work and to increase state flexibility through the waiver process. But
The reform takes away national level responsibilities and puts the money and responsibility into the individual states. A good amount of flexibility is provided, which may or may not result in a positive manner. For instance, they money could be used on the work reform and job preparation, while others could find loopholes in the laws, and while their purposes may not be malicious, the money would not truly be carrying out the role intended.

"No longer will cash assistance to dependent children be guaranteed by the federal government. Instead it will be provided, or not, by states using block grants." (Bane) This is the basic premise of the new bill.
Specifically, there are nine titles addressing separate issues involved. The bulk of the 54 billion dollar savings appears in Numbers XV and XIII. They offer the most serious impact, according to Mrs. Smith and they were also considered the most flawed by President Clinton. Title IV bans most legal immigrants from receiving most federal benefits. Title XIII cuts food stamp benefits across the board and restricts food stamp benefits to unemployed adults without disabilities or dependents to 3 months out of 36 (Bane).
It does not promote work effectively, and it will hurt millions of poor children when it fully implemented. He is also deeply concerned with the fact that it bars hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants -- including many who have worked in the
United States for decades and paid a considerable amount in Social Security and income taxes -- from receiving disability and old-age assistance and food stamps, and reduces food-stamp assistance for millions of children in working families. If the said parent fails to find a job or exceed their five year total, what would happen to the children? The answer, disturbingly, is nothing. During a floor debate, Senator Edward Kennedy described this as
"legislative child abuse". (Edelman)

While the authors are agreed that this is ,overall, a bad idea, they also each can 't help but praise a few pieces of the legislation, such as the child care and self-improvement initiative. They express how the program set forth in a well intended manner, in the hopes of correcting one of our nations greatest problems, can turn into many new problems. The hardest part lies in the fact that there is no universal answer to an issue as large, widespread,