Welfare Reform: A Permanent Solution or A Temporary Band -Aid?

Welfare Reform: A Permanent Solution or a Temporary Band -Aid?

Welfare Reform is a very big factor in our American society .It is need by many, hated by most. Some see it as a handout to the lazy, or a helping to those facing hard times. The debate continues, even in the face of sweeping welfare reform, which, for all of its sound and fury, has not helped or changed much. What's wrong with welfare and how can we fix it? This is not a simple question, and there is no simple answer. However, one thing remains eminently clear. Welfare desperately needs to change and improve. But where are we to help with this change and improvement. Are we headed backward or forward in welfare reform. To answer these questions, we must catch a glimpse of the world of welfare.

In our society welfare is Odessa, a grandmother in her seventies, who digs through other people's trash to find suitable clothes for her grandchildren. Welfare is a Mariluz, who lived in a tent with two children below the age of five, because her welfare check would not pay the rent of even the most squalid apartments in North Philadelphia. Welfare is destiny; a five year old that cries in class. Because when asked to recite her address, she realized that because of the numerous evictions she had been through she could not remember it. Welfare is Cheri, who after being cut off welfare for missing a meeting, worked as a topless dancer to avoid being out on the street with her teenage son. Welfare is a Virginia family of four living on $347 a month. Welfare is waiting years to be placed on the waiting list for a job- training program. Welfare is run down neighborhoods, inferior schools, and dilapidated housing. Welfare is not a picnic in the park.

Of course, from a less human standpoint, welfare is a group of entitlement programs aimed at helping the poor. What most people are referring to when they say "welfare" is Aid to Families With Dependant Children (AFDC), a program that provides monthly checks to families in which all adults in the household are unemployed. Most, but not all, of the recipients are single mothers. AFDC recipients are often eligible for many other programs, including Medicaid, food stamps , Aid to Women with Infant Children (WIC) and subsidized housing. While not all AFDC recipients receive all of these benefits, enough do, if they are consider part of the welfare equation. The majority of these programs have come to be resented by Middle America. The resounding echo of the middle class has been "welfare a mess, let's go back to the way things were", (Gillespie 45).

Actually, it would be difficult to find a time in America when welfare was not a part of society. In colonial times, towns or churches often took responsibility for their poor. Some towns required residents to house the homeless; most towns and churches had charity programs which members were required to contribute to (Stien 103). While community support of the poor was a concept as old as time, welfare as we are familiar with it did not begin until 1935, when Roosevelt incorporated it into his New Deal legislature (Stien 205).

It began as a small part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Social Security Act. In addition to AFDC, the Act consisted of the programs we now call Medicaid, Medicare and social security. It originally included several other programs, which have been incorporated into the others over time. The Social Security Act was meant to help Americans who had been hurt by the Great Depression get back on their feet as the economy picked up. Even critics of the Act never imagined how far- reaching the programs in it would become. Critics did, however, say that the entire act was a breeding ground for waste, fraud, and misuse. Roosevelt answered them by saying; "Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in the spirit pf charity, then the constant omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference", (Winner 205). Indeed, the Social Security Act was originally created in the spirit of charity. For quite some time, AFDC accomplished its mission - to allow single mothers who had been widowed or deserted by their husbands to stay at home and raise their children.

However, much has changed since 1935. In fact, society's view of women and motherhood is one of the areas that has come the farthest. No longer are single mothers pitied for their predicament. Instead, they are blamed for getting pregnant too soon and for having babies that they knew they could not afford. No longer are women expected to stay home with their children. Instead, they are urged to go to work in order to provide for their children and become better role models. "Those women who claim that it is too hard to work and raise children are often scorned by the many single professional mothers in America, most of whom are products of the country's increasing divorce rate," (Stien 406). Unfortunately, while society may have come a long way since 1935, until last year, welfare had barely changed at all. How long could a program aimed at keeping women at home survive in a society that was pushing women out of the house (Stien 603)?

Other than a few minor changes in the early sixties, (Among them were provisions which allowed poor two-parent families to receive aid, and the establishment of the food stamp program) welfare was still the same as it had seemed the welfare system was almost universally hated. However, reform meant different things to different people. To conservative Republicans, welfare was the root of all evil. Therefore, the thing to do was kick everyone off welfare, thus ending the system, and all the approach would do anything but create more problems. Their idea of reform was job training, and less red tape. When President Clinton was elected and vowed to come through on his campaign promise to "end welfare as we know it," liberals and welfare recipients breathed a collective sigh of relief. It showed that Clinton was on their side and his reform would help them. Congress was still a majority Democrat institution; they were likely to side with Clinton. After the bleak eras of Bush and Reagan, who purposely fueled the hatred of welfare, Clinton seemed to be a blessing (Brandwein 237).

However, in the four years between Clinton's election and his delivery of his promise, the country, the Congress, and Clinton himself, had changed drastically. Two years earlier, America, fed up with Clinton's inability to come through on his promises, had taken it out on Congressional Democrats. Now Republicans controlled both houses. Clinton's approval ratings were dwindling, after nearly four years in office, there was not much that he could