Decline of The Welfare State
Participation in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and food stamp programs began to decline dramatically after the enactment of the Federal Welfare Law enacted in 1996. In 1996 President Clinton endorsed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act which required that a person had to work in order to receive government assistance and support. The bill converted AFDC to a block grant- Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)-with fixed funding. This is where the federal government gives the states “blocks” of money to distribute for income support and work programs based on what they spent in 1994. According to the Congressional Budget Office, that bill included nearly $55 billion in cuts in low-income programs in a six-year time period.
Other provisions made it possible for states to withdraw a substantial amount of state resources from basic income support and work programs for poor families with children to divert federal TANF block grant funds to other uses.The legislation allowed states to deny aid to any poor family or category of poor family. Also, the legislation prohibited states from using block grant funding to provide aid to families that have received assistance for at least five years, but the state could also cut that time limit shorter - including availability to cash aide and work slots.
The bill cut out $28 billion in food stamps, cutting the benefits by almost twenty percent.These reductions affected the working poor, the disabled and the elderly. In the legislation the food stamp provision affected the poor between the ages of 18-50 who had no children. The bill reported that these individuals were limited to three months of food stamps while unemployed in any three-year period.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that all of these provisions would deny food stamp benefits to an average of 1 million people a month who are willing to work but can’t find a job and are not offered a workfare. The lack of food eats into the housing budget.
Read more about this topic: Homeless Women In The United States
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)