President Bill Clinton's Welfare Reform Analysis
In 1996, President Bill Clinton reformed the welfare system to improve its services with mixed reviews. The issues surrounding the reform got people divided left and right. New York Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was quoted saying “the 1996 reform law a brutal act of social policy, a disgrace, and would dog proponents to their graves” (Robert Rector). The president of Children’s Defense Fund, Marian Wright Edelman, said “the welfare reform will leave a blot on Bill Clinton’s presidency” (Robert Rector). Her husband, Department of Health and Human Services assistant secretary, Peter Edelman, resigned his post in protest of the new law.
Still, there were a number of individuals, mainly conservatives, welcomed the change with open
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Though there is a debate what the real purpose of the TANF program, its main purpose, according to Sawhill, “was to assist needy families, fight welfare dependency by promoting work and marriage, reduce non-marital births, and encourage formation and maintenance of two-parent families” (Sawhill). Conservatives wanted to bring attention to the work and family creation issues while many liberals, although appreciating the focus on the work, were equally concerned with securing/making sure of benefits good enough for income for needy …show more content…
In 2010, the buying power of block grant has alarmed proponents serious enough to address the issue during the TANF debate. States argue that Congress initially urged them to build TANF surpluses during prosperous times. It has been noted that in real terms, the annual grant is declining and the system does not adjust automatically when the economy sours and caseloads rise.
Furthermore, there was also a conflict of formula allocating the block grants among states. The distribution of block grants among states was based on the historical allocation of federal AFDC funds. Poorer states received less TANF money per poor child than wealthier states with tis style of funding. Because the block grant is fixed, this formula did little sense especially when the old formula in AFDC encouraged state
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Rebecca M. Blank's Welfare Reform
664 Words | 3 PagesShe states this reform was introduced 10 years prior to her article being written and then asks, “But, what happened to these women and children once they left welfare?” (Blank, 2006). She immediately answers, “It turns out that those who left welfare did well enough to surprise the skeptics, myself included, but it remains hard to identify all the reasons” (Blank, 2006). Before the reform took place and even some time after, Blank was not for the welfare program.
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TANF Failure
512 Words | 3 PagesThe TANF, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, did have its initial intended impact. TANK was implemented as a new program under President Clinton to lower the dependency of families on welfare which is one of the sole reasons the government made the decision to switch from Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) to TANF. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priority [CBPP], “The national TANF caseload has declined by over 60 percent over the last 18 years, even as poverty and deep poverty (i.e., income below half the poverty line) have worsened” (2015). TANF received results that the federal government was looking forward to at the time. There are four goals that TANF is required to meet to contribute to the better life for families and children that fall below the poverty line: “(1) provide assistance to needy families so that children may be cared for in their own homes or in the homes of relatives; (2) end the dependence of needy parents on
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