The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 (Tanf, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), Emphasized

Apr McCray thought she had finally caught a interruption in belatedly 2005. That's when the state of Louisiana granted cash assistance to the single mother through the Temporary Assistance of Needy Families (TANF) program. Information technology was her outset experience with America's welfare program.

McCray, who had been in and out of work, struggled to make ends come across. This, she hoped, would at least help soften the burden.

Merely a month later, the land stripped her of the benefits without a articulate explanation, she said. Since and so, she says Louisiana, which controls state and federally allocated TANF dollars, has denied her requests for assistance several times.

"It gets depressing," said McCray, who in 2016, is even so struggling. With three kids and rarely more than than a part-fourth dimension job, she says she needs help she tin can't seem to get from a welfare system that was overhauled twenty years ago.

Overhauling welfare was a authentication of and so-President Neb Clinton'due south fourth dimension in office. When he signed welfare reform into constabulary on Aug. 22, 1996, he alleged at a anniversary in the White Firm'due south Rose Garden that it would "end welfare as we know information technology."

Twenty years afterwards, few would dispute the accuracy of that prediction. Welfare is, and has been, a vastly different system than it was prior to the law, which gave states wide control over their ain welfare programs by allocating to them cake grants.

So, two decades later, are those changes working? It depends whom you ask.

TANF's legacy has divided policy experts, with supporters saying it put an emphasis on piece of work and increased employment among unmarried mothers in the procedure while also reducing poverty overall. The program'south critics say it tore a pigsty in the condom net for people who remained in poverty and couldn't discover steady work, like McCray.

"(TANF) did shift the emphasis toward work. I recollect that is something where in that location has been a lot of agreement," said Heather Hahn, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. "... As far as whether people are improve off, I do recollect they are, in some cases, worse off."

What America'due south welfare system used to be

Welfare didn't exist in America earlier the Great Low and Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. It officially came into being every bit a rule under the Social Security Act in 1935, offering assist to families with dependent children (AFDC).

In establishing the program, the federal government, for the outset time, took responsibility for helping children with a parent who was dead, gone or otherwise incapacitated. Previously, those children nearly likely would accept been institutionalized.

The program worked by the government giving funds to us, which and so distributed the coin under federal guidelines.

Over several decades, AFDC went through several changes and revisions, perhaps virtually notably in 1961 when it expanded its definition of a "deprived child" to include one who had an unemployed parent. And, though the benefits were modest, many families did end up dependent — and the criticism poured in.

The program was blamed for encouraging unwed mothers, and for discouraging work. It included phaseout rates, meaning that dollars earned meant less dollars in assistance.

Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan chipped away at changes, instituting job grooming and piece of work requirements for AFDC participants. But by the 1990s, calls were clearly pouring in for change.

Enter Bill Clinton, who championed the most radical overhaul of America'due south welfare system to appointment. Clinton, amid a re-election campaign, made reforming the program function of his bid to win back the White Firm.

When TANF became a law, a lot changed

The newly minted Temporary Assistance for Needy Families put an emphasis on getting people out of poverty and to work.

Under TANF, recipients in almost cases are required to participate in piece of work activities for 30 hours a week. Combined with expansions to the Earned Income Tax Credit, a taxation credit for people with low- to-moderate-income jobs, TANF succeeded in getting people to piece of work, particularly during Clinton'southward presidency.

From 1996 to 2000, employment rates among never-married mothers shot from 63% to 76%, co-ordinate to the not-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). Additionally, both poverty rates amidst families with unmarried mothers and overall poverty rates dropped.

"The welfare reform legislation moved usa in the correct management by being much more ambitious about employment for the single mother population," said Robert Doar, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who was formerly the commissioner of welfare in New York City.

Employment and poverty rates have leveled off in the long term, which has resulted in disagreement among policy experts most simply how effective TANF has been in increasing employment, though most agree that it at to the lowest degree helped motility the needle.

Where the law has failed, experts say, is past leaving backside those at the very lesser — the group of people in deep poverty who typically haven't been able to discover work, like McCray.

Studies have found that since TANF was instituted, deep or extreme poverty has increased. A 2011 study by the University of Michigan's National Poverty Center found that families living on less than $2 per person a 24-hour interval more than than doubled from 1996 to 2011.

Block grants: The good and the bad

Hahn of the Urban Institute and Liz Schott of the CBPP each attribute the rise in deep poverty largely to TANF. They pointed to iii main flaws with the legislation: the block grants don't adjust for inflation; states have often spent large portions of their TANF dollars on things other than bones assistance; and states sometimes have incentives to cut needy recipients loose from the programme.

Since TANF became law, states have received fixed block grants from the federal authorities. When lawmakers were constructing TANF, Democrats in Congress wanted to include an inflation aligning for the grants, said Ron Haskins, a Brookings Institution senior fellow who helped draft welfare reform every bit a staff member on the House Committee on Ways and Means.

An inflation adjustment would have enabled the amount of the block grants to increase along with inflation. But the law passed through a Republican-held Congress without one.

"Retrieve, in 1996 we were in midst of a huge budget fight, and Republicans were trying to remainder the upkeep and savings were a huge deal," said Haskins, who considers the reform mostly a success.

Not adjusting for inflation has caused the block grants to erode by about a tertiary since 1996, according to the CBPP. That has essentially reduced the benefits states can give out, as well every bit the number of families that receive benefits, fifty-fifty as the number of needy families hasn't been going down.

In addition, states have great flexibility in how they can spend their block grants. The coin spent must fit into one of TANF's four main purposes: profitable needy families; promoting work and union; reducing out-of-wedlock pregnancy; and increasing two-parent families.

States take broad discretion in determining what falls under those broad purposes, and that has led to significant spending on things other than core welfare services.

That'due south a problem, Hahn said, because providing families with cash or helping parents find jobs are the 2 most effective ways to lift families out of poverty, since both provide them with incomes. In 2014, the most contempo data available, 26% of national TANF spending went toward cash welfare, while merely 8% went to work programs, according to the CBPP.

"It doesn't ever have to be nigh cash, merely information technology should be about getting people to piece of work," Schott said.

The route alee

Xx years after Bill Clinton signed welfare reform, it'south his married woman, Hillary Clinton, who could become the next president and have an opportunity to amend the law.

The Clinton campaign did not return an electronic mail requesting comment, just the Democratic presidential nominee has indicated on the campaign trail that she would re-examine welfare programs.

In an Apr interview with WNYC, she said "we have to have a hard wait at it" and was critical of the five-year limit that recipients can go benefits.

She was as well critical in a June interview with Vox'southward Ezra Klein of the "leeway" given to usa and said in that location should be an expectation that states provide a safety net to those in poverty.

"I remember we take to do much more to target federal programs to the poorest," she said in the interview.

Her opponent, Republican nominee Donald Trump, hasn't oft discussed welfare reform or TANF during his presidential campaign and his campaign didn't render a request for comment. But in his 2011 book, Time to Become Tough, Trump praised welfare reform for emphasizing piece of work and said other welfare programs should follow the same approach.

While discussing welfare in a June interview with Play a trick on's Sean Hannity, though, Trump said people need fifty-fifty more than of an incentive to work — which he would seek to create.

"Right now, they have a disincentive," he said in the interview. "They take an incentive not to piece of work."

Follow Michael Burke on Twitter: @michaelburke47

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Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/08/21/welfare-reform-20-years-later/88389666/

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