Welfare Reform
Welfare reform has been needed for years. The old entitlement programs have kept welfare recipients on welfare for generation after generation. The families were kept in poverty with little hope of ever getting out of the system. Under the entitlement programs, families were penalized for trying to work. It held them into the system because they knew they would lose all benefits if they started a job. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, and the temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program it created, made moving people from welfare to work a primary goal of the federal welfare policy. The worker I interviewed thought the program was a great improvement over the old AFDC program. She thought the old program made the families dependent on the system. It made them feel so secure that no one wanted to try to leave the system. It led to generation after generation of the same families remaining on the welfare rolls. Limiting benefit time and giving the families continued benefits after finding employment is one of the key ingredients to helping the client become self-suff . . .
The worker felt they were making a very big mistake returning to West Virginia because the possibility of finding a job is less here than in other areas of the country. They make more than some of the elderly that have worked their entire life. The state of West Virginia received over $8 million dollars in 2001 for reducing their caseloads and moving clients into employment. The welfare reform laws are not perfect, but it is a start. The local worker’s caseload has also been increasing. Some Social Security benefits are $200 monthly or less and they are not entitled to a Medicaid card for their prescriptions. It doesn’t work that way. Federal grants are conditioned upon states moving recipients into work and reducing dependency. The Welfare Reform Act of 1996, gave the individual states the opportunity to set up their own programs as long as they followed the federal guidelines. Welfare reform is working and in the end everyone will see that making welfare recipients self-sufficient is the only way to change the old system into something everyone can feel proud about. The worker calls the other state and finds out how many months the family received benefits in that state and it is deducted from the 60 month lifetime limit in WV. She felt that the figures were not 100% accurate. Over the past four years the welfare rolls have declined.
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