Vol. 76/No. 36      October 8, 2012

The legislation targeted one of the most vulnerable sections of the working class—single parents. Sixteen years later the result for millions is neither work, nor welfare.

When Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the main federally funded cash relief program, was wiped off the books. It was replaced with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.

TANF set a lifetime limit of five years for most recipients, tightened eligibility criteria and increased degrading means testing and intrusion into individuals’ lives.

The law was enacted with broad bipartisan support. For a number of years, during an uptick in the business cycle, the effects of the anti-working-class assault was partially masked. Now, in the midst of a deep economic contraction, the law’s real effects are increasingly being felt.

Today only one in five poor children receive cash aid, the lowest level in 50 years. One in four low-income single mothers is jobless and without cash aid—roughly 4 million women and children, twice the rate in 1996.

TANF is paid out by the federal government as a block grant to the states, which then use the funds to operate their own programs. It puts conditions on the states to receive the money, including the requirement to encourage “two-parent families” and reduce “out-of-wedlock pregnancies.” State programs are mandated to have “work requirements” for workers to get welfare.

The historic trend is a decline of two-parent families. Fifteen percent of all children lived in single-parent families in 1970; in 2010 it was 34 percent. Two-thirds of Black children live in single-parent families. In several states it’s more than 70 percent, and in Washington D.C., 80 percent.

Each state has to ensure that at least 50 percent of its TANF recipients are engaged in “work-related activities.” For two-parent families the requirement is 90 percent. Welfare was to be replaced with “workfare.”

Since the economic crisis exploded in 2007, unemployment has jumped, the competition for jobs intensified, and more and more working people have given up trying to find work. But the welfare rolls are still close to 70 percent lower than in the mid-1990s.

Those who’ve been lucky enough to find work are forced into low-paying, nonunion jobs, often without health, pension or other benefits. What many workers receive for their “work-related activities” is below a living income.

The TANF federal grant to the states remains the same as it was in 1996, while inflation has cut its real value by about 30 percent. In 1997 three out of four federal and state TANF dollars were spent in cash assistance to families. Today it’s one in four.

Levels vary widely between states—but nowhere do they reach even 50 percent of the arbitrarily set official poverty line. A majority of states pay between $200 and $500 a month. Compared to 1996 the real value of payments has gone down by more than 20 percent in 34 states.

As cash assistance has plunged many people have found some relief in food stamps. In May this year a historic high 40.8 million received them, one in seven U.S. residents. But the government is going after them, too. The Senate voted Aug. 2 to cut $12 billion from the program.

Throughout the economic crisis that has marked his presidency, Barack Obama has said that Clinton’s welfare “reform” will remain “a centerpiece of any social policy.”

One piece of Clinton’s 1996 legislation limited the time adults without children could get food stamps without fulfilling the work requirement. Obama suspended this rule in 2008, as part of his “economic stimulus” package. The number of individuals collecting food stamps then rose by 2 million.

In July, as the 2012 presidential campaign was heating up, the Health and Human Services Department announced plans to modify state requirements to abide by quotas for welfare recipients to get jobs or be dropped from the program.

The Obama administration repeatedly says its goal is to make it easier in hard times for the states to get more people working, not fewer. HHS says its new standards will require 20 percent more people to move to work from welfare before a state can qualify for a waiver from the quotas.

The move has come under harsh criticism from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and other Republicans. Obama “wants to strip the established work requirements from welfare,” Romney said.

“The Obama administration has engaged in a systematic effort to undermine work and increase dependence across government benefit programs,” Rep. Dave Camp, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Rep. John Kline, chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement released Sept. 19.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said he would place work restrictions on “all these federal programs.” Running mate Paul Ryan calls Clinton’s elimination of “welfare as we know it” an “unprecedented success.”  
 
 
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