20 Years Later, It’s Time to Reform Welfare Reform
A lot has changed since 1996; it’s time for the next President to make amends
On August 22, 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (known by it’s extraordinarily catchy acronym, PRWORA). This single act—drafted and pushed by the Republican congress—is one of the largest pieces of welfare reform in the United States.
A Washington Post article from the day of the signing noted that PRWORA was “estimated to save about $54 billion over six years, with about half of those savings coming from reductions in the food stamp program.”
“Much of the remainder of the savings comes from benefit cuts to legal immigrants who have not become citizens. The bill denies them food stamps and Supplemental Security Income for the elderly and disabled. States must decide whether to continue Medicaid and cash payments to poor immigrant families,” wrote staff reporter Barbara Vobejda at the time, adding that Clinton had vowed to figure out how to shore up the impact later.
The law, which may or may not have been an essential goodwill gesture for Bill Clinton’s reelection, had rolling real-world consequences far outside the Beltway. History has shown us that this piece of legislation has not been particularly effective at ending poverty and has instead simply made life more difficult for the nation’s poor.
As we approach the 20th anniversary of this law—which has reduced access to necessary funds while perpetuating outdated and untrue ideas about the value of “welfare-to-work” programs—and the dawn of another, different Clinton presidency, it’s time to reconsider the way that we talk about and execute anti-poverty programs.
First, a look at the impacts of welfare reform on individuals living in poverty 20 years later.
The reform was advertised as a way to reduce overall spending on welfare programs while encouraging independence from public assistance—and, indeed, having a job or taking part in job-searching activity became a key element of eligibility for welfare assistance after 1996. But the biggest change ushered in by PRWORA was the pivot from an entitlement program—where basically, people have the right to cash assistance and other programs when they need them—to a block grant program, which allocated large chunks of money to states and allowed them to divvy up the funds as they saw fit.
As a result, its immediate (and long-term) impact was simply that fewer people are receiving benefits, despite increases in poverty across the country, and that some states are doing dramatically better than others, depending largely on the whims of their state and local government; between 1997 and 2014, more than 20 states had decided to reduce spending on “core benefits.” This state-by-state approach also, as I’ve written about before, has huge impacts on individuals in rural communities, who are often reliant on consistent access to services.
Many of PRWORA’s components are also working less effectively or covering fewer people than they did when the law was signed in 1996. Particularly, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program — hailed by Republicans as the cornerstone of welfare — which was created as a kind of replacement for the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. Whereas AFDC, a 61-year-old entitlement, guaranteed that any poor family who needed cash assistance could get it, TANF came with barriers to access, including work requirements. It was also extremely vulnerable to cuts and reallocations—and, subsequently, it currently assists very few people who need the help.
A report for the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities from 2015 found that TANF cash assistance has fallen by more than 20%. From the report:
…In 2014, just 23 families received TANF benefits for every 100 poor families, down from 68 families receiving TANF for every 100 poor families in 1996. Even more troubling, 12 states’ TANF programs reach only ten families or fewer for every 100 families with children in poverty. For those families, TANF often is their only source of support; without it they would have no cash income to meet basic needs.
This is in part because TANF and, in general, welfare spending—despite the constant drumbeat from the right about how much money we’re collectively blowing on “handouts”—has failed to keep up in inflation in most states. CBPP found that in just two states, TANF benefits were higher in 2015 than they were in 1996 when adjusted for inflation; in most states, the value of TANF benefits had fallen, leaving recipients well below the poverty line.
Additionally, even though cash assistance is largely the face of “welfare,” most states use the bulk of their TANF funds (about 70%, according to the CBPP) on programs other than direct cash assistance—in fact, quite a bit of TANF spending doesn’t even go to needy families.
This is because TANF is built on four main purposes, which are:
- Provide assistance to needy families so that children can be cared for in their own homes
- Reduce the dependency of needy parents by promoting job preparation, work and marriage
- Prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies
- Encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families
And, it turns out, a lot of states are running with the second two, rather than the first two.
To get an idea of just what kind of programs states are using this money on (and welfare programs, generally), Marketplace reporter krissy clark dove deep into these policies for a recent podcast called The Uncertain Hour.
In the podcast, Clark found that states are permitted (and, in some ways, incentivized) to spend their block grants on programs including marriage classes for financially-stable couples, among other things. Programs such as “Forever. For Real.”, which teaches “love styles” to newlywed and engaged couples, are offered free of charge to anyone who wants to take them.
When those who are enrolled in the classes are told that they’re technically funded by welfare, the recipients can’t believe it—because, of course, most of us assume that welfare spending goes to cash assistance, not community classes with pizza and conversation about “sensual touch.”
If this seems somewhat ridiculous—particularly considering the right’s rhetoric around “welfare spending”—you’re not alone. Clark interviewed numerous lawmakers and policy professionals who were surprised to hear that classes encouraging marriage were receiving so much of the pie. Because while marriage has long been touted as a sharp object in the fight against poverty, it’s nowhere near as effective as, say, job training. And yet job training and other supports for employment receive less than 10% of TANF funding.
What the current state of TANF spending makes very clear is that the biggest hurdle when it comes to reforming welfare reform won’t necessarily be securing the money, but rather, courting the political will to change what we do with it.
A large number of the programs which receive TANF money have been found to do a fairly poor job of helping struggling families and individuals break the cycle of poverty, let alone achieving TANF’s four goals—but they’re also exactly the kind of feel-good programs and services that conservatives love. Abstinence-only education (yes, TANF funds, which are supposed to reduce unplanned pregnancy, are used for deeply ineffective curricula that have linked to higher teen birth rates), pregnancy crisis clinics that don’t provide abortions (meanwhile, contraceptives at places like Planned Parenthood are not covered, nor are abortions, thanks to the Hyde Amendment) and welfare-to-work programs which have very little data to back their efficacy all get millions of welfare dollars in various states each year, while cash assistance has been shredded.
In short, TANF dollars are failing to do what the program is set out to do, in part because of the ways that state lawmakers have decided to spend them, but also because of a lack of oversight built into welfare reform on the whole.
The hangover from the law, which presidential nominee Hillary Clinton backed as the First Lady, is so painful that it continues to be a substantial liability for her presidential campaign.
In an interview with WYNC in April, Clinton explained that at the time, she “believed that it could be a net positive, if it were implemented right.” Many of the issues with the law, she said, were in the implementation, not in the law itself. “I would put most of the responsibility on the Bush Administration and on governors and on the failure to be able to get some of what was tried to have more modulation when there were downturns in the economy,” she explains.
Not everyone agrees with her defense of the law, though. In an April article, ThinkProgress argued that it’s welfare reform itself, and not the implementation, that has caused been so problematic.
The block grant structure, not Republican politicians’ decisions, is what hampered welfare reform in the recent economic crisis. Without an automatic infusion of funding from the federal government, and with welfare money tied up in other needs, states weren’t able to increase help as need increased, and caseloads actually fell. This isn’t just in red states: at least 46 responded to budget deficits during the recession by cutting welfare. But food stamps, a program where the federal government gives states more money when demand goes up, was able to rise 45 percent.
Regardless of the main issues with welfare reform—whether it’s spending decisions rooted in conservative and religious ideology or the block grant structure—it’s become clear that PRWORA will be back in the spotlight if and when Clinton takes office.
But she’s only going to do it if it seems politically safe and, even better, popular. Because it’s abundantly clear that, as John Oliver said, this is an election being won and lost on feelings, not facts.
Plenty of state and local governments still ignore the copious data showing that welfare reform doesn’t work and that people receiving it do; House Speaker Paul Ryan’s “A Better Way” plan asserts that “our welfare system should encourage work-capable welfare recipients to work or prepare for work in exchange for benefits,” perpetuating the idea that they don’t — when in fact, most people on welfare do work, it’s just not enough to make ends meet because wages and assistance are both just too low.
As I’ve written before, the proliferation of poverty in the United States isn’t because we don’t have the money to eradicate it—even without massively adding back revenue into TANF and other programs, reallocation could ensure assistance to many more families and individuals—but rather, because we live in a society that doesn’t believe poor people deserve to be given a hand up when they need it. That some people just deserve to be poor, and that if you are poor, it is 100% because of your own personal failings, all data and research and evidence to the contrary.
This isn’t new—a 2015 article in the Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare noted that “the Protestant work ethic underlies most attitudes on welfare, past and present”—but it has shifted substantially over time, which shows that it can be shifted back.
Following the Great Depression, more Americans expected that the government would help assist needy families. However, that changed substantially in the 1970s and 80s.
From the Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare:
The largest change in opinion occurred between 1973 and 1983. In 1973 almost 70% of Americans believed that the government has a responsibility to provide for those in need and in 1983, this figure rose to an all-time high of 83%…Between 1987 and 1995, public support for welfare programs shifted downward. In 1987, 71% of those polled agreed that the government has a responsibility to take care of those in need; however, in 1995, this figure decreased to 61%. This trend may be the result of several factors. The public’s increasing resentment and disdain for the poor today may be one factor affecting the downward shift in public support for welfare. The current shift seems to be toward less government involvement in all aspects of American life.
This shift was in part due to the reaction to Reagonimics (it’s not at all surprising that as more people experience poverty or know someone who does, they turn their back on lawmakers and ideas that put the onus on poor people, rather than poor systems).
Policy tends to capture public opinion at the exact moment when they’re being introduced and passed—which means that, despite good intentions at the time, some laws simply don’t age well. Welfare reform is an example.
Just take the full name of PRWORA:
“Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act”
This emphasis on personal responsibility was extremely fashionable in 1996—as were many other elements which we can look at now as extremely conservative and have little to do with personal responsibility at all.
These public opinions have begun to shift back, according to a report from the Center for American Progress in 2014, which found most Americans believe that poverty is not the fault of the poor, but rather, due to systemic causes, including low wages and lack of access to government programs that can help them.
From the report:
Only 25 percent of Americans agree more with a personal cause: “Most people who live in poverty are poor because they make bad decisions or act irresponsibly in their own lives.” Even white conservatives and libertarians prefer the structural vision of a failed economy to personal reasons for poverty by a wide margin of 63 percent to 29 percent, respectively.
Still, state and local governments, as well as conservative lawmakers, continue to back policies who disproportionately put the blame for poverty on poor people, not poorly-organized systems or an economy that makes it increasingly difficult to get ahead. Because though public opinion is changing, their hardline stances have not.
As public opinion shifts on the issue of poverty and assistance—as the income gap widens and more Americans slip into economic doldrums that don’t feel like their own fault—revisiting welfare reform in a comprehensive, policy-based way would be an incredibly powerful statement from the Democratic Party, and give them the chance to get on the right side of something they’ve been struggling with for so long.
Welfare reform turns 20 today; it’s time to show it the door.
