A problem that has been plaguing the United States for many years is our nation’s percentage of population that is unemployed and receiving welfare. In his 1992 campaign for president, Bill Clinton pledged to “end welfare as we know it.” Four years later, President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Reconciliation Act of 1996, which did indeed usher in a new approach to welfare for the most prominent of all welfare programs, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Since 1935, welfare had been primarily a system of open-ended government payments to single mothers with dependent children. In the 1960’s, the welfare program was expanded as part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty and for the first time was referred to as an “entitlement” (Agency). This report will elaborate on past and current statistics and information regarding unemployment and poverty rates to show the significance of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, while also displaying graphs to better visualize the fluctuations that occurred before, during, and after the act was passed.
Federal welfare programs spent $5.4 trillion dollars between 1965 and 1994. In 1996, President Clinton signed a new bill called Temporary Assistance for
Work (as defined by the state) required after a maximum of two years of benefits
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