The reform also forced people to develop a work ethic, by placing limits on the amount of time that they could remain on the program. It also denied Aid in the form of food stamps to aliens until they become citizens. The reform also denied TANF completely to Illegal aliens. With these and other reforms made, welfare regained its legitimacy, ensuring its survival for a while longer. Whether or not the reform is successful is irrelevant to the masses, but this is the goal of client politics. In order for the policy's to work, the public must not be aware, or not care about the costs. Though the reform can be seen as a success, seeing as how the average amount of time spent on TANF by a family if 18.3 months, meaning that less people are remaining on welfare for a long time. It can also be seen as a failure, in that only 9 percent of TANF families have a working family member. .
Another program in Social Welfare that I will address is Social Security. The Social Security program is an example of Majoritarian politics, in which many people pay and many people benefit. This characteristic makes it easy for the program to stay alive. When people see the benefits before them there is no need to prove the programs legitimacy, because the clear benefits prove it. But there is a major flaw in the Social Security program. The program is set up to be a pay-as-you-go system, this means that today's workers are supporting today's retirees. Instead of funding your own Social Security account, you are funding the people's accounts who are currently enrolled in the program. The problem with this system is that the ratio of workers to retirees is shrinking, in 1940 the ratio was 42 : 1, today there is only 3 : 1, and in 2040, if no changes are made, it is expected to be 2 : 1. The implications this has in the future is either higher taxes on the workforce, or decreased benefits of retirees. This flaw has slowly begun a slide of Social Security from being a Majoritarian program, to becoming a client program in which many pay, but few benefit.