Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 is a United States federal law passed by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The bill implemented major changes to U.S. social welfare policy, replacing the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.
The law was a cornerstone of the Republican Party's "Contract with America", and also fulfilled Clinton's campaign promise to "end welfare as we know it". AFDC had come under increasing criticism in the 1980s, especially from conservatives who argued that welfare recipients were "trapped in a cycle of poverty". After the 1994 elections, the Republican-controlled Congress passed two major bills designed to reform welfare, but they were vetoed by Clinton. After negotiations between Clinton and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Congress passed PRWORA. Clinton signed the bill into law on August 22, 1996, which was amended by the Noncitizen Benefit Clarification and Other Technical Amendments Act of 1998.
PRWORA granted states greater latitude in administering social welfare programs, and implemented new requirements on welfare recipients, including a five-year lifetime limit on benefits. After the passage of the law, the number of individuals receiving federal welfare dramatically declined. The law was heralded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as a "re-assertion of America's work ethic", largely in response to the bill's workfare component. Critics assert that PRWORA draws upon misogyny, racism, and homophobia, citing low-wage work as the societal problem of the welfare system.
History
1930s to 1970s
caseloads increased dramatically from the 1930s to the 1960s as restrictions on the availability of cash support to poor families were reduced. Under the Social Security Act of 1935, federal funds only covered part of relief costs, providing an incentive for localities to make welfare difficult to obtain. More permissive laws were tested during the Great Migration between 1940 and 1970 in which millions of black people migrated from the agricultural South to the more industrial northern and western regions of the United States to find jobs in wartime defense industry and in the post-war era. Additionally, all able-bodied adults without children and two-parent families were originally disqualified from obtaining AFDC funds. Court rulings during the Civil Rights Movement struck down many of these regulations, creating new categories of people eligible for relief.Community organizations, such as the National Welfare Rights Organization, also distributed informational packets informing citizens of their ability to receive government assistance. Between 1936 and 1969, the number of families receiving support increased from 162,000 to 1,875,000.
After 1970, however, federal funding for the program lagged behind inflation. Between 1970 and 1994, typical benefits for a family of three fell 47% after adjusting for inflation.
Reasons for policy reversal
Concern about dependency
The idea that the welfare-receiving poor had become too dependent upon public assistance also encouraged the act. The idea was that those who were on welfare for many years lost any initiative to find jobs. Those on welfare realized that taking up a job would mean not only losing benefits but also incur child care, transportation and clothing costs. Their new jobs probably would not pay well or include health insurance, whereas on welfare they would have been covered by Medicaid. Therefore, there are many reasons welfare recipients would be discouraged from working.1980s and 1990s
In the 1980s, AFDC came under increasing bipartisan criticism for the program's alleged ineffectiveness. While acknowledging the need for a social safety net, Democrats often invoked the culture of poverty argument. Proponents of the bill argued that welfare recipients were "trapped in a cycle of poverty". Highlighting instances of welfare fraud, conservatives often referred to the system as a "welfare trap" and pledged to "dismantle the welfare state". Ronald Reagan's oft-repeated story of a welfare queen from Chicago's South Side became part of a larger discourse on welfare reform.Republican governor Tommy Thompson began instituting welfare reform in Wisconsin during his governorship in the late-1980s and early-1990s. In lobbying the federal government to grant states wider latitude for implementing welfare, Thompson wanted a system where "pregnant teen-aged girls from Milwaukee, no matter what their background is or where they live, can pursue careers and chase their dreams." His solution was workfare, whereby poor individuals, typically single mothers, had to be employed in order to receive assistance. Thompson later served as Health and Human Services Secretary under President George W. Bush.
Passage of PRWORA was the culmination of many years of debate in which the merits and flaws of AFDC were argued. Research was used by both sides to make their points, with each side often using the same piece of research to support the opposite view. The political atmosphere at the time of PRWORA's passage included a Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Senate and a Democratic president.
2012
In July 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services released a memo saying that, if states found ways to increase employment generally, they could apply to waive the requirement that 50 percent of a state's TANF caseload be employed. The waiver would allow states to continue distributing TANF funds without requiring individual recipients to work. The Obama administration said this was intended to give states flexibility in how they operate their welfare programs. Some states struggled to help TANF applicants find jobs, noted Peter Edelman, the director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy.The change was questioned by Republicans including Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Orrin Hatch, who expressed concern that the memo would remove the main focus of PRWORA. Mitt Romney attacked the measure, saying that Obama was "gutting welfare reform". However, PolitiFact stated that Romney's claim was "not accurate" and "inflames old resentments", giving it a "Pants on Fire" rating. CNN also reported that assertions that Obama was "taking the work requirement off the table" was false. In response to Republican criticism, Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, pointed out that multiple states, including some with Republican governors, had asked Congress to allow waivers.
Passage in 104th Congress
A central pledge of Clinton's campaign was to reform the welfare system, adding changes such as work requirements for recipients. However, by 1994, the Clinton Administration appeared to be more concerned with universal health care, and no details or a plan had emerged on welfare reform. Newt Gingrich accused the President of stalling on welfare and proclaimed that Congress could pass a welfare reform bill in as little as 90 days. Gingrich promised that the Republican Party would continue to apply political pressure to the President to approve welfare legislation.In 1996, after constructing two welfare reform bills that were vetoed by President Clinton, Gingrich and his supporters pushed for the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, a bill aimed at substantially reconstructing the welfare system. Authored by Rep. John Kasich and introduced to Congress the month after Confederate Memorial Day in Tennessee, the act gave state governments more autonomy over welfare delivery, while also reducing the federal government's responsibilities.
It started the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program, which placed time limits on welfare assistance and replaced the longstanding Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. Other changes to the welfare system included stricter conditions for food stamps eligibility, reductions in immigrant welfare assistance, and recipient work requirements.
Gingrich and Clinton negotiated the legislation in private meetings. Previously, Clinton had quietly spoken with Senate Majority Whip Trent Lott for months about the bill, but a compromise on a more acceptable bill for the President could not be reached. Gingrich, on the other hand, gave accurate information about his party's vote counts and persuaded the more conservative members of the Republican Party to vote in favor of PRWORA.
President Clinton found the legislation more conservative than he would have preferred; however, having vetoed two earlier welfare proposals from the Republican-majority Congress, it was considered a political risk to veto a third bill during a campaign season with welfare reform as a central theme. As he signed the bill on August 22, 1996, Clinton stated that the act "gives us a chance we haven't had before to break the cycle of dependency that has existed for millions and millions of our fellow citizens, exiling them from the world of work. It gives structure, meaning and dignity to most of our lives".
After the passage of the bill, Gingrich continued to press for welfare reform and increasing employment opportunities for welfare recipients. In his 1998 book Lessons Learned the Hard Way, Gingrich outlined a multi-step plan to improve economic opportunities for the poor. The plan called for encouraging volunteerism and spiritual renewal, placing more importance on families, creating tax incentives and reducing regulations for businesses in poor neighborhoods, and increasing property ownership for low-income families. Gingrich cited his volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity as an example of where he observed that it was more rewarding for people to be actively involved in improving their lives—by building their own homes—than by receiving welfare payments from the government.