Candidate Platform Preparation and Policy Position

Nate Kaldor

Candidate Platform Preparation and Policy Position

Portfolio Draft--Due December 11, 2006

Executive Summary

        Welfare reform was meant to move people from welfare to work, and strengthen the bonds of the nuclear family—marriage in particular. The main argument against welfare reform is that it has not helped to strengthen bonds within the nuclear family (Wax, 2006, para. 4). Legislation signed by the Bush Administration in February 2006, reauthorized TANF: this “reauthorization includes $150 million to support programs designed to help couples form and sustain healthy marriages. Up to $50 million of this amount may be used for programs designed to encourage responsible fatherhood.” (United States Department of Health and Human Services, 2006, para. 6). This should address the argument against welfare reform, but we do not have enough hindsight to say whether it has or not yet. Otherwise, welfare reform appears to be a success in moving people from reliance on welfare to the workforce. Judging by this we are headed in the right direction.

Introduction to Issue

        Welfare—economic assistance of families in need—is today a fact of life. If someone falls, the government helps them to get back on the horse.  Specifically what this platform position is about is the governmental block grant known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), formerly Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Providing aid to those at a disadvantage has become a national trademark, with the development of TANF, Social Security, Food Stamps, and numerous other programs in the welfare utility belt. In recent history there have been successful pushes to reduce welfare; an example of this would be the formation of TANF to replace AFDC and help the impoverished achieve financial independence through local state welfare to work programs in the historical 1996 bipartisan welfare reform act.

        Public opinion on welfare reform, according to a study performed by Public Agenda, you can see the exact percentages in the left (Public Agenda, 2001). With a substantial gap between those that think welfare reform successful and those that think it is not, this shows that a majority of Americans feel that it has been working well. Given substantial decline in the amount of welfare rolls—a drop of over 50%—it appears that welfare reform has been a success, and is heading in the right direction (U.S. Welfare Caseloads Information, 2004).  

        The goals of Welfare Reform are:

        (1) Ensure that poor kids can be properly cared for in ‘their own homes’.

        (2) Encourage people to get job training, jobs, and get married.

        (3) Sponsor abstinence.

        (4) Strengthen marriage.

As you can see, 3 of the 4 goals of TANF were to strengthen marriage, and one of the main arguments against welfare reform is that welfare reform has not helped to strengthen bonds within the nuclear family (Wax, 2006, para. 4). The main issue that this policy will address is the success of welfare reform.

Historical Analysis

        All of these federal guidelines are the brainchild of congressional problem solving in 1996 to Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). The history of AFDC is as follows: In the early 1900s, according to the Constitutional Rights Foundation, “Single mothers often found themselves in an impossible situation. If they applied for relief, they were frequently branded as morally unfit by the community. If they worked, they were criticized for neglecting their children” (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 1998). Back then it was very uncommon to see women in the workforce—men were the providers—so if a woman went to find a job, it was a rarity, and she was looked down on, because during that time period men were seen as the bread winner, and the women were seen as raising the children and keeping the house. When a couple got divorced, it naturally produced this conundrum: if the mother works to support her child, she is not caring for her child; if she applies for relief from the local official, she is scorned for being unfit as a mother.

        This led to the creation of the “‘mother’s pension’ movement” which, “sought to provide state aid for poor fatherless children who would remain in their own homes cared for by their mothers” and “By 1933, mother’s pension programs were operating in all but two states” (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 1998). And, even though it was a state by state program in the early 1900s, this appears to be beginning of the movement toward a federal welfare program.

        When FDR signed the Social Security Act in 1935, it encompassed more than just social security, but early AFDC as well, “The original title of the program was Aid to Dependent Children. The stated purpose of Title IV was to provide financial assistance to needy dependent children. The federal program made no provision for assisting a parent or other relative in the household although it did specify that the child must live with a parent or other close relatives to be eligible for federal aid. It was not until 1950 that the federal government began to share the maintenance costs of a caretaker relative” (Assistant Secretary for Planning & Evaluation, 2001). AFDC was originally meant to help impoverished children, but was later extended to help impoverished families—logically; helping the family that was impoverished was helping the child that was impoverished.  

         According to an article on MSNBC, “Congress created AFDC in 1935 as part of the landmark Social Security Act, which also included unemployment insurance and old-age assistance. In an era when few women worked, AFDC was intended to provide modest income support for widows and their children. By the 1980s, it had evolved into something else: guaranteed payments for single, often never-married mothers” (Samuelson, 2006). This provides a biased opinion on the history of welfare, from the point of view that welfare reform in the shape of TANF was, in fact, a good thing, given that times had changed and seeing women in the workforce was no longer a rarity, but a common occurrence. TANF changed the way that people on welfare lived, “It eliminated the automatic entitlement to benefits. To qualify, mothers had to look for work, take job training or both (states set exact requirements). There was a general five-year lifetime limit on receiving benefits” (Samuelson, 2006). According to this article, before TANF there was no real push to get people off of AFDC by making them look for work and/or job training, and there was no real time limit.