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August 27th, 2016 
Awake Goy 
Susanne Posel ,Chief Editor Occupy Corporatism | Media Spokesperson, HEALTH MAX Group
Back in 1996, the Clinton administration introduced “welfare reform” that became one of the most comprehensive change to address national poverty. The question twenty years later is how did that work out?
The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, released a new report defending the Clinton welfare reformation law, while simultaneously attempting to debunk opponent’s commentary. In essence, republicans believe that the reform was part of an effort to save Americans on Medicaid and food stamps from complete financial depravity.
Former President Clinton replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with the current program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), and placed requirements such as working for welfare, time limits for benefits, and generally turning government assistance into a grant that is expected to yield a financial return – at some point.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan criticized the Clinton welfare reform, saying: “The defenders of the old activism toward the poor, surrendered willingly, with the shrugs and indifference of those who no longer believed in what they stood for.”
TANF has been used by state governments as a “slush fund” for budget deficiencies rather than assist poor residents. In encouraging single mothers to sign up for TANF, certain states made sure that money went to state projects and not the intended destination, thereby keeping poverty going so that federal assistance would follow suit.
Researchers with Johns Hopkins University and the University of Michigan found that there are a number of “households living on $2 or less in cash income per person per day in a given month increased from about 636,000 in 1996 to about 1.65 million in mid-2011, a growth of 159.1 percent.”
Corroborating this data, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says that under-reporting of food stamp recipient’s causes children in poverty to grow up in homes that fall below the poverty line. That number is has risen by half a percent between 1995 and 2005.
For the last two decades, under-reporting of poverty on the state level and welfare recipients themselves choosing to report zero income to receive the maximum in benefits has also had an effect on single-motherhood, according to Jeffrey Grogger, economist for the University of Chicago.
Grogger wrote: “Indeed, the sizable expansions of this particular anti-poverty tool appear to be the most important single factor in explaining why female family heads increased their employment over the 1993-1999 period.”
Surprisingly, as less Americans are receiving welfare, benefits overall, the US government has spent more on those programs at the financial benefit of the state government and not the residents. This is partially because states have taken this cash and invested in “child care, college scholarships and programs that promote marriage as a way to prevent poverty.”
Congressman Jason Smith wrote in an op-ed piece : “While this reform 20 years ago did help some people escape poverty, it is clear we have an entirely new round of obstacles that are placing more Americans into the poverty trap… The bad news is that the welfare reform 20 years ago was narrowly focused to apply to only a few programs and did not apply to all government welfare and anti-poverty support programs.”
Susanne Posel
Source Article from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OccupyCorporatism/~3/Qqwq2Z0cchs/
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