It’s been 20 years since President Bill Clinton‘s welfare reform legislation became law, and many of the advocates, service providers, and even welfare system haters who found the overhauls problematic at the time find themselves in the same state of discontent.
That’s largely due to the sizable decreases in case loads for families in need of cash assistance through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, designed to be a safety net for America’s most needy families struggling to achieve self-sufficiency.
“At the beginning of welfare reform we had about 487,000 [Pennslyvanians] in the TNF program,” said Kristen Dama, supervising attorney at Community Legal Services. “A few months ago we hit a milestone. For the first time ever, the TANF program dropped below 160,000 recipients.”
It’s at 158,000, what CLS considers to be an “all-time low.” So, what’s the problem?
Clinton’s reform was supposed to help move families from assistance into the workforce with incentives. A lot of those incentives, Dama said, are wrapped up in dropping TANF case loads.
Read more at http://generocity.org/philly/2016/08/19/community-legal-services-clinton-welfare/.
