On Being

The Federal government also participated in the attack on welfare. President Ronald Reagan was elected to office in 1980 on a campaign that featured anti-welfare rhetoric. He promptly set about dismantling welfare.

The Reagan administration attempted to cut not only public assistance but also other forms of social insurance. Political reaction, however, immediately precluded significant change in Social Security or unemployment insurance. His administration was successful, however, in cutting into disability insurance, part of the Social Security Act intended for anyone who had been disabled for at least a year. Charging fraud and waste, the administration tightened requirements (which required no approval from Congress) and almost 200,000 people lost their eligibility. Among those declared ineligible were people whose poverty was a result of addiction and manychildren suffering from illness. Of those former recipients who had the resources to challenge their administrative termination, over half of them had their eligibility reinstated on appeal. The vast majority of those cut, however, never challenged and lost eligibility.

Public assistance programs were more successfully targeted. By 1983, 300,000 families had lost their eligibility for AFDC, "saving" the government over a billion dollars a year. Eligibility and benefits for food stamps, school lunch programs for the poor, Medicaid, extended unemployment benefits, and other programs were cut. The Federal housing budget was slashed from over $30 billion to $7 billion, virtually precluding any new construction of housing for the poor.

By 1992, political support for curtailing social welfare programs was bipartisan, and in most places it was political suicide to campaign on the basis of increasing the amount the government spent on programs for poor people. The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 was the capstone of this process.


Welfare Reform
After campaigning on a promise to "end welfare as we know it," Democratic President Bill Clinton joined with a Republican Congress in 1996 to pass the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, popularly known as "Welfare Reform." (Because this legislation uses the term "welfare" to refer to the Aid to Families with Dependent Children [AFDC] program, I will follow that usage in the next paragraphs.) Among the most important features of the legislation were the following.