Current Welfare Reform: A Return to the Principles of 1834
In his Presidential Address of 1992, President Clinton announced his intention of "ending welfare as we know it." That promise has finally come to fruition in principle, if not yet in actual practice, with the passage of The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996. The Act proposes to substantially modify the previous welfare system by compelling welfare recipients to accept greater responsibility for their own support by requiring "workfare." Workfare will require them to perform public service, enroll in job training programs, limit the length of time they can receive payments, eliminate payments for additional children born to welfare mothers, and, in some states, drop the able-bodied from the welfare rolls altogether. These are all components of a strategy designed to eventually move able-bodied welfare recipients into the private work force and off public support. These changes follow from widespread acceptance of the belief that the welfare system is responsible for the creation of a dependant class unwilling to accept responsibility for themselves. The view is that members of this "underclass" or "poverty culture" are characterized by and reproduce such social pathologies as crime, drug abuse, and unwed motherhood that prevent its members from active participation in mainstream American life. In addition, the recipients of relief are no longer viewed as having a right to public support [Melville 1994, 19], particularly if they are able-bodied [Aaron 1990, 277]. Reforming, or "ending welfare as we know it," is now seen as being in the best interests of the poor-es "honoring a moral obligation to help poor people help themselves" [Clinton 1996]. Why welfare reform? Why now, and why in this form? The answer, it is argued, can be found in the theme of this conference-"the Great Capitalist Restora-