Ending Corporate Welfare as We Know It: An Institutional Analysis of the Dual Structure of Welfare
In 1996, after years of debate and the accumulation of a vast literature on poverty, economic dependency, and family structure, the U.S. government voted to "end welfare as we know it." The federal government officially withdrew the entitlement to cash assistance and imposed strict time limits on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), the replacement for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) [Burtless 1997]. Federal regulations require all recipients to work within two years and limit all forms of assistance to 60 months. States are free to impose shorter time limits and more stringent work requirements as they see fit. While government assistance for individuals at both the federal and state levels is clearly in retreat, government assistance for the business sector appears to enjoy broad public support. Under a wide array of programs, the federal government assists business in the form of direct services, cash grants, subsidized credit, as well as through various tax credits and deductions. Plainly, the call to "end welfare as we know it" did not apply to all recipients of government aid. Corporate welfare is estimated to cost the federal government between $170 and $200 billion each year [Collins 1996]. This figure far exceeds the amounts ever budgeted for individual welfare programs. The Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program cost the federal government $11 billion in 1989. Even Medicaid, which benefits primarily the elderly, was budgeted at $30 billion. This is about half the amount lost to the federal government through tax credits and deduc-