Talk:Welfare reform

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This page is US-centric. There are movements in favor of welfare reform in many other countries. David.Monniaux 16:44, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm new on this page...Canadian. Maybe the difference is in how you view the term of "welfare reform". It isn't positive or negative on its own. In the US it has a particular value though: cuts to funding (a POV way of getting to my point).Use the term "Common Sense Revolution and you'll get a huge reaction in Ontario....for or against...but the term itself doesn't mean anything...it was a slogan for a set of political changes to (mainly) social programs--Marcie 07:01, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Need some citations

I'm trying to use this page to do some research, but am finding it wanting. This line in particular would be very useful, if I had a reference to back it up:

Later, the scale of welfare cheating was found to be very small...

Sources on this politically charged subject are intimidatingly confusing. Could somebody assist me in verifying this? Many thanks in advance. – Clockwork

[edit] Leaning towards the right

Is it me, or does this article seam to lean towards the Gingrich-point-of-view (GPOV as I call it)? I put a POV on this article because I was thinking that it is. It seems that the wording of the article leads more towards a conservative ideal rather than that of a neutral point of view, as preached by Wikipedia. Now, leaving my personal political opinions out of this, I'm seeing some need for change, beginning with some real citations in this article (example: "The tide of public opinion in favor of some change to the welfare system was considerable.[Haskins 2006]"). If anyone agrees, disagrees, please note it. Editor19841 (talk) 19:45, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The outcomes section cites no sources, and somehow connects the drop in child poverty among African Americans to the welfare reform act alone. And why does it link to Newt Gingrich at the bottom, and only to the republican party's "Contract with America"? This article is about welfare reform not about welfare reform in America alone, and it certainly should not focus on the conservative viewpoint on welfare reform alone. There have been many analysises that disagree with the conclusions of this article yet these criticisms have not been included. For example see: http://www.urban.org/toolkit/issues/welfarereform.cfm This article is in desperate need of a reworking. BTAUS 04:31, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

That's what I'm talking about; a lack of a world-wide view, and the fact that not just this article's worshiped conservatives are involved in welfare reform. There needs to be a serious tide of change with this article. Editor19841 (talk) 19:21, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I fail to see a rightwing bias, especially with statements such as this: "Clinton, once elected, worked with a Democratic congress and met with considerable success in moving people from welfare to work through state waiver programs. These programs allowed states to experiment with various welfare reform measures.The system became a common target of Newt Gingrich and other Republican leaders, though changes had already been set in motion by Clinton and the Democrats."

There is neither citation of Democratic-initiated measures, nor bill numbers or names. Why would Republicans attack state welfare experimentation when that was a component of their Personal Responsibility Act? I'm only saying that it provides no citation or examples to back up the claim, and appears as a pro-Clinton point of view. The history is much more complicated than this article suggests.

For instance, here is an archived criticism of President Clinton's welfare reform plan at the Heritage Foundation by Robert Rector: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/IB200.cfm . Since it is an old article and has many errors in it, let me clean up some important parts of it:

"The reason only a tiny number of recipients will be required to work under the Clinton plan is because of the huge number of exemptions and limitations associated with the work obligation. The most glaring exemption is that parents born before 1972 will not be subject to any time limits or work requirements at all. This alone exempts nearly 80 percent of the current AFDC caseload from the work requirement."

"The 'two years and then work' rule is purely cosmetic. It is subject to so many limitations that, if enacted, it would have virtually no effect on the actual operation of the welfare system."

"While the bill's time limits and work requirements are a sham, even worse it does nothing about the two most important welfare reform issues: exploding welfare costs and the crisis of illegitimacy. Last year, federal and state governments spent over $320 billion on welfare; by 1998 welfare costs will rise to over $500 billion, costing on average nearly $5,000 for each taxpaying household. And today nearly one in three American children are born out of wedlock; President Clinton himself has warned the illegitimate birth rate will soon rise to fifty percent. Yet the Clinton 'reform' will do nothing to deal with mushrooming welfare costs or the soaring illegitimate birth rate."

The point is that we should be more specific as to who originated the ideas of: --Time-limit on receiving aid --State experimentation --Cutting off aid to unmarried women --Not increasing benefits per illegitimate child --Mandatory work hours

Here is conservative criticism of the Personal Accountability Act by Doughlas Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute: http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.24784/pub_detail.asp

Maverick-X 12:10, 28 November 2006 (UTC)