Importance Of Welfare Reform

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The Welfare Reform Act While reading through many articles about the Welfare Reform Act an old Chinese Proverb comes to mind, “If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day; if you teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime.” The welfare program was never intended for people to live on forever. Instead of continually feeding man from the welfare program, man is beginning to be taught how to feed himself. “The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 2996 – A.K.A. The Welfare Reform Act – represents the federal government’s attempt to reform the welfare system by “encouraging” recipients to leave welfare and to go work, and by turning over primary responsibility for administering the welfare system to the states”…show more content…
Statistics indicate that around half of the people who use to be on welfare no longer need the program, therefore; they must be able to provide for themselves and his or her family. Unfortunately this is not always the case. Sometimes learning how to fish or how to work is not always an easy task, especially when a person does not receive education on how to fish or to work. Without a college education to receive a decent job or the knowledge of how to obtain a job a person usually cannot find a job that will be beneficial for them or their dependence. The data does not indicate whether people are succeeding when they are let go from the welfare program. A report from Richard Wolf from USA Today indicates that on August 1996 there were 8,607 families in Idaho on welfare, and then on December 2005 that number decreased to 1,870 families (Wolf, 2006). These numbers should indicate that the new rules of welfare are working. The data does not show that the number of people who qualified for Medicaid, food stamps, and other welfare assistance in Idaho increased 41% in June 2010 from the previous fiscal year (Department of Health, Idaho, 2012). For Idaho that means one out of every four people qualified for additional help. Data shows the intended goal of decreasing people relying on welfare was successful. Unfortunately instead of staying on welfare people are now seeking and obtaining aid through other welfare and low income programs that permit them to remain for longer periods of time. It is hard to know what is best for the United States as a country and for its

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