The Personal Responsibility Act
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The Personal Responsibility Act is the name given to current legislation before the House of Representations to reform welfare. It has been believed for some time that there was a need for welfare reform, though how to achieve this and what a different welfare system would entail has been the subject of considerable argument. The current approach has been labeled mean-spirited and misdirected by critics who see in it an attack not on welfare cheats or even on the bureaucracy administering welfare but on those least able to fight back or to succeed without government assistance, namely women and children and the truly needy poor. The Republicans state that they are placing incentives in the law to get people off the welfare rolls, incentives that will make it more attractive to have a job than to be on welfare, and incentives to prevent socially undesirable problems such as illegitimate births by women and girls seeking increased welfare payments or believing that they can have children because the government will subsidize their behavior. Some form of welfare reform is very likely to be passed this session by both houses of Congress, but it is not at all clear that the approach popular in the house will pass in the Senate. Numerous critics have found much to comment upon in the welfare system as it has developed. Two of these critics are David T. Ellwood and Charles Murray , and both are critical of American social policy with regard to welfare, an effort to help the
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wood asks the essential question--should welfare be reformed or replaced? He notes that the country has gone through several attempts at welfare reform, or at least discussions of welfare reform with an eye to making changes if a good program can be developed. The conservatives have called for the elimination of welfare, and Ellwood rightly notes that no one expects this call to be heeded. What is being discussed is the imposition of new obligations and responsibilities on recipients, with the government in turn providing training or jobs. Ellwood considers these issues and notes that while they would help, they would not have more than a modest effect on the caseload and on the ability of the disadvantaged to provide for themselves. Ellwood points out the reason for this--none of these changes would address the real issue, which is that such modifications do nothing about the real problem of poverty:
They will not make single parents much more productive or eliminate their child care responsibilities. They will not raise wages. They will not reinforce and strengthen families. They will not give the poor real dignity or responsibility. They will not do much to integrate the fundamental conflicts of the welfare system.
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Approximate Word count = 1789
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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