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 poor that fails to accomplish its task. The issue for them seems to be the failure of the system to go beyond good intentions and to find a way to make the promise of welfare come true. Both commentators see the system as having been created to provide assistance that would help the individual succeed on his or her own, but instead the receiving of welfare has become institutionalized so that it becomes a way of life rather than a way-station in life. Ellwo...