TEMPORARY ASSISTANCE TO NEEDY FAMILIES

This research paper discusses the historical origins, impact and success or failure of the federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program enacted into law in 1996.

TANF is a keystone of the welfare reform legislation passed by a Republican majority in Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 23, 1996. TANF replaced and represents a radical departure from, the Aid to Families with Dependent Families (AFDC) portion of federally financed welfare assistance to the poor. TANF consists of block grants of fixed amounts of federal funds to the states which are free to provide welfare assistance to the poor on such terms as they individually see fit, subject to only to constitutional requirements and federal guidelines. The aim of the latter is to reduce welfare rolls and associated costs by imposing time and other limitations on the availability of welfare benefits and by encouraging the transition of recipients from welfare to work. In its first three years of operation, TANF has succeeded in its goal of reducing the number of families dependent on welfare, but its long term success is dependent on the performance of the economy and the willingness and ability of the states to discharge the burdens transferred to them by the federal government. TANF is no solution to the problem of structural poverty in the United States and may aggravate it.

Federal relief was originally intended a

. . .
le was a sure loser anyway, they . . . decided to separate welfare and Medicaid, and began to move a free standing welfare bill through Congress. Under AFDC, federal matching fund grants to the states were based, according to Cotter, on a "formula . . . pegged to the state's per capita income" definition of poverty. Since those definitions varied, so did federal grants as a percentage of total payments to recipients, from 50 percent to about 70 percent. Although no particular levels of assistance were ever guaranteed to eligible AFDC recipients, AFDC benefits were treated as entitlements and the federal government in effect ensured that the states would carry out their welfare entitlement programs. Under the 1996 Act, AFDC was scrapped in favor of TANF, a system of federal block grants which were fixed at a total of $16.4 billion per annum and were to be allocated in accordance with the amount of federal grants in fiscal year 1994. TANF benefits were no longer to be treated as entitlements. The states could use the grants and provided whatever benefits and whatever benefits they each decided, so long as they met certain general federal criteria. One such requirement was that no family recipient could receive TANF benefits f
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Republicans Clinton, Act AFDC, Families AFDC, Support Act, TANF Lowry, Information Age, Congress AFDC, Conclusion AFDC, Tax Credit, Nobel Prize, welfare reform, federal funding, welfare rolls, block grants, job training, assistance poor, food stamps, university press 1998, welfare benefits, princeton university, clinton administration, princeton princeton university, princeton university press, welfare ed amy, ed amy gutmann,
Approximate Word count = 2616
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

More Essays on TEMPORARY ASSISTANCE TO NEEDY FAMILIES