d. Over time, AFDC was expanded to include survivors and dependent coverage. In 1960s under Lyndon Johnson's anti-poverty program, additional federal and state financial assistance to poor families was provided in the form of free food stamps and school lunches, free or subsidized health care, education and housing, and aid to the elderly and disabled.
Demands for Welfare Reform in the 1980s
High inflation and the other economic difficulties of the late 1970s and early 1980s led to middle class disillusionment with major government social spending programs. Ronald Reagan inveighed against Welfare Queens and welfare bums. Conservative intellectuals such as Charles Murray argued that social welfare programs promoted a culture of dependency. He said that "illegitimacy is the central social problem of our time" and that "the welfare system becomes an instrument for teaching . . . children [of poor single unwed mothers] all the wrong lessons about how to get along in life." Even some liberals expressed disenchanted with the existing welfare system. According to Edelman, Robert Kennedy in April 1967 called it "bankrupt."
According to Cotter, under the administration of President Ronald Reagan, there was "considerable trimming of AFDC and more rigid eligibility in the food stamp program but also expansion of medical care benefits" under Medicaid. During the administration of George Bush, the Family Support Act of 1988 was passed. It provided no new welfare benefits, but added $3.3 billion over five years to be used to finance the costs of new requirements that AFDC recipients enlist in job training and education programs, one year of day care assistance and continuation of Medicaid eligibility to ease the transition from work to welfare, stepped up enforcement of child support payments, and it placed caps on the expansion of AFDC benefits to two parent families. Edelman said "the 1988 law represented a major bipartisan compromis...