Poverty & Welfare
Conservative & Liberal Views
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Poverty and welfare are generally interdependent, for it is the poor who welfare programs aim to help. The debate among conservatives and liberals over poverty and welfare involves distinct disagreements, ideologies, and views about the roles of government. So, too, the backgrounds of conservatives and liberals are often distinct which posits different values between groups. In 1996 Congress passed and President Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (Welfare 2002). Up until this time liberals had mainly controlled the shape of welfare policies in U.S. government. This Act radically changed the American welfare system and shifted U.S. policy to the conservative view. The main changes in the Act were the elimination of unlimited federal aid to the poor and a limit for families on welfare of five years.In Conflicting Worlds of Welfare Reform, Lawrence M. Mead (1997) gives an excellent synopsis of the differences in ideologies of liberals and conservatives as well as their respective views on the role of government with respect to poverty and welfare. Liberals believes that poverty is caused by ôbarriers to opportunity such as racism or lack of jobs and child careö (Mead, 1997, 15). In other words, the causes of poverty are socially manifested to liberals, meaning the poor are not responsible for their poverty. Such a viewpoint of the socially oriented causes of poverty,
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ntly as 1988 both groups worked together on welfare reforms and enacted legislation that gave each side a victory. However, the two groups have broken communication and the conservative view now rules in light of the legislation from 1996. Conservatives do not blame poverty on society. Conservatives blame poverty on government because they view welfare as a means of enabling poor people to live ôimprovidently...it is largely by having babies out of wedlock and declining to work that people gain access to aid. The answer is to abolish welfare for the working-aged or at least impose severe work requirements. To do this is only to expect of the poor the self-reliance America expects of all its citizensö (Mead, 1997, 1). Conservatives argue that giving aid to single unwed mothers enables them to make a living off of their children and prohibits them from seeking work opportunities. While this view outrages many liberals, it is the view of many Republicans who forced the passage of the 1996 Reform Act on President Clinton due to their majority in Congress. At the time of the Act, Republican Representatives like Gerald B. Solomon (2002) argued in favor of the legislation, noting that self-reliance will never be achieved if such
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Approximate Word count = 1234
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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Conservative & Liberal Views
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