A Need for Change: A Reassessment of Welfare Reform

"The debate is over. We now know that welfare reform works," declared President Clinton in the summer of 1997. The national consensus generally supported his assertion, and his major policy change: to halt the number of lax, uneventful aid recipients who are content with leeching indefinitely off the national welfare system. Under Clinton's 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the former Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program was replaced by another, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The TANF terminated such unlimited welf…