Thanks for this post, Miriam.
I'd forgotten what a crock of puke the Personal Responsibility and
Work Opportunity Act was. If we(America) truly believed in work
ethics, we would put forth a piece of legislation that designed
employment(Jobs) as a solution. We would include free public
education for all children, to enable them to become productive
workers. We would raise the minimum wage to something close to a
living wage, enabling all citizens and non citizens alike, to
participate in the American society.
Frankly, this legislation looks very much like a larger, more complex
copy of the "Contract" I must sign each year, in order to attempt to
serve older blind and low vision people with far too few dollars. My
contract also, like this bill, protects my employer, first, last and
always. Sure, it says it is serving the needs of the clients, but it
is actually a dollar monitoring system.
Carl Jarvis
,
On 6/1/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Frank,
This is just a superficial look at the welfare legislation that we were
discussing. It comes from Wikipedia where you can find more details.
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996
Long title An Act To provide for reconciliation pursuant to section
201(a)(1) of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 1997
Acronyms (colloquial) PRWORA
Nicknames Welfare Reform
Enacted by the 104th United States Congress Citations
Public law Pub.L. 104-193 Statutes at Large
110 Stat. 2105 Legislative history . Introduced in the House as H.R. 3734
by John Kasich (R-OH) on June 27, 1996
. Committee consideration by House Budget, Senate Budget
. Passed the House on July 18, 1996 (256-170)
. Passed the Senate on July 23, 1996 (74-24, in lieu of S. 1956)
. Reported by the joint conference committee on July 30, 1996; agreed
to by the House on July 31, 1996 (328-101) and by the Senate on August 1,
1996 (78-21)
. Signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 22, 1996 The
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996
(PRWORA) is a United States federal law considered to be a major welfare
reform. The bill was a cornerstone of the Republican Contract with America
and was introduced by Rep. E. Clay Shaw, Jr. (R-FL-22). President Bill
Clinton signed PRWORA into law on August 22, 1996, fulfilling his 1992
campaign promise to "end welfare as we have come to know it".[1]
PRWORA instituted Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which
became effective July 1, 1997. TANF replaced the Aid to Families with
Dependent Children (AFDC) program-which had been in effect since 1935-and
supplanted the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training program (JOBS)
of
1988. The law was heralded as a "reassertion of America's work ethic" by
the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, largely in response to the bill's workfare
component. TANF was reauthorized in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.
Provisions[edit]
This section possibly contains original research. Please improve it by
verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements
consisting
only of original research should be removed. (April 2010)
Overall decline in welfare monthly benefits (in 2006 dollars)[22]
PRWORA proposed TANF as AFDC's replacement. The Congressional findings in
PRWORA highlighted dependency, out-of-wedlock birth, and intergenerational
poverty as the main contributors to a faulty system.[23] In instituting a
block grant program, PRWORA granted states the ability to design their own
systems, as long as states met a set of basic federal requirements. The
bill's primary requirements and effects included the following:
. Ending welfare as an entitlement program;
. Requiring recipients to begin working after two years of receiving
benefits;
. Placing a lifetime limit of five years on benefits paid by federal
funds;
. Aiming to encourage two-parent families and discouraging
out-of-wedlock births;
. Enhancing enforcement of child support; and
. Requiring state professional and occupational licenses to be
withheld from illegal immigrants.[24]
In granting states wider latitude for designing their own programs, some
states have decided to place additional requirements on recipients.
Although
the law placed a time limit for benefits supported by federal funds of no
more than two consecutive years and no more than a collective total of five
years over a lifetime, some states have enacted briefer limits. All states,
however, allowed exceptions to avoid punishing children because their
parents have gone over their respective time limits.[citation needed]
Federal requirements have ensured some measure of uniformity across states,
but the block grant approach has led individual states to distribute
federal
money in different ways. Certain states more actively encourage education;
others use the money to help fund private enterprises helping job seekers.
The legislation also greatly limited funds available for unmarried parents
under 18 and restricted any funding to all immigrants.[3] Some state
programs emphasized a shift towards work with names such as "Wisconsin
Works" and "WorkFirst." Between 1997 and 2000, enormous numbers of the poor
have left or been terminated from the program, with a national drop of 53%
in total recipients.[25]
According to the House Ways and Means Committee, "The major goal of Public
Law 104-193 is to reduce the length of welfare spells by attacking
dependency while simultaneously preserving the function of welfare as a
safety net for families experiencing temporary financial problems." A major
prong in this effort was to improve child support collection rates in an
effort to move single parent families off of the welfare rolls, and keep
them off. According to the Conference Report. "It is the sense of the
Senate
that - (a) States should diligently continue their efforts to enforce child
support payments by the non-custodial parent to the custodial parent,
regardless of the employment status or location of the non-custodial
parent".
The reformed child support program attacks this problem by pursuing five
major goals: automating many child support enforcement procedures;
establishing uniform tracking procedures; strengthening interstate child
support enforcement; requiring States to adopt stronger measures to
establish paternity; and creating new and stronger enforcement tools to
increase actual child support collections. The law envisions a child
support
system in which all States have similar child support laws, all States
share
information through the Federal child support office, mass processing of
information is routine, and interstate cases are handled expeditiously.
Section III (Child Support), Subtitle G (Enforcement of Child Support)
contains 14 enforcement measures to improve the collection of child
support,
including potential denial or revocation of passports. One provision
required the State Department to refuse or revoke passports for anyone who
owed more than $5,000 in child support. Those provisions were upheld in
Weinstein v. Albright (2001), Eunique v Powell (2002), In re James K.
Walker
(2002), Dept of Revenue v Nesbitt (2008), Risenhoover v. Washington (2008),
Borracchini v. Jones (2009), and Dewald v. United States (E.D. MI 2009).
In granting states wider latitude for designing their own programs, some
states have decided to place additional requirements on recipients.
Although
the law placed a time limit for benefits supported by federal funds of no
more than two consecutive years and no more than a collective total of five
years over a lifetime, some states have enacted briefer limits. All states,
however, allowed exceptions to avoid punishing children because their
parents have gone over their respective time limits.[citation needed]
Federal requirements have ensured some measure of uniformity across states,
but the block grant approach has led individual states to distribute
federal
money in different ways. Certain states more actively encourage education;
others use the money to help fund private enterprises helping job seekers.
The legislation also greatly limited funds available for unmarried parents
under 18 and restricted any funding to all immigrants.[3] Some state
programs emphasized a shift towards work with names such as "Wisconsin
Works" and "WorkFirst." Between 1997 and 2000, enormous numbers of the poor
have left or been terminated from the program, with a national drop of 53%
in total recipients.[25]
According to the House Ways and Means Committee, "The major goal of Public
Law 104-193 is to reduce the length of welfare spells by attacking
dependency while simultaneously preserving the function of welfare as a
safety net for families experiencing temporary financial problems." A major
prong in this effort was to improve child support collection rates in an
effort to move single parent families off of the welfare rolls, and keep
them off. According to the Conference Report. "It is the sense of the
Senate
that - (a) States should diligently continue their efforts to enforce child
support payments by the non-custodial parent to the custodial parent,
regardless of the employment status or location of the non-custodial
parent".
The reformed child support program attacks this problem by pursuing five
major goals: automating many child support enforcement procedures;
establishing uniform tracking procedures; strengthening interstate child
support enforcement; requiring States to adopt stronger measures to
establish paternity; and creating new and stronger enforcement tools to
increase actual child support collections. The law envisions a child
support
system in which all States have similar child support laws, all States
share
information through the Federal child support office, mass processing of
information is routine, and interstate cases are handled expeditiously.
Section III (Child Support), Subtitle G (Enforcement of Child Support)
contains 14 enforcement measures to improve the collection of child
support,
including potential denial or revocation of passports. One provision
required the State Department to refuse or revoke passports for anyone who
owed more than $5,000 in child support. Those provisions were upheld in
Weinstein v. Albright (2001), Eunique v Powell (2002), In re James K.
Walker
(2002), Dept of Revenue v Nesbitt (2008), Risenhoover v. Washington (2008),
Borracchini v. Jones (2009), and Dewald v. United States (E.D. MI 2009).
