Welfare, Its What Is Wrong with America

Welfare has been around for than six decades. Since the beginning of its creation people have question whether the programs offered is helping the community. As American taxpayer's, your funds contribute to welfare for others. Due to the large number of members who receives government assistants, it is not that simple to monitor every individual. But, I propose that welfare should be reformed. Society is abusing the access to social welfare and to change the downfall sure to come, the government needs to reform the accessibility and ownership of welfare because it defiles the reason why it was formed, it is creating a dependent nation, and effects taxpayers and people who really need government assistance.

Sometimes life hits you hard, one day you are living paycheck to paycheck, the next day you lose your job and you wonder how you are going to live at all. So you gather your pride and stand in line to ask for assistance. For some, this process is humiliating, for others it is a way of life. Welfare was developed to help Americans suffering through the Depression. At some point it went from providing assistance to becoming a crutch to those who did not want to work. The government decided I was time to put an end to the abuse of the welfare and the Republicans pushed for reform of the system. In many ways the reform did more harm than good and there is a fine line between reform and the edge of poverty. With that being said, many Americans still

Welfare should not be removed completely, for some actually need it, but it should be limited to prevent people from abusing the system and cheating taxpayers out of their money.

Reforming the welfare system was first initiated by Bill Clinton in 1996, by keeping a promise “to end welfare as we know it.” Between the years of 1989 and 1994, there had been a 33% increase in the number of households receiving welfare. Originally, these provisions of reform were implemented as a strategy to increase labor market production among public assistance recipients. Many held the belief that those receiving welfare had become too dependent on public assistance. It was suggested that welfare discouraged those receiving benefits from working. Becoming employed would mean losing benefits, while also incurring an array of expenses that were typically covered through public assistance, such as health insurance. As dependency became a primary concern, fundamental reform rooted itself into the minds of the working-class. Although, the idea of getting rid of welfare as a whole was unpopular, the belief that those in need were being discouraged from employment through what was often referred to as “the welfare trap” called for reformation within the system.

Welfare has been a very touchy and controversial subject to research. A lot of people believe that we should have it and a lot of people believe that we shouldn’t. Some people believe that the welfare should be limited. On the other hand, people think

As it stands now the welfare system is unfair to everyone to include, taxpayers who float the bill for futile programs; to society, whose

Welfare programs like Social Security, Medicare, SNAP, TANF, and Medicaid, do cost the federal government billions of dollars. Clearly cutting costs to these programs would be the best way to save money and or put it elsewhere. However, the programs that cost us the most (Social Security and Medicare) are untouchable while SNAP, TANF, and Medicaid are not. The agreement against these programs is that they cost too much and are abused by those who use it. If it is true that people abuse it then it is clear that funding needs to be cut and the abusers punished. Many believe these programs should be stricter and should focus on helping people get jobs instead of encouraging them to not get jobs. Overall those against welfare programs don’t want

"Welfare 's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence." Ronald Reagan said this statement on January of 1970 when the "Los Angeles Times" interviewed him (Williamson). Federal government funded welfare in the United States started in the 1930s during the Great Depression. Because of the vast numbers of people out of work and with insufficient funds to buy food for their families, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved a program to give money to state governments for the purpose of making jobs so that unemployed people could work (Bill). This start of federal aid was the beginning of what we know welfare to be today. This paper will show whether or not welfare works in our society, whether or not the U.S. should reform it, and if this nation should even have welfare for those who cannot work.

The United States of America is a great nation, with many great opportunities for our country’s vastly diverse citizens. One of these opportunities is the provision of welfare for those citizens that need that little bit of extra help to keep going. However, this welfare is also a cause of great discontent among some of the other citizens of our country. These citizens opposing welfare may sound like they may be cruel or unsympathetic people, but they may have a solid basis for their disagreeing attitude. Some of the recipients of this welfare are not citizens unable to do work and provide for themselves. and many taxpayers do

Over the past several years, Welfare reform has been a hot topic in politics in the United States. A lot of research has been done on the effectiveness of welfare and most research states that welfare is hindering rather than helping people get out of poverty. When talking about the role played by anti-poverty programs in America, David T. Ellwood and Lawrence H.

In 1935, Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the Social Security Act which, among other things, provided for the financial, medical, and material needs of the poor (Komisar 125,128). Since then, there have many additions and reforms to the bill, none of which has served to quell the controversy surrounding the effectiveness of the welfare system in the United States. The main concerns of the distribution of welfare dollars and resources can be answered by the questions ?Who gets assistance?? and ?How much do they receive??. The U.S. welfare system is administered by the Department of Health and Human Services, which attempts to answer these questions through a system of minimum incomes, government-calculated poverty levels, number of children, health problems, and many other criteria. This complicated system leads to one of the critiques of the welfare system?that it is too large and inefficient. President Lyndon Johnson declared a ?War on Poverty? in 1964 designed to alleviate the burden of the poor and established the Food Stamp program the next year (Patterson 139). In 1996, a major welfare reform bill was passed that placed time limits on welfare assistance, required able participants to actively seek employment, and implemented additional services for the needy (Patterson 217).

Welfare is financial aid given to those in need of assistance. There are many reasons one could need welfare such as a disability, illness, or in the case of the new poor, (those who have never been poor before) job loss due to economic recessions. (Hurst 2013.) Sometimes the ones who should receive benefits are denied and money is granted to the non-poor. Businesses are also able to have access to government-aid. Phantom welfare, or “corporate welfare” is defined as any federal spending program that provides payments or unique benefits and advantages to specific companies or industries. (S.S. 2007) This loose definition includes payments like grants and direct subsidies to companies. Sometimes there are cash payments made to farmers

The top 20% of American’s own 81% of this nation’s wealth yet they pay 61% of this nations taxes. They are more than able to afford taxes and in a time when this country is in dire need of tax money they need to step up and take those cuts. If the 2nd 20% of American’s only bring in 12.2% of this nations income yet they pay 19% of this nation’s income then it’s time for the rich to start coughing up the cash. The rich 60.2 of the nation’s income and still pay 61% of this nations taxes and that’s not fair. If everyone else can pay without their fair share of income for way worse jobs then the rich should start paying up.

Have you ever dreamed about not having to work anymore? Every working class citizen has surely thought about the one day that they will retire and hope that they never have to work again a day in their life. There is a small problem with this; People are getting paid right now to do nothing with the money that would normally be given to someone who has retired and earned a social security payment. This is essentially what welfare is. Welfare comes in all different shapes and sizes but its main focus is to take money from taxes and hand it out to the people who need it. Now welfare as a whole is a very understandable system and is very helpful to those who fall out of work and need a little help to sustain themselves while they get back on

In my opinion, the rich should not pay more in taxes because they have done nothing to the poor, in order to pay extra. Just because the rich are rich does not mean the poor should feel the need to make them pay more in taxes. Even though some rich people got rich because they got lucky with the inheritance from family members, it still does not give the poor to call the rich “scapegoats” just because they have them money to support themselves and their family and also have a little extra for other