Ending Welfare as We Know It

by R. Kent Weaver

Overview

"Bill Clinton's first presidential term was a period of extraordinary change in policy toward low-income families. In 1993 Congress enacted a major expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income working families. In 1996 Congress passed and the president signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. This legislation abolished the sixty-year-old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program and replaced it with a block grant program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. It contained stiff new work requirements and limits on the length of time people could receive welfare benefits.Dramatic change in AFDC was also occurring piecemeal in the states during these years. States used waivers granted by the federal Department of Health and Human Services to experiment with a variety of welfare strategies, including denial of additional benefits for children born or conceived while a mother received AFDC, work requirements, and time limits on receipt of cash benefits. The pace of change at the state level accelerated after the 1996 federal welfare reform legislation gave states increased leeway to design their programs. Ending Welfare as We Know It analyzes how these changes in the AFDC program came about. In fourteen chapters, R. Kent Weaver addresses three sets of questions about the politics of welfare reform: the dismal history of comprehensive AFDC reform initiatives; the dramatic changes in the welfare reform agenda over the past thirty years; and the reasons why comprehensive welfare reform at the national level succeeded in 1996 after failing in 1995, in 1993–94, and on many previous occasions. Welfare reform raises issues of race, class, and sex that are as difficult and divisive as any in American politics. While broad social and political trends helped to create a historic opening for welfare reform in the late 1990s, dramatic legislation was not inevitable. The interaction of contextual factors with short-term political and policy calculations by President Clinton and congressional Republicans—along with the cascade of repositioning by other policymakers—turned "ending welfare as we know it" from political possibility into policy reality.

"

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815792475
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	08/01/2000
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	500
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.19(d)

About the Author

R. Kent Weaver is a senior fellow in Governmental Studies at the Brookings Institution.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1	Introduction: Welfare Reform as a Political and Policy Problem	1
Chapter 2	Welfare as We Knew It	9
	Poverty and American Families	10
	The Structure of American Family Support Policies	11
Chapter 3	Explaining Welfare Politics: Context, Choices, Traps	23
	Contextual Forces in Welfare Reform Politics	24
	Analyzing Political Choice	29
	Policymaking Traps in Reforming Welfare	43
	Stasis and Change in Welfare Policy	52
Chapter 4	The Past as Prologue	54
	Growing Controversy over AFDC	55
	Nixon's Family Assistance Plan	57
	Carter Tries Again	60
	The Budget Blitzkrieg of 1981	66
	Reagan's New Federalism	68
	The Family Support Act of 1988	70
	Policy Counterpoint: Expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit	78
	Patterns and Lessons in Welfare Reform	84
	Avoiding the Welfare Reform Policymaking Traps	91
	Conclusions	100
Chapter 5	Welfare Reform Agendas in the 1990s	102
	Getting Politicians' Attention: The Problem Stream	103
	Welfare Reform Options: The Policy Stream	106
	Raising the Stakes: The Political Stream	126
	Conclusions	133
Chapter 6	The Role of Policy Research	135
	The Boom in Policy Research	140
	Uses and Limitations of Policy Research	143
	Issues Surrounding Program Entry	145
	From Program Exit to Self-Sufficiency	153
	Conclusions: Policy Research and the Politics of Dissensus	160
Chapter 7	Public Opinion on Welfare Reform	169
	Public Opinion and Policy Change	169
	The Importance of Elite Priming	171
	Analyzing Opinion on Welfare	172
	Causes of Poverty and Welfare Dependence	175
	Attitudes toward Specific Reforms	177
	Whom Do You Trust?	186
	Conclusions and Implications	190
Chapter 8	Interest Groups and Welfare Reform	196
	Child Advocacy Groups	199
	The Democratic Leadership Council	206
	Intergovernmental Groups	207
	Social Conservative Groups	211
	Conclusions: The Ambiguous Impact of Groups	217
Chapter 9	Not Ending Welfare as We Know It: The Clinton Administration's Welfare Reform Initiative	222
	The Political Environment for Welfare Reform	223
	A Crowded Agenda	228
	Policy Choice and the Politics of Formulation	232
	Coming to Closure	237
	The Clinton Administration Proposal	242
	The Political Feasibility of the Clinton Plan	246
	Conclusions	248
Chapter 10	A New Congress, a New Dynamic	252
	The Electoral Earthquake	253
	Initial Bids	260
	Evolving Bids: Seeking a Workable Compromise in the House	274
	Explaining the Republican Success in the House	289
Chapter 11	Stop and Go in the Senate	294
	Setting the Stage in the Senate	295
	Stop and Go	301
	A Fragile Republican Coalition	303
	Aftershocks	313
Chapter 12	Endgames and Aftershocks	316
	Bargaining Positions and Bargaining Rules	317
	Endgame One: The Budget Process and Initial Vetoes	320
	Endgame Two: The Senate Bill and Gubernatorial Intervention	321
	Endgame Three: Moving a Bill	325
	Provisions of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act	328
	Aftershocks	335
	Conclusions	337
Chapter 13	Gaining Ground? The New World of Welfare	342
	Declining Caseloads	343
	State Program Design	344
	Welfare Offices	347
	The Behavior of Welfare Recipients	350
	The Long-Term Prognosis	352
Chapter 14	Welfare Reform and the Dynamics of American Politics	355
	The Politics of Welfare Agenda Change	355
	The Political Barriers to Comprehensive Welfare Reform	359
	Enacting Welfare Reform, 1995-96	364
	The Centrality of Choice	382
	Notes	387
	Index	465

What People are Saying About This

R. Shep Melnick

Nothing yet written on welfare reform can match the breadth, richness, or even-handedness of Weaver's analysis. He combines an encyclopedic knowledge of welfare policy with a subtle and convincing analysis of American politics. This is political science and policy analysis at its very best.
—( R. Shep Melnick, Boston College)

Editorial Reviews

...a definitive account of the most startling change in the American welfare state since its beginnings in the Social Security Act of 1935...Mr. Weaver's book will remain the authoritative history of one of the 20th century's most stunning revolutions in social policy.

Wall Street Journal

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 replaced the 60-year-old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program with a new block grant program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). This study sets the conflict of PRWORA in context of immense public dissatisfaction with AFDC, a long series of failed reform initiatives, and the electoral competition between the president and a new Republican majority in Congress. Weaver is senior fellow in the governmental studies program at the Brookings Institution. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

"A definitive account of the most startling change in the American welfare state.... Mr. Weaver's book will remain the authoritative history of one of the 20th century's most stunning revolutions in social policy." —Thomas Main, Baruch College, Wall Street Journal, 12/4/2000

"This book is well-written, meticulous in its use of research, extensively documented, and comprehensive in its coverage of the process leading to welfare reform." —Sanford F. Schram, Bryn Mawr College, Political Science Quarterly, 4/1/2002

"An encyclopedic, prodigiously researched volume that bids fair to become the standard work on reform of the United States welfare system in the final decades of the twentieth century.... provide(s) a rich intellectual and policy history for the legislation that Clinton ultimately signed in 1996." —Russell L. Riley, University of Virginia, Congress & the Presidency, 10/1/2001

"The book is a useful chronology of the developments that culminated in the 1996 Personal Responsibility Act.... Weaver offers helpful summaries of the most important issues in welfare." —Brendan Conway, Philanthropy Roundtable, 7/1/2001

"Weaver has produced a very readable account of welfare reform and the final victory.... This incredibly thorough and detailed history will interest professionals in the social services as well as historians and political scientists." —D.R. Jamieson, Ashland University, Choice, 7/1/2001

"['Ending Welfare as We Know It'] present[s] us with insightful and fresh analyses of the welfare reform policy process.... [The book] has a lot to offer to students and scholars in a variety of fields.... The analysis [is] informed by solid theoretical frameworks and grounded in the realities of welfare reform.... I strongly recommend ['Ending Welfare as We Know It']." —Mary Ann E. Steger, Northern Arizona University, Journal of Politics, 8/1/2002

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