New Republican Opportunity: Welfare Reform
American Spectator
By Peter Ferrara
Sweeping, historic, welfare reforms were enacted in 1996, led by the Republican congressional majorities at the time, with strong, bipartisan support. The reforms involved the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC), originally adopted during the New Deal. The federal funds for the program were sent back to each state with the funds to be used for a new welfare program designed by each state based on mandatory work for the able bodied.
Sweeping, Historic Success
Before the reforms, the federal AFDC funds for each state were provided through a matching formula. The more spent by each state for AFDC, the more federal matching funds were paid to each state. So the states had an incentive to sign up more and more AFDC recipients, for each new recipient effectively brought more federal funds to the state. As a result, before the 1996 reforms, the AFDC rolls grew and grew, in both good economic times and bad, apart from state AFDC experiments that began to implement the fundamental changes.
Common Bread 