CNA\/EWTN News<\/a>).- Welfare reform was one of the biggest United States legislative events of the 1990s, but after 20 years what is its legacy from the standpoint of Catholic social teaching?<\/p>\nCatholic policy experts gave differing responses to the program.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s complicated,\u201d said John Carr, director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, John D. Mueller, director of the Economics and Ethics program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., thought it a \u201csuccess, in general.\u201d<\/p>\n
August 22 marked the 20th anniversary of the passage of welfare reform, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.<\/p>\n
The new program \u2013 Temporary Assistance to Needy Families \u2013 was a major overhaul of the previous one, Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Democratic President Bill Clinton signed into law the bill passed by both houses of a Republican Congress.<\/p>\n
Among the biggest changes of the 1996 law were the federal government delegating block grants to the states and letting them administer assistance, and the addition of work requirements for families receiving government assistance.<\/p>\n
The supposed reason behind the reform was to move Americans from welfare to work, and ensure that people wouldn\u2019t take advantage of the system by staying on it long-term, unnecessarily.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops initially opposed the 1996 law, in large part because it blocked legal immigrants from receiving welfare assistance. After the program was re-authorized in Congress in 2010, the conference released a statement on welfare reform expressing their support of and criticisms of certain aspects of the policy.<\/p>\n
One of its successes in the last 20 years was that \u201cin reality and in the public mind, it connected assistance to work, which is a good thing,\u201d John Carr said. \u201cWork is an expression of our dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, he added, welfare reform and its work requirements \u201cworks a lot better in a booming economy than in a recession,\u201d when good jobs are more scarce and harder to find.<\/p>\n
John M\u00e9daille, an adjunct professor of theology at the University of Dallas who has authored books on business and economics, argued that welfare reform has not been a success in promoting flourishing two-parent families.<\/p>\n
In many cases today, he said, both parents are working during the day thus inflicting a \u201csplit\u201d on the family life. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t seem to encourage, economically, the formation of strong families, and [it] forces mothers into the workplace,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A key question, he asked, is \u201care families at the bottom end of the scale stronger or weaker than they were before welfare reform?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI certainly see no evidence that they\u2019re stronger and a lot of evidence that they\u2019re weaker,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Carr agreed that welfare reform \u201cworks less well for those at the very bottom, who have the most problems, obstacles, in their path to the workforce, and for children in those situations.\u201d<\/p>\n
A good economy must be built around work, a decent safety net, and opportunity, he insisted, adding that moving forward the conversation must especially focus on work, like job training and the creation of jobs that can sustain families.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose who can work, should work, and they ought to be able to make a living that supports a family,\u201d he said, \u201cand those who can\u2019t work for a variety of reasons ought to be able to live in dignity, and that\u2019s where a safety net comes in.\u201d<\/p>\n
From the standpoint of Catholic teaching on subsidiarity, welfare reform was indeed a success, John D. Mueller, director of the Economics and Ethics program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., told CNA.<\/p>\n
Mueller defined subsidiarity as \u201cthe notion that each function of society should be undertaken by the social unit which is best suited to answer\u201d a particular problem. Welfare reform, he said, \u201cdid encourage the sorts of hierarchy of ways of meeting needs\u201d rather than a simple top-down federal approach.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt got people off welfare into jobs, which had been doubted,\u201d he added, because the Earned Income Tax Credit also came along at the same time. This tax credit was contingent upon people working and so was a way of \u201chelping people help themselves\u201d rather than something that would \u201cmake them less employable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carr agreed that the reform \u201chas been carried out in more flexible ways at the state level,\u201d which is a \u201cgood thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both M\u00e9daille and Mueller agreed that welfare alone is not the best long-term solution for poverty. It makes \u201cdisadvantaged\u201d persons \u201cless employable,\u201d Mueller said, while according to M\u00e9daille, \u201cwelfare creates dependency.\u201d<\/p>\n
In that sense of avoiding large-scale dependency on the government, M\u00e9daille said, \u201cthe motives were good\u201d for enacting welfare reform.<\/p>\n
Its flaw, however, was that it did not address the big questions of whether there are \u201cenough jobs for all\u201d and whether existing jobs \u201callow for the formation of families,\u201d he said, which would involve true solutions to the problem of increasing welfare rolls.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn both of those counts, the system we have fails,\u201d he said. Jobs in areas of real need \u2013 infrastructure, social, cultural \u2013 are not being created \u201cto bring the unemployment rate down to its frictional levels,\u201d he said, and it is here that government could intervene and be the \u201cemployer of last resort\u201d by creating jobs to build infrastructure, for example.<\/p>\n
Instead, businesses are content to create low-wage jobs where workers receive government assistance on the side, he continued. Thus, the available jobs in the economy do not pay the income and benefits necessary to sustain a family, and welfare becomes a \u201csubsidy to the rich,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are the kind of issues I think reform ought to be dealing with,\u201d M\u00e9daille insisted. \u201cInstead of being the consumer of last resort, let [government] be the employer of last resort.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Washington D.C., Aug 24, 2016 \/ 12:13 pm (CNA\/EWTN News).- Welfare reform was one of the biggest United States legislative events of the 1990s, but after 20 years what is its legacy from the standpoint of Catholic social teaching?<\/p>\n
Catholic policy expe…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1031,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us"],"yoast_head":"\n
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