Welfare Reform
We’re all familiar with the heart throbbing accounts of poverty-stricken families with no home, no food, and no hope, and how the welfare system kept them from drowning in the river of destitution. But why is it that no one seems to tell the welfare fraud stories? Maybe it is because the public is being denied the truth.
Every year, billions of dollars go towards the federal funding of America’s welfare system. In 2010 alone, the government spent almost $700 billion of taxpayer money to support state-run welfare programs across America. That’s enough money to buy Apple Inc. and still have a billion left over.
The welfare system was established during the Great Depression when many American families were losing their jobs and homes; in a time where handling money was a rarity and there was nowhere for the helpless to turn, welfare kept families from collapsing. However, as the years passed, times changed, but the welfare system did not.
In this day and age, the system encounters more abuse than ever before and is not doing what it was initially intended to do. Yet the government, and therefore all working American citizens, still support it. Although it may seem that the welfare system has been successful in alleviating poverty since it was created, the reality is that the system is full of flaws and is crippling—and will continue to cripple—America until it is reformed.
The general position of the American public is that the welfare system is a necessary part of American politics. Welfare, so it is said, provides economic equality among the classes and prevents social upheaval. Pertaining to the individual, many would argue that receiving welfare is a citizen’s constitutional right, and that every individual should have a safety net to catch them should they fall into a financial pothole (Debate.org, 2013). In a national college debate concerning the abolition of the welfare system, the pro-welfare side stated that taking away the welfare system would mean “punishing innocent children and single mothers who need those benefits. Who”—they asked—“will help them if the government doesn’t?” (Madden).
The welfare system was first established because of the undeniable actuality that individuals unable to work due to injury, disability, or job shortage would be condemned to a life of suffering if they did not receive aid. Nowadays, without welfare, families with low income salaries would be torn apart, children would starve, and seeing the homeless and death on the street would become the norm.
In fact, the number of people in need of aid in America is up to two million and counting, meaning that 6% of America’s total population is considered poor. Because of the welfare system, 1.8 million of those people are receiving direct financial aid from the government.
But the face of poverty is different now than it was then. Back in the struggling 30s, the poor was dirty, unclothed, and starving. In modern times, the “poor” have iPhones, junk food, and TVs. Yet there are grouped in the same state of helplessness. They receive the same aid. And why not? They “need it”.

But there is also a complete opposite viewpoint centered on the idea of abolishing the system altogether. These people claim that welfare is a form of bureaucracy that is giving rise to increasing government intervention, and that the system will eventually lead the nation into a communistic state. In the absence of welfare, they say, America could return to being an independent, free state for the individual. Russell Madden, a writer and professor at Kirkwood Community College, said that the idea of welfare is “centered on the justification of taking values and resources from one group of people and giving them to another.” This wouldn’t be a problem, except for the fact that it is being taken involuntarily and handed out to all the wrong people. A reform, so it is said, would not be enough to eliminate all the issues of the system.
But the point isn’t to eliminate all of the issues. It is to reduce them, and make the system more accessible to people who truly need the help.
The biggest problem with the welfare system now is that it is supplying financial aid to some who don’t actually need it and denying aid to those who do. This is something that is always overlooked; most people don’t know that welfare is not a necessity to 1.6% of the people on it. That may not seem like a big percent, but put into actual figures, that’s 30,000 welfare recipients that are receiving taxpayer money that they do not need, while 200,000 starving, skinny, helpless people that require welfare to survive are not receiving any help at all.
Hand-in-hand with the failure to supply help to 200,000 Americans is the exploitation of the system. Since there are many potholes, it is easy to manipulate welfare programs.
An instance of this abuse can be seen in Ronald Reagan’s 1976 example of the “Welfare Queen”, based off a woman named Linda Taylor. The “Welfare Queen” lived in Chicago and used 80 pseudonyms to collect countless payments of welfare; eventually, the money she received from the government leveled out to equal a $150,000 annual salary (Levin, 2013).
There are smaller occurrences throughout America every day; some people intentionally remain unemployed for greater benefits, claim to not receive benefits so they can collect multiple payments, and have more children and avoid marriage so they are eligible for extended aid (WelfareInfo.org, 2014).
In 1983, Dorothy Woods posed as twelve different “impoverished women with a total of forty-nine dependent children” so that she could receive child care benefits; the state awarded her the money, unmindful of the fact that the woman actually had no kids and led a privileged lifestyle (Timnick, 1987).
Despite the fact that there are federal implications for welfare fraud, it still happens all over America. Perhaps this is because the system is not efficiently regulated; there obviously needs to be a more effective way of weeding out the scammers. Yet no one calls for reform.
Furthermore, welfare is the second largest funded item within the federal budget. The extent to which the government provides funds for the welfare program is, frankly, much more than the system requires. Every year, the welfare system doles out five times the sufficient financial aid needed to raise a household out of poverty.
Simplified, the amount of pay a welfare recipient gets is over $30 an hour; that’s more than the average American citizen makes in any American industry.
Taking this into consideration, the welfare system can actually be considered a disincentive to work. Traditionally, people with low income would get married, stay married, and work. But the system is inspiring people to do the opposite: if one does not work and does not get married, they receive financial help.
This is the underlying factor that attributes to those hundreds of thousands that are on welfare that don’t need to be—they’d rather someone else work for their paycheck.
When the welfare system was created, it was intended as a temporary solution to those suffering from financial deficiency. But nowadays, people are starting to rely on welfare more and more as a permanent source of aid, expecting substantial funds with little to no work in return. “They don’t have to worry about gas money or paying mortgage. The government will take care of them because they are American citizens” (Starkes, Ethnic Studies, 2012). With this sense of entitlement, citizens lose the ability to be self-sufficient. Over the last decade, the welfare system has become more of a way of life than a safety net. Something needs to change to redirect the welfare system before it is too late.
Despite all the abuse and the entitlement attitudes, there are people who sincerely need the help of welfare. For this reason, it is unrealistic to consider abolishing the system, and since it cannot be dropped, reforms are the best step towards a better system. This should start with stricter conditions for families on welfare.
There is already a five-year limit for the amount of time a single family can receive welfare, but perhaps there would be less long-term reliance on the system if there was a single year limit. If, in one year, the economic state of the family has not progressed, they should be taken off welfare. After all, the welfare system is made as a temporary solution to get families moving again; it is not meant to be their source of income for years at a time.
In addition, upon receiving welfare aid, recipients should agree to undergo multiple drug and alcohol screenings throughout their time on welfare, commit to rehabilitation treatment and education training, and contribute to society through community service equivalent to the extent of their aid.
As the system is now, recipients get a monthly paycheck while sitting on the couch all day with a bag of potato chips and DVDs they bought with their welfare checks. Maybe if recipients were required to perform some sort of civil assistance, there would be less applicants to the welfare system.
Now, some people would argue, with these limitations, what happens to the disabled and people unable to work due to serious injury? The simple answer is to establish a different, more specific program that focuses solely on people with these restrictions.
There is a fine line between destroying the system, and reforming it. Calling to attention all the problems with the system is not asking to disregard it. Reform is simply the act of change. It is common knowledge that the welfare system helps millions of people nationwide. There is no doubt that America needs some form of it to survive. But there needs to be changes in order to make the system more beneficial to all American citizens.
By enforcing stricter regulation of the system and treating the welfare system as a temporary fall back, taxpayers would pay less money and more people in need of aid would be treated. By implementing reform, the system’s integrity would be reestablished and it would be as successful as it was in the time of its birth.