Work Over Welfare: The Inside Story of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law

Policy & Practice, Dec, 2006 by Frank Solomon

Work Over Welfare: The Inside Story of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law.

By Ron Haskins, Hardcover/450 pages Brookings Institution Press First edition. 2006/ISBN: 0-8157-3508-3 List Price $21.50

Ten years ago, President Clinton, backed by a bipartisan Congress, signed historic legislation designed to end "welfare as we know it." In his new book, "Work Over Welfare: The Inside Story of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law," Ron Haskins provides insight into the history of the political battles and policy debates that produced a dramatic overhaul of the American welfare system.

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A senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and co-director of Brookings' Center on Children and Families, Haskins was a key staffer on the House Ways and Means Committee at the time of the bill's passage and played a large role in its creation.

The book contains new revelations about the entitlement welfare debate in Congress, the inclusion of welfare reform in the GOP's "Contract With America" and the three versions of the legislation that passed Congress--two vetoed and one eventually signed by Clinton in August 1996. Haskins tells the inside story of how this revolution in American social policy fundamentally changed the nature of government assistance to poor families in the country.

The most important change brought about by the 1996 law was the replacement of the Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) program with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. After three decades of public frustration with public welfare policy, Congress proposed ending the entitlement to cash, imposing a five-year time limit on benefits, requiring mothers to prepare for and search for work or have their cash benefit reduced or terminated, and requiring states to place half of their welfare caseload in programs that lead to employment.

A decade after the 1996 reforms were passed, welfare rolls have plummeted by nearly 60 percent, the first sustained decline since the program was enacted in 1935. The employment of single mothers heading families reached the highest level ever. As a group, mothers heading families with incomes of less than about $21,000 per year increased their earnings every year between 1994 and 2000 while receiving less money from welfare payments. Over the same period, the child-poverty level enjoyed its most sustained decline since the early 1970s; and both black child poverty and poverty among female-headed families reached their lowest level ever.

Similarly, data on consumption and hunger show that the material conditions of low-income, female-headed families have improved. National surveys show that almost every measure of child well-being--except obesity--has improved since the mid-1990s.

Haskins has done a superb job of telling the story of the landmark welfare reform legislation, providing wonderful insights about politics and policy-making as well as about welfare. Even for those who were less than enthusiastic about the substance of welfare reform, this is a fascinating and valuable read.

Haskins concludes with an analysis of the social and political landscape over the past decade. He discusses the bill's surprising impact on reducing welfare dependency, increasing employment and reducing child poverty, and ends the book with this observation: the nation is now on a new and firmer path to ending dependency, increasing self-reliance and improving the social and economic status of millions of struggling families.

This is a piece of work by not only a rare political operative who is also a serious scholar, Haskins knows how to tell a good story, complete with laughs, suspense, empathy, novelistic details, memorable characters and a distinct point of view.