After 20 Years: The Disastrous Impact of Welfare Reform
A couple of months ago, speaking to a large, diverse audience in Cleveland, Ohio, Jonathan Kozol joked that as a Jew, when he has the opportunity to address church audiences, he takes great pleasure in reminding Christians about the meaning of the words of Jesus. On a hot summer night in 1999, when Kozol presented the keynote at a United Church of Christ General Synod—taking his text from John, 21: 15-17—here is what he preached: “When Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘If you love me, feed my sheep,’ he didn’t say, ‘only the sheep who dwell in the green pastures.’ He didn’t say, ‘only the sheep whose mothers please us by acceptable behavior.’ He didn’t say, ‘only the sheep whose fathers have good jobs and mothers come to PTA.’ He didn’t say, ‘only the sheep whose parents make smart choices.’ He didn’t say, ‘only the sheep who have two parents in the pen.’ He just said, ‘If you love me feed my sheep.'”
Kozol was, of course, speaking about welfare reform, the then three-year-old law that “ended welfare as we know it,” replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and redesigned public assistance as a program to shape the behavior of poor parents. TANF conditioned welfare on parents’ willingness and ability to secure work outside the home, but it neglected to consider the needs of America’s poorest children.
As welfare reform reaches its 20th birthday in 2016, here is how Peter Edelman evaluates what he describes as “The War on the Poor”: “The welfare reform of the 1990s left millions of Americans near destitution… We should know by now that Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or TANF—the so-called ‘welfare reform’ enacted in 1996—is a failure. For every 100 families in poverty in 1996, 68 received cash assistance. Now it’s only 23 in 100. Less than 1 percent of our population—just 3.1 million people—receives TANF now. Cash assistance has After 20 Years: The Disastrous Impact of Welfare Reform | janresseger:
