Welfare serves as a broad term for federal and state programs that support residents through cash assistance, healthcare and medical provisions, food assistance, housing subsidies, energy and utilities subsidies, education and childcare assistance, and subsidies and assistance for other basic services. Its obvious that almost all residents of the United States rely on welfare services, a main reason why any major reforms to these programs are so controversial. How our government supports its citizens has always been a hot topic because the legislation that deals with welfare is so tightly connected with a lot of opinion in terms of morals as well as a huge ton of money mostly funded by taxpayers. Because its importance and easy misunderstanding, I wanted to summarize how welfare works here in the US and how it specifically impacts our society.
Welfare in the United States is just about as old as the country itself with individual colonies and eventually states having legislature to support those lacking the means to completely support themselves. They were modeled after English poor laws which provided care to those who could physically not work and work for those who needed it to make money. Specifically, aid to veterans and pensions to widows and handicapped veterans have been offered for every US war. Workers compensation was widely in effect since 1929 and retirement benefits for government workers can be traced back to the 1800’s, but all of these programs varied greatly from state to state.
The Great Depression is where the Federal government really started to have a heavy influence on social programs because of the states’ inability to fund them. The Social Security Act in 1935 was a major part in this change along with acts put into law by Lyndon B Johnson in the 1960s. Much needed change came from Bill Clinton in 1996 which ultimately took away incentive for states to have more families using direct government aid by basing federal funding off of total population and not the amount of people currently on government aid. Welfare became way to receive shot-term cash and to put people into job position for self support.
The Affordable Care Act passed in 2013 worked to make health care more universal. Supporters of the act boast that 6.4 million previously uninsured Americans now are insured and that 12.3 million more Americans are now enrolled in Medicaid. Critics of the acts point out that middle class premiums and overall costs of insurance have heavily increased causing an even larger amount of Americans unable to use their insurance while having to overpay for it.
Republicans have vowed, especially with their control of both the House, Senate, and Presidency, to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Just this past Friday, Republicans were supposed to vote on the GOP’s proposed healthcare act, the American Health Care Act. However, because of the lack of unified support among House Republicans, the President had the bill pulled from the floor mostly due to the fact that it’s too similar to what it is trying to replace.
Although the future of our current healthcare system is fairly uncertain, we have been able to conclude on the affects of welfare on our overall society. Political scientists like Ben Radcliff say that more generous social programs creates a high quality of life for all people in society. He claims that not only do these social programs directly better the conditions of living for people receiving benefits, but they also reduce the social pathologies (such as crime and anomie) that are the result of poverty and insecurity. Although it seems our country needs some help in developing a new system, we can thank the government in the respect of welfare benefiting us all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_programs_in_the_United_States (I know its Wikipedia but it has an great collection of info on this topic.)
https://www.thebalance.com/obamas-health-care-reform-2645661
https://www.ssa.gov/history/aja964.html
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