Zipperer 1

Herman Zipperer

Mehdi

ENG 111

15 November 2017

Reformation of the Abused Welfare System

Over 20% of the U.S. population takes part in some form of a government assistance

program monthly (Census Bureau). These programs can all be compiled into a single term called

the welfare system. This system spans over many aspects of life ranging from healthcare, food,

and even childcare. The welfare system was created in 1935 and was formed as a way to provide

low-income families with cheap and meaningful support from the government. It has gone

through many reforms over the past century with the last one occurring in 1996. Many

Americans are calling for a new and improved welfare system that can help the poor get on their

feet. The current system is found to be easily manipulated by the people taking a part in it using

it as a way of life, not a stepping stone. This costs the tax-payers millions of dollars yearly just to

support the people who do not actually need help from the government. The long-time abuse of

the welfare system calls for reform to improve the broken aspects of its subsystems such as the

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, child welfare, and Medicare/Medicaid.

No person wants to go hungry and have to worry about where their next meal will be

coming from. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP for short, was the

solution created by the government to provide free or relatively cheap food to families in need.

According to Michael Tanner, Today, nearly one out of every six Americans receives SNAP

(2). This system is one of the largest out of any of the government assistance programs. With

exponential growth in the participation of the program, many more people will receive SNAP in
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the future, as well as the people currently on the system. This growth will lead to the continued

abuse of the system if something is not changed. The largest contributor to the expansive

development of SNAP is the fact that the requirements of eligibility are not strict enough. Tanner

also states that a person can be eligible if they have a gross income below 130 percent of the

poverty level and a net income below 100 percent of poverty, as well as less than $2,000 in

assets or if they participate in any other form of government assistance (5). With such relaxed

eligibility requirements, many people sign up for SNAP when they do not actually need it. This

leads to an outstanding cost for tax-payers who have to pay for the people who exploit this

program. If stricter policies were put into place, many of these individuals who do not need

SNAP will be cut out of the program and reduce the giant costs that they induced. While being

the largest program of welfare, SNAP is not the only one with many problems that needs to be

fixed.

The children of this country are the future and need to be protected and provided for, no

matter the cost. Childcare is an ever-increasing issue that needs to be looked at and improved

upon, so that no children in the nation will go without a loving household. The Child Welfare

League of America, or CWLA, helped in founding many of the childcare organizations that deal

with child abuse/neglect, foster care, adoption, as well as youth development programs (Marx).

With such a wide variety of services, children in need have many outlets to their disposal. For

example, foster homes and orphanages simulate a household for children that have no home to

go to. The underlying problem, however, is not the lack of services provided, but the quality of

these services. Many children are not always receiving the loving familial care that one needs to

grow. The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform reports that, One major study of

foster care alumni found they had twice the rate of post-traumatic stress disorder of Gulf War
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veterans and only 20 percent could be said to be doing well (1). This unsettling discovery

shows how much care is truly being put into these systems. The PTSD caused from foster care

can be linked to children being thrown into a family without any consideration for the childs

best interest. About one-third of the children in foster-care have been abused in some way by

their foster parents or peers (NCCPR 1). The easiest way to prevent the needless abuse is through

actually trying to keep a family together instead of splitting it apart. There may be times where a

child will need to be rescued by the government from an abusive household, but a low-income

household is not abusive. There is no reason that children should be taken from their families just

because the parents are poor. Childcare systems need to find a better way to provide for the

children in need by providing for the family.

Lastly, one of the most expansive welfare programs is the healthcare system. Many

people want to make sure that they do not have to worry about paying for the massive expenses

that come through healthcare by buying insurance. However, insurance in itself is not cheap and

requires a steady financial income. This is where the problem arises for people in poverty. How

are they supposed to pay for healthcare when they are not able to even pay for food? This is why

both Medicare and Medicaid were created. According to Marianne Bitler and Hilary Hoynes,

about 90% of people receiving cash benefits from the government also receive Medicaid (9).

With such a staggering amount of people on Medicaid (68,239,620 Americans in September

2017 alone), the government has to figure out a way to provide healthcare services at a cheap

cost. Marx states that, The fundamental problem with managed health care is the conflict

between the goals of high quality and low costs (Marx). This is true as the government has to

take shortcuts to provide for the millions of Americans that are a part of the Medicaid/Managed

Care system. Many public hospitals and clinics are not able to correctly pay their employees for
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the services provided to Medicaid patients. When costs are not covered, the quality of the service

will undoubtedly decline as a result. The government needs to find a way to cover the costs for

public institutions that provide Medicaid/Medicare, so that the Americans who need it will get

the quality service that they deserve.

Since being a substantial topic for political debate, there are many Americans who

despise welfare reform. One topic that is always under heated discussion is the work requirement

that is needed for people to take part in any government assistance program. The majority of

Americans believe that the work requirement should stay, but there are a few who seem to

disagree. They believe that working a minimum wage job does not provide the financial stability

for an average family. The family will be worse off after receiving said job because they will no

longer have the benefits from welfare. This is false because one is still able to receive benefits

even after finding a job for a short while, until they are economically stable. Even if one was to

be cut off early, they would still have the experience of finding and working a job. This

experience is priceless and could be used later to find an even better career down the line. If the

work requirement were to be taken away, there would be no motivation for the individual to go

out and find a job. This in turn allows for free-loaders on the system that incur many unwanted

costs that have to be relieved by tax-payers.

Another view against welfare reform is that if it were to occur, many people would be

sent down into a spiraling path of poverty (Spence). They believe that poverty rates would be at

an all-time high and would ultimately end up sending America into another great depression.

Some believe that without the current benefits that welfare provides, the safety net would be

removed and cause people to fall under the poverty line. Restrictions on welfare can sometimes

be deemed as too harsh or excessive, but without them any one would be able to participate.
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These restrictions allow for the government to focus on the Americans who need help the most.

It promotes financial and economic growth by encouraging work ethic and fiscal responsibility.

If more detailed restrictions were to be enforced, it could reduce the amount of people taking

advantage of the welfare system significantly.

All in all, the welfare system spans across many aspects of everyday life and provides for

people in need through programs for healthcare, food, and even childcare. Each one of the

subsections all have their own unique problems that call for reform and need to be looked at by

the government. If nothing were to be done, this country would continue to shoot itself in the

foot by digging an even bigger debt grave. New policies need to be put into place that allow for a

stricter selection process of the SNAP program. Children need to be held at a higher priority

when it comes to the protection of them and their families. Lastly, the people providing free or

relatively cheap healthcare need to be better compensated by the government. If these actions

were to occur, the overall social and economic opinion on poverty would be better off than it is

now.
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Works Cited

Bitler, Marianne and Hillary W. Hoynes. The State of the Safety Net in the Post-Welfare

Reform Era. NBER Working Paper, no. 16504, October 2010.

Marx, Jerry. Current Issues and Programs in Social Welfare. Social Welfare History Project,

2010, https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/recollections/current-issues-and-programs-in-

social-welfare/

Spence, Lester. An Argument Against Welfare Reform. NPR, 18 Sep. 2006,

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6096905

Tanner, Michael. SNAP Failure: The Food Stamp Program Needs Reform. Policy Analysis,

no. 738, October 2013. Cato Institute,

https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa738_web.pdf

The NCCPR Quick Read: Child Welfare in America An Overview. NCCPR, 1 Sep. 2015.

21.3 Percent of U.S. Population Participates in Government Assistance Programs Each Month.

United States Census Bureau, 28 May, 2015, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-

releases/2015/cb15-97.html