Welfare: The Importance Of Welfare In The United States

Many supporters of welfare point out that the United States is lacking compared to most European nations when it comes to welfare. Most people agree that the United States is far superior to most of the European nations in terms of economy and technology: however, they also agree that it is unacceptable that the leader of the free world falls behind many countries in providing a better social welfare system. For example, Sweden has government sponsored education, healthcare, and an amount of money quarterly for children of low-income households. Supporters of welfare show this system as a goal that the United States should work towards. The Swedish tax rate averages about 48% of every worker`s income, that would be a hard thing to sell to people in the United States. To have a welfare system like Sweden, it would exponentially raise taxes to levels that most people would not be comfortable paying. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act signed on August 22, 1996, completely changed cash and food welfare programs and has helped to reduce federal spending on welfare. It has replaced the Depression-born program of Aid to Families with Dependent Children with yearly grant money going to states for assisting families in need. It required citizenship for many of the benefits. It also helped reduce spending on food stamps, and child nutrition. The program also increased funding for child care and created a grant for care of children in low-income households. The Work vs. Welfare Trade-Off stated “that the Obama administration may have weakened work requirements in 2012.” (Tanner and Hughes 42) The government gave an executive order that gave those states that increased “employment exits” from welfare by 20% flexibility in defining welfare-to-work activities. The study shows that only 42 out of 100 adult recipients are actually working and only 8 out of the 42 recipients have private- sector jobs to date. Since the beginning of the welfare program, it has evolved from being a program that is designed to help people who are in need of assistance, into a large scale program that often keeps more people down than it helps. Sadly, it …show more content…
Unlike other governmental policies, welfare usage policies are fairly easy to abuse. Through having to monitor so many within the program, the government has caused many to be able to go into welfare without the need for it. This has caused the overall tax rate to increase substantially since 2010. This is supported by new research from the Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee that shows that over the last five years, the U.S. has spent about $3.7 trillion on welfare. “Under the President’s FY13 budget proposal, means-tested spending would increase an additional 30 percent over the next four years.” (The Weekly Standard). This has caused many people to have the need for governmental subsidies and enter this vicious cycle of dependency on the program. On the other hand, many people sincerely need this program in order to live day to day. The problem with this however, is that the program has caused many people to not go into the workforce, but instead solely depend on welfare as a means to live on. As a society, we must find a compromise on the welfare system that will both help people that are in need and also keep people from becoming too dependent on