Work, a Major Issue of Welfare Reform

The focus of the welfare debate has changed dramatically since the 1980s. During the early 1980s President Ronald Reagan attacked waste, fraud, and abuse in the welfare system, the conventional attack upon public welfare at the time. Since the late 1980s, however, the issue of welfare reform has focused on work programs as a means of getting people off welfare and keeping them off. Both among Republicans and Democrats, a consensus developed that jobs, either in the private sector, subsidized by the government, or both, were the most promising answer to the welfare problem.

By the summer of 1996 a number of welfare-reform proposals had been offered for consideration in Congress. Virtually all proposals contained a basic requirement that welfare recipients get jobs, either on their own or with the help of local welfare agencies. At the same time, because...