Does Welfare Reform Cost More Money?
Work-fare programs in some states already have been successful in getting recipients back to work while decreasing total welfare costs.
Taxpayer Choice
After more than 30 years of the War on Poverty, the federal government has proven one thing: it does a bad job of dispensing welfare. Hardly anybody is happy with the result. However, there is a better alternative: taxpayer choice.
A New Day for Welfare
Congress is on the verge of passing a major reform that ends the entitlement status of Aid to Familes with Dependent Children, a status it has held since 1935. Instead, each state will receive a specific amount of money in a block grant and will have the freedom to design programs that meet its particular welfare needs.
Bob Dole's Welfare Reform Plan
Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole has introduced a major welfare reform bill. The bill includes some important provisions, and takes the first steps toward general welfare reform.
Welfare Reform: Should There Be Strings Attached?
A debate has arisen among conservatives over how much freedom the states should have. Some argue for a "no-strings-attached" approach under which federal requirements on state use of block grant funds would be minimal. Others want the federal govermnet to impose what they see as a conservative version of welfare, replacing the current liberal one.
Principles for Welfare Reform: Block Grants
The goals of these block grants are laudable: transferring power back to the people and allowing local communities to find workable solutions to a welfare system that is a dismal failure. Yet serious questions remain. How much should go to each state? Should restrictions be attached? What promises should be made for future years?
Welfare Reform: School Lunches
Opponents of moving responsibility for school lunches to the states believe in centralized, big-government solutions. But they are going against the trend to devolve power to states, localities and the private sector, from which the most innovative solutions come.
Welfare Reform That Really Works
Public opinion polls show most people recognize that the current welfare system has utterly failed and are thoroughly disgusted with it. They would overwhelmingly support radical reform including spending reductions.
Why Not Abolish the Welfare State?
Everyone from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton seems to agree. Our welfare system is a disaster. It's in desperate need of reform.
Paying People Not to Work: The Unemployment Compensation System
The Unemployment Compensation system encourages employeers to lay off their employees and discourages the unemployed from finding new jobs.
Private Sector Alternatives to the Welfare State: A New Agenda for Black Americans
The black community in the U.S. has a rich tradition of self-help institutions. These institutions, essential to black survival, thrived in the time of black slavery, during the period following the Civil War, during the Great Depression and during other crisis — long before there was a welfare state and at times when white society was either hostile or indifferent to the plight of blacks.
Privatizing the Welfare State
New evidence shows that there are remarkable differences among the people we label as "poor".
Paying People to be Poor
Since 1972, there has been a strong, positive relationship between the amount of welfare spending and the amount of poverty, after adjusting for other important factors, including the unemployment rate and the rate of economic growth.
Welfare Report
The welfare system of the United States is creating proverty, not destroying it. The War on Poverty not only is not being won, but the weapons designed to defeat poverty are being used to insure its proliferation.