Explain the key provisions of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

In 1996 President Clinton and the Democrats and Republicans in Congress compromised on welfare reform and passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. Key provisions of this act are:
The federal guarantee of cash assistance for poor families with children is ended. Each state now receives a capped block grant (lump sum) to run its own welfare and work programs.
The head of every family has to work within 2 years, or the family loses its benefits. After receiving welfare for 2 months, adults have to perform community service unless they have found regular jobs. (States can choose not to have a community service requirement.)
Lifetime public welfare assistance is limited to 5 years. Hardship exemptions from this requirement are available for up to 20% of recipients in a state.
Communities must provide child care to TANF participants.
States can provide payments to unmarried teenage parents only if a mother under 18 is living at home or in another adult-supervised setting and attends high school or an alternative educational or training program as soon as the child is 12 weeks old.
States are required to maintain their own spending on public welfare at 75% of their 1994 level or 80% if they failed to put enough public welfare recipients to work.
States cannot penalize a woman on public welfare who does not work because she cannot find day care for a child under 6 years old.
States may deny Medicaid to adults who lose welfare benefits because of a failure to meet work requirements.
A woman on public welfare who refuses to cooperate in identifying the father of her child must lose at least 25% of her benefits.
Future legal immigrants who have not yet become citizens are ineligible for most federal welfare benefits and social services during their first 5 years in the United States. Supplemental Security Income benefits and food stamp eligibility ended for noncitizens, including legal immigrants, receiving benefits in 1996.
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