Trump’s Plan To Take People From Welfare To Work
Today, the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) released a report outlining the likely effects of expanding work requirements for non-disabled working-age adults in social welfare programs. The following is the executive summary. Read the full report here.
The American work ethic, the motivation that drives Americans to work longer hours each week and more weeks each year than any of our economic peers, is a long-standing contributor to America’s success. However, while working Americans contribute more time to work than our peers in comparable economies, the share of working-age Americans participating in the labor force has fallen behind the share in peer countries over the last several years. Today, many non-disabled working-age adults do not regularly work, particularly those living in low-income households. Such non-working adults who receive welfare benefits may miss important pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits for themselves and their households, and can become reliant on welfare programs.
To help transition more non-disabled working-age Americans into the workforce, President Trump signed an executive order in April 2018 instructing agencies to reform their welfare programs by encouraging work and reducing dependence, in part by strengthening and expanding work requirements (to the extent current law allows). This effort builds on previous bipartisan commitments to require and reward work in welfare programs. In the 1990s, President Clinton promised to advance welfare reforms that would transition those expected to work into the workforce. Bipartisan legislation during his presidency reformed the main cash-based welfare program for low-income households—Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)—in part by imposing strong work requirements on non-disabled working-age adults in its work-focused replacement, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Though work requirements have been an important component in promoting employment for TANF recipients, today most recipients of non-cash welfare programs are not subject to work requirements, despite the fact that these non-cash programs now provide the vast majority of welfare assistance to low-income individuals and households.
In this report, we document the share of adult recipients in the three major non-cash welfare programs who society generally expects to work: non-disabled working-age adults (between 18 and 64). Low employment rates of non-disabled working-age recipients suggest that legislative changes requiring them to work and supporting their transition into the labor market, similar to the approach in TANF, would affect a large share of adult beneficiaries and their children in these non-cash programs.
We then discuss three reasons for expanding work requirements in non-cash welfare programs as a means of solving the problem of a large number of non-disabled working-age recipients on non-cash welfare programs who work few, if any, hours. First, self-sufficiency has been declining in recent decades while material hardship has fallen, motivating a renewed focus on building self-sufficiency via work requirements. Second, an alternative solution of increasing positive incentives for work (for example, by increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit) could exacerbate already-high implicit taxes on low-skill part-time workers. Third, evidence suggests that welfare programs that require work in return for benefits increase adult employment and may improve child outcomes.
The timing is ideal for expanding work requirements among non-disabled working-age adults in social welfare programs. As was the case in the period of welfare reform in the mid-1990s, current labor markets are extremely tight and unemployment rates are at very low levels, even for low-skilled workers. Still, even if work requirements improve outcomes for the majority of affected recipients, some may experience negative effects, which is why it is important to carefully design requirements and increase support in helping recipients overcome barriers to employment (e.g., lack of childcare, mental illness, or criminal records). Quite the opposite of harming people, expanded work requirements can improve the lives of current welfare recipients and at the same time respect the importance and dignity of work.
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Simple plan for this: cut off their welfare completely unless they are working, or TOTALLY unable to work due to serious injuries. No doctor’s excuses.
If a person can physically work, then they should do so. You see some people not going to work because when they figure day care, gas,, clothing, lunch, etc., it cost more than they can get o welfare,
Then maybe in order to work these people should pay one or two of their own to do day care, transportation, etc..
Or not have more kids than what you can afford.
…….They are about 40 MILLION recipients in US, including PR and Hawaii, the two worst, in country with a population of about 280 Million!,….Time for at least a third to get Jobs, and get the Leeches off the easy money payroll and paying taxes!!,…America should just get rid off welfare, food stamps , free housing, free education, free medical!!,….No more free stuff!!,….
Better said then done. People are used to the good life, free everything for decades…. work has become an abomination for them. Citi s will burn, massive riots, massive demonstration, the race card at every turn, the media fanning the fire.
Much blood will be spilled if blacks are forced too work”
Time to only give to the very needy, our senior citizens and our veterans. If you are here illegally you get nothing. If you are here from a foreign country get a job, have sponsors, but no free stuff, no free education. If you don’t work go back to where you came.
I agree wholeheartedly with you, Granny.
Require the able body recipients to get a job, ANY JOB, and then have welfare pay them the difference between their income and the local average wages, over time their pay raises should eventually remove the need for any welfare assistance. AND, if there are some who will not adhere to such a policy, they get nothing from any welfare assistance programs.
And men will begin to feel good about themselves as those men during the depression all they wanted was a job not welfare.
I see my first comment was deleted…. not surprised!
Time to re-incorporate the draft, not necessarily for the Army, but for community service. Many of these folks don’t realize what the community does for them and need to learn what they can do to make our communities a better place. If they don’t like it, they can leave the country (if they can find one that will take them) as those fleeing military draft did before it was abolished…..
I would like to see the Disability program re-done.
They refused my husband repeatedly, even though he has spinal stenosis, a debilitating condition. The Judge viewing the case, and others in the room, could not think of ONE job my husband would be able to perform. Yet they still denied him. The denial mentioned that he was not yet 50 years old and was young enough to work. !!!!! What does age matter in a case of disability?
Meanwhile, we know many people who have gotten on Disability for the most idiotic reasons. One man hasn’t worked a month in his life and he is almost 60 and guess what…lives with his parents. He is quite mentally capable of doing something. This is not fair. It is cruel.
Now, combine that with the Welfare problem. We practically had to shed blood to get financial help, while the illegal immigrants and other criminals basically had a free pass.
The form we had to fill out instructed the illegals to skip several papers of EXTREMELY important paperwork.
Once accepted, they made my husband’s life a living hell when it came to constant paperwork, like EVERY MONTH. They repeatedly asked for the same information that had already been turned in numerous times and was admittedly in the computer system.
Basically, they tortured him. He, who was in constant excruciating pain and had enough to deal with.
Also, when it came to food, there was no limit on what items you could buy. We could buy any kind of junk food we wanted and they wouldn’t stop you. Shouldn’t it be helping us THRIVE?
And then, with that food card, we were unable to purchase personal care items like soap, toothpaste, shampoo, razors, sanitary pads, etc. How is that truly helpful? So you had to have BOTH the food card AND financial assistance, which was hard to get accepted on in our case, because they expected one of us to work. Husband could not PHYSICALLY work, and I was needed in the home to care for both him and our children. When they said, “We can provide child-care”, we said, “Not a chance, you’re not getting our kids.”
Then, eventually, things got so bad, I was forced to volunteer, which thankfully, I was able to choose hours from 5:00-10:00am, five days a week, so I could be home with the kids in the morning. We just had to hope for the best that my husband wouldn’t fall while I was gone and need emergency help. I ‘earned’ LESS than minimum wage but worked LONGER HOURS than any employee in the building. How is THAT fair?
The following year, they changed the rules and told my husband that, on TOP of myself working those same hours and days, HE ALSO would now have to enter back in the work force….without an increase in our financial help!!!!! BOTH of us!
At that point, we said, NO MORE. You’re not ruining our family. And we removed ourselves from the financial program. It was hard, but what they put us through was much harder. It was very cruel. And it ticks me off that my husband, who is a white, conservative, takes-pride-in-his-work family man was treated like scum.
So yeah, a lot of changes need to be made.
We are in a better place now, btw. Our church offered him a part-time job knowing his condition, so it was comforting knowing that he wouldn’t lose his job if he had a bad spell. He was able to gain some strength and after a year, he was able to go full-time somewhere else.
But, THAT was a blessing. Welfare and Disability didn’t know it might work out for us. It needs changed.
Another reason it needs changed is because stories like ours are many. And it breeds despair, resentment and anger. The people at the Welfare office , guess what, they sit behind safety glass, security checks, and such things. I imagine they fear for their lives…people in despair have probably threatened to ‘go postal’. Not good. Not good for our country and fellow citizens…at all.
America First.