Having examined the
presuppositional worldviews that precede liberal and conservative policy-making
decisions and future goals in the last blogpost, I will now discuss the
resultant policies from each ideology that I support or disagree with. The
position that I do agree with the newly formed Temporary Aid to Needy Families
(TANF) is that states are now able to make determinations about to whom and how
much aid is given. ADFC, TANF's predecessor, provided federal assistance to
needy families and individuals, unlike TANF which is now at the state level. I also agree with TANF's four purposes: that
children are cared for in their own homes, to reduce dependency on welfare (by
providing assistance, through marriage or work), preventing out-of-wedlock
pregnancies, and formation and maintenance of 2 parent families. The
focus is on enabling and empowering individuals and families who are needy to
work and ultimately provide for themselves. There is no reason why someone who
can work and provide for themselves should receive aid that will enable
dependency on the system.
Obviously
this purpose has its limitations, for example single mothers. Single mothers
have to work a certain amount of hours per week, but this means that the mother
will have to spend money on childcare, have no time with their children and
always be financially challenged. This brings up another purpose of TANF, which
is reducing the number of people on welfare and not reducing poverty.
Unfortunately dependency on welfare has decreased, but the issue of poverty
persists. Also, TANF only sponsors education for a limited number of vocations
(nurse, secretary etc…) instead of increasing human capital.
Overall,
TANF is not a perfect program, there are aspects of it that are great and some
that just don't work. I myself take an integrationist approach, I would reduce
dependency on welfare by empowering those who can work to work, while at the
same time not being so rigid that a person has no quality of life because of
this expectation, some allotments should made individually.
Good piece on this topic, Dan. There will always be poor people. Helping them is touchy; we have a culture that idealizes rugged individualism, and seems to worship a high work ethic, too. The ridiculous haters that moan about having to work while others get handouts don;t usually have a clue what it would be like living on TANF or disability. It's hard!
ReplyDeleteI totally agree, I really don't understand the "moocher" mentality, most families are living paycheck to paycheck. There will always be people who abuse the system, we can't judge the merits of a program or system based on its abuses, but if it is effective in accomplishing its intended goal.
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