Lesson Plan

Public Policy: Welfare Reform

Overview

This 13-minute video chronicles the decision by Bill Clinton to sign a controversial welfare reform bill in 1996. The video illustrates the centrist tendencies of President Clinton’s administration, and shows students how the bill has affected the lives of poor Americans. The video is useful for demonstrating the political context of the 1990s, and sets up an engaging discussion about Americans’ changing views about the government’s role in providing public assistance.

Objectives

How Bill Clinton’s 1996 welfare reform bill reflected the centrist politics of his administration and the broader political context of the 1990s.
How Clinton’s welfare reform bill was intended to function, and how it was implemented by state governments.
How Clinton’s welfare reform bill has affected the lives of poor Americans, and reshaped the relationship between poor Americans and government.

Subjects

Social Studies
Civics & Government

Topics

AP U.S. History
Bill Clinton
Cultural and Social Change
Domestic Policies
Economics
Race in U.S. History
1990s America
21st Century

For Teachers

Introducing the Lesson

Created in 1935 as part of the New Deal, Aid to Families With Dependent Children enabled the poor could claim welfare from the government in cash, with no limit on the amount of available money or on how long payments would continue.

But in the anti-welfare backlash that eventually developed, “entitlement” became a dirty word, certainly among conservative Republicans but also among many centrist Democrats. Americans receiving welfare, hardly a powerful political force, found themselves routinely characterized as loafers and cheats.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law a bill that promised to end “welfare as we know it.”

The new law gave individual states the power to decide how best to spend their federal welfare funds, and by 2000 the welfare caseloads had dropped to their lowest level in 30 years.

But the financial crash of 2008 revealed a downside to the apparent success of state-managed welfare. Crushed by budget shortfall, states filled financial gaps by shifting funds designated for welfare to pay for everything from pre-K programs to college scholarships.

As job losses mounted and the demand for welfare assistance soared, states were unable to provide adequate coverage.

By 2016, the 20th anniversary of President Clinton’s promise to end “welfare as we know it,” people receiving cash assistance had dropped from 14.1 million to 4.1 million.

But even Clinton admitted that those in deepest poverty were worse off than they had been. And those living in deepest poverty – making less than $10,000 a year – sought help in other government-supported programs, such as food stamps.

Essential Questions

When were the first federal welfare programs created? What group of people were they created to help? By the 1990s, why did some Americans want to reduce spending on welfare programs?
How did Bill Clinton position himself on the issue of welfare?
When Bill Clinton signed the welfare reform bill in 1996, what were the terms of the bill? How did it change welfare policy?
In the late 1990s, during the booming economy, what were the results of Clinton’s welfare reform bill? How did these results change when the economy went into recession? How did individual states begin to modify the intentions of the bill? What did states do with the money they were supposed to be spending on TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families)?
Two decades ago, 68 out of every 100 poor families in the US received welfare. After two decades of welfare reform, what is that number today? How many millions of Americans live in poverty today?

Lesson Procedure

As president, Bill Clinton once declared that “the era of big government is over,” and often claimed he was a centrist. What does this approach tell us about the political and ideological context of the 1990s?
How has public opinion about welfare policy changed over time? How did Clinton, a Democrat, position himself differently on welfare policy than Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson? What is the larger context of the public’s changing attitudes toward welfare policy? How has public opinion about the role of government changed since the New Deal and Great Society programs of the 1930s and 1960s?
Do you think the pendulum of public opinion towards the role of government has started to swing back toward wanting government to play a larger role in people’s lives? Do you think the younger generation of Americans has a different view of this question than older Americans?
Why do you think Clinton now has regrets over the way his welfare reform bill was implemented by the states? If a president signs a bill that has unintended consequences, to what extent is the president responsible?
Politically, why does the issue of welfare policy create so much anger and controversy?

Additional Resources

Transcript for "Welfare and the Politics of Poverty"Retro Report

20 Years Later, Welfare Overhaul Resonates for Families and CandidatesRetro Report

Standards (Common Core State Standards)

CCSS.ELA.LITERACY.RI.11-12.3:

Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequences of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact or develop over the course of a text.

CCSS.ELA.LITERACY.RH.11-12.7:

Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) in order to address a question or solve a problem.