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Rebecca M. Blank's Welfare Reform

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Welfare America, home of the brave, the free, and the blessed! In this country many programs have been established to help those in need. One of these programs is welfare. Welfare is a public assisting aid, which gives citizens who live in the minimal level of poverty free money. This program is funded from the taxes payed by all working Americans. Since the money is taken out of citizens checks, the people have no problem voicing their opinion on the matter as they do most topics involving how tax money is used.
There are people who are in favor of welfare and those who are opposed. Rebecca M. Blank, currently the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is one who is skeptically in favor of welfare. She has written several books …show more content…

She states this reform was introduced 10 years prior to her article being written and then asks, “But, what happened to these women and children once they left welfare?” (Blank, 2006). She immediately answers, “It turns out that those who left welfare did well enough to surprise the skeptics, myself included, but it remains hard to identify all the reasons” (Blank, 2006).
Before the reform took place and even some time after, Blank was not for the welfare program. As time passed however, she began to notice the progress which it brought. This changed her view in support of welfare. She continues to supports her stand on this program by sectioning off the reform and its results. The first subheading of the article is entitled The Reforms. In this section she simply states what the goal of the reform was, “The new law gave the states strong incentives to push more welfare recipients into jobs or job placement programs.” (Blank, …show more content…

This is due to number of different programs and policies that were also taking place during this time. People were seeing more incentives to work, they were not working solely on the fact that the new law required it. Though Blank is somewhat countering her argument as to why she is in support of welfare, she restates her support with this section. “Nevertheless, it is clear that more welfare recipients were able and willing to enter the labor force than most of us would have predicted.” (Blank,

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