ABSTRACT
During his first term as U.S. president, Bill Clinton promised to end welfare as we knew it. In 1996, Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), which replaced a fifty-year system of federally controlled benefits with statecontrolled community development block grants. The grants, referred to as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), included more restricted time limits and more rigid work requirements than did previous legislation. In 2003, at the request of President George W. Bush, the U.S. House voted to renew the 1996 welfare law and impose even stricter work requirements on people who receive cash assistance from the federal government (Pear 2003). The Senate did not take such action, so the PRWORA was continued for another year as it stood.
