Introduction

When President William Clinton signed into law P. L. 104-193, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), on August 22, 1996, he brought to conclusion his 1992 campaign promise “to end welfare as we know it.” More important, he brought to conclusion a process begun many years earlier by many other politicians in both major U.S. political parties: an assault on poor women and their children. That is the reality-rather than the rhetoric-of “welfare reform.” Bill Clinton and far too many Democratic politicians played into this process, but it was an assault led by conservative Republicans, from the very beginning of Aid to Dependent Children (and the later Aid for Families with Dependent Children program) as a provision in the Social Security Act of 1935 (originally titled the Economic Security Bill). After six decades of public assistance gradually evolving into an entitlement, “public aid” to mothers and children had once again become a privilege for those identified as being deserving rather than a right-a privilege to those deemed worthy through being subjected to working far below minimum wage and who would be subject to lifetime time limits on how long they would be provided a public “helping hand.”