The government decides how much welfare support to provide, and to whom based on measures of economic well-being. They are based on national mean income figures. Mean income is an estimate of how much a typical person earns over a given period of time, usually a year. People whose incomes are less than a determined amount below the national mean are considered to be living in poverty. Welfare programs target the people with relatively little income and few assets. This is called means-tested welfare.

Others feel that welfare restrictions are much too strict. People who depend on benefit to support them and their families are being denied. On November 22, the House of Representatives had its final chance to prevent temporary unemployment benefits from ending on December 28. These are people who are just temporarily unemployed and need money until they can find a job. They depend on the income to support their families. Unless the House of Representatives adopt a bipartisan senate, which is very unlikely to happen, they will be denied essential benefits for living. It is cases like this that push people into thinking that the government is really too strict on the disadvantaged, and unemployed. Some who make even a few cents over the required minimum income are denied benefits. This causes debt, and poverty to rise at an alarming rate. If reforms are made to tighten restrictions on welfare benefits this problem will only increase.

ressures have caused several states to cut back on their programs in recent years.

The problem with welfare is that it is just too costly for the government and private organizations to handle, with the amount of recipients that depend on it. There is no easy solution. There are legitimate arguments on both sides of the issue.

Since this law was passed, welfare rolls have declined by more than half since 1996. In 2000 the number of families on welfare was reduced by forty two percent in just the state of California and fifty six percent in the United States total. The number dropped drastically from 4,963,050 to 2,208,095 families. It has led to more poor single mothers working than ever before. Single parent families are seeing their earnings rise, and child poverty is at its lowest level ever.

On the other side of the issue, some feel that this law has left welfare policy with too many flaws. After the PRWORA laws were passed in 1996 about half of the welfare recipients who left welfare had lowered household income, more than fifty dollars a month lower. Some welfare recipients have lower net earnings than they had on welfare, because they cannot keep their jobs for the entire year, or they loose food stamps, or Medicaid, sometimes erroneously. Up to one third of those who left welfare for low wage jobs were back on welfare within a year, largely due to the lack of steady work and the difficulty of keeping a job while maintaining childcare arrangements. About for

Some common words found in the essay are:
Reconciliation Act, House Representatives, SSI People, President Clinton, , Democrats Republicans, Fund UNICEF, Bill Clinton, prwora laws, welfare recipients, single parent families, private organizations, parent families, welfare benefits, single parent, welfare programs, left welfare, support families, families welfare, laws passed 1996, welfare recipients left, food stamps medicaid, families receiving welfare,
Approximate Word count = 1971
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)