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Disruptive Christian Ethics
Although such specifics are the endpoint in the process of creating wel
fare reform policy, they are a good, concrete starting point for our ethical
assessment of social practices.
Welfare Reform Policy
Public policy is supposed to address social problems, such as the conse
quences resulting from huge disparities in our communities between the
resources accessible to the wealthy and those accessible to the poor.2Unlike
members of wealthier communities, people who are poor face multiple,
critical needs due to their lack of access to health-care resources, adequate
housing, education, or enough food. In the face of ever-widening social dis
parities, what kind of social welfare policy was created by the government
to guide U.S. society into the twenty-first century?
In the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconcili
ation Act (PRWORA), the transference to the states of full responsibility
for oversight and administration ofwelfare programs represented a historic
shift in national public policy, which meant a dramatic change from a con
sistent federal policy concerned with the plight of the poor to a disparately
allocated state block-grant program. Moreover, as the title of this new fed
eral approach to poverty indicates, people who find themselves and their
families in need of emergency economic assistance are now met by a gov
ernment response that focuses on their personal responsibility.
One researcher, Sharon Hays, for three years accompanied applicants
and chronicled the morally disciplining methods of welfare reform in a
southeastern town. She describes the intake interview for the welfare
recipient:
By the time we got to the long-winded explanation of welfare-
reform, we were nearly an hour into the intake, about half-way
through. . . . Our caseworker, Gail, was speaking quickly now, partly
because she knew how tiring this process can be__ [Hays quotes the
caseworker as explaining:] The program TANF stands for Tempo
rary Assistance to Needy Families. It was called AFDC before, wel
fare checks, lots of names for it. Now it’s Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families, and that’s because of changes with welfare reform.
With federal welfare reform, over the course of your lifetime, you can
receive assistance for a total of 60 months.
And wliat happens
is that
you have a big clock that ticks. Rach time
you rc rnvr ;i T A N F
check,