In the United States, welfare benefits for individuals and families with no or low income had been almost non-existent prior to the Great Depression of the 1930s. With millions of people unemployed, the federal government saw income security as a national problem. In addition to establishing two major "social insurance" programs to respond to future income loss (Social Security and Unemployment compensation), the Social Security Act of 1935 launched federal grants to support state welfare programs for low-income elderly and families with children. The former evolved into Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a federally administered program for the elderly, blind, and disabled. The latter became Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Both were supplemented by two important "in kind" benefit programs also funded by the federal government -- Medicaid and Food Stamps. Needy individuals not meeting the eligibility criteria for these forms of federally assisted or supported welfare may qualify for purely state or state and local relief, often called general assistance.

In 1996, Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (Welfare Reform Act). The new law eliminated AFDC, placed permanent ceilings on the amount of federal funding for welfare, and gave each state a block grant of money to help run its welfare program. For example, under the 1996 law, federal funds may only be used to provide a total of five years of aid in a lifetime of a family. Another significant change was the complete exclusion of legal aliens from receiving any SSI benefits. The passage of the Contract with America Advancement Act of 1996 further narrowed the number of people allowed to receive SSI disability benefits by requiring that drug addiction or alcoholism not be a material factor in their disability.

The law governing entitlement and benefit to any one of these welfare programs is complex. For individuals or families involved with more than one of them, the situation is even more so. Federal law applies to federal benefits like SSI and, in some respects, to federally funded benefits administered by the states, as AFDC used to be and Medicaid remains. Both federal and state programs must comply with Constitutional standards in setting eligibility rules and procedures for applying them.

About
$59 billion is spent on social assistance programs compared to about $96 billion spent on corporate welfare per year

Beg to differ, lindajoy, but the infamous welfare queen does not exist. The lazy, shiftless, scheming welfare queen seen in line at the grocery store buying filet mignon and lobster with food stamps, with countless jobless men drifting in and out of her bed was an image conjured up by Reagan i n 1976.

Work requirements for the long-term SNAP recipients who do not have children have been in place since 1996.

Trumpy and repulsives want to make in order to receive about $150 to $185 a month in benefits, SNAP participants between the ages of 18 and 59 would have to prove they are working least 20 hours a week or participating in an equivalent job training program. Those who are disabled or raising a child younger than 6 would be exempt.

What’s wrong with that, you might ask? Nothing, if you assume that the only people who don’t have jobs are the ones who don’t want them.

Who are these people, anyway?

Reagan, the repulsives’ king of welfare reform, introduced us to the “welfare queen” during a campaign rally in 1976.

“In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record,” he said. “She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.”

That never happened. But her legend lives on.

The t***h is that the average food stamp recipient isn’t an urban black woman at all. She is a white woman.

Contrary to what Loki alleges, of the 44 million SNAP recipients, 36% are white, 25% are African-American, 17% are Hispanic, 3% are Asian and 1% are Native American, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Contrary to what some might think, people living in this country illegally are not eligible.

The bottom line is that the real beneficiaries of SNAP, independent of race, are children. 44% of participants are younger than 18, an additional 12% are age 60 or older and 9% are disabled adults, according to federal government statistics.

And the assumption that people who receive food assistance don’t work? It’s a lie.

Nearly one-third of all SNAP households — and nearly half of those with children — report an income. Many families rely on SNAP only when they are between jobs or because they are among millions of American’s working poor. The problem is that most of the jobs they can get are low-paying and often are temporary.

That elusive "welfare queen"? She's just a figment of those repulsives’ uninformed imaginations.

http://psmag.com/economics/erasing-welfare-myths