Welfare is intended for families or individuals that are in need of assistance with no or little income. For those who do not know, Welfare funds come from hard working individuals that are required to pay taxes. Now we wonder, are the tax payers’ hard earned money going to the right deserving recipients? Welfare fraud is on the rise in this country. Many are taking advantage of the system taking away the help that is meant for people that truly needed help to provide for their families or people that need assistance until they can stand on their own feet. Statistics clearly show that “785,000 to 1.2 million families are illegally receiving welfare benefits. At the average rate of $11,500 per year, this means taxpayers are being scammed out of roughly $9 to $13.5 billion dollars every year” (User, par. 4) that is $13.5 Billion dollars of the tax payers hard earned money that is going to the wrong people that do not deserve it. What are the types of Welfare fraud that are being committed in the United States that our government needs to pay close attention to? To start, hopeful recipients will intentionally give false information about their household income to qualify. Some will sell their food stamps also known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP). Also, illegal and misuse of Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) is one of the problems our Welfare System is facing today. All three are considered illegal and these type of activities need to be stopped immediately. People that are in need should be given the assistance they desperately ask for. The System should re-assure tax payers that their hard earned money is going to the right recipients and is not going into the wrong hands.
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...earned dollars are not contributing to help the rightful recipients, but instead it is going straight to the pocket of individuals that are abusing the system and could care less about violating the law. Committing any welfare fraud is illegal and whoever chooses to break the law will be punished. “The Department of Human Services (DHS) may hold an administrative hearing, bring criminal charges or ask you to voluntarily sign a disqualification agreement if you are suspected of fraud. You will have to pay DHS back and will also be disqualified from receiving benefits for 1 to 10 years” (“Welfare” 2). Bringing criminal charges on recipients that are misusing and abusing the system is fair. It is a serious matter that needs to be taken seriously. It is stealing from the tax payers and taking away assistance from individuals that doubtlessly need the assistance.
Welfare can be defined as “systems by which government agencies provide economic assistance, goods, and services to persons who are unable to care for themselves” (Issitt). The United States welfare system is an extremely complex and unique entity that encompasses ideas and concepts from an abundance of different places. Many people believe the current system is an excellent resource for the population, while others believe the current welfare system requires reform and budget cuts to become effective.
Public assistance such as welfare, food stamps, unemployment, cash aid, and housing assistance, has been put in place for the benefit of American citizens. This has been set-up to help people in their time of need after they have helped other Americans in need. Welfare gets its funds from; you guessed it, hardworking Americans. Whenever a person gets paid, state and federal government takes a percentage out of their check every single time. State taxes are what provide the funding of public assistance. Many people believe this comes down to a more moral issue. People in these programs are getting hard worker’s money; therefore, if you are receiving help, you shouldn’t be involved in criminal actions. Many people are losing jobs in this time of recession which is causing unemployment rates to sky-rocket. This causes public assistance rates to r...
Swan, Richelle S., et al. "The Untold Story of Welfare Fraud." Journal of Sociology & Social
Programs like Unemployment, Medicare, and Social Security increase the number to roughly fifty percent. Granted that some of these programs are paid in programs, the number of people that are relying on government assistance is too high. In total, there are thirteen categories that fall under the title of Welfare (Federal Safety Net). These programs are put into place to provide things like cash, food, housing, medical benefits, social services, child services, and training. The main target of these programs is low-income Americans. Firstly, the unfair distribution of funds is a problem in more than one way. Individuals of families who are in real need may be receiving government assistance, but they would be getting more sufficient help if funds and resources were not so loosely spent. Another way in which funds are being unfairly distributed is the products and services obtained by recipients on welfare
If only 3% is committing fraud, than 97% of families receiving benefits really need it. Is it humane to not aid the 97% that really need help? Once again there are solutions to decreasing the small amount of fraud being committed instead of slashing the program all together. There are already programs in place, such as GAIN or Grow, to help beneficiaries get help with resumes, get job training, go to school, and help the beneficiaries place themselves in a position for the long-term. Another solution would be to add more programs or ensure the programs already in place is
It is a commonly known fact that a large percentage of Americans are living on and relying on welfare, which is a government program that provides financial aid to individuals or groups of people who cannot support themselves. Welfare began in the 1930’s during the Great Depression. There are several types of assistance offered by the government, which include healthcare, food stamps, child care assistance, unemployment, cash aid, and housing assistance. The type of welfare and amounts given depend on the individual, and how many children they have. There are many people who honestly need the government assistance, but there are also many who abuse the privilege.
Since the Welfare reform law was introduced in 1996 it has impacted American society greatly. The new welfare policy, named the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), replaced the Aid to Family and Dependent Children (AFDC) program; they have five known differences that only affect the ones who need the assistance. Critics argue that the TANF has negatively impacted the society while some argue that it has not. Linda Burnham, author of “Welfare Reform, Family Hardship & Woman of Color,” asserts that “welfare reform has increased the hardship faced by many women leaving welfare for work and their movement into low-wage jobs, exposes them to higher level of housing insecurities, homelessness, food insecurity, and hunger.” She also argues that women of color “are especially vulnerable to the negative impact of welfare reform” (38).
Welfare has been a safety net for many Americans, when the alternative for them is going without food and shelter. Over the years, the government has provided income for the unemployed, food assistance for the hungry, and health care for the poor. The federal government in the nineteenth century started to provide minimal benefits for the poor. During the twentieth century the United States federal government established a more substantial welfare system to help Americans when they most needed it. In 1996, welfare reform occurred under President Bill Clinton and it significantly changed the structure of welfare. Social Security has gone through significant change from FDR’s signing of the program into law to President George W. Bush’s proposal of privatized accounts.
Being raised in a single-parent lower class home, I realize first-hand the need for welfare and government assistance programs. I also realize that the system is very complex and can become a crutch to people who become dependent and complacent. As a liberal American I do believe that the government should provide services to the less fortunate and resources to find work. However, as able-bodied citizens we should not become complacent with collecting benefits and it is the government’s job to identify people who take advantage of the system and strip benefits from people who are not making efforts to support themselves independently. I will identify errors that exist within the welfare system and several policy recommendations to implement a change that will counteract the negative conditions that currently exist.
A single divorcee’ mother of two is working a minimum waged job that doesn’t pay life’s cost of survival. Not only does this mother have to take care of herself, she has children that need shelter, nourishment, and stability. In order for that to be possible, help is needed. Most people, majority is fathers, have too much pride to ask for help because of the image. Being on social welfare promotes the ego dropping image that one cannot provide for themselves or their family. But is image more important than the life itself? Children are dying of hunger or dehydration because their parents cannot afford decent meals or purified water. Children are dying from sickness because their parents cannot afford a home that protects them from the cold. Some of these parents are working forty hours a week or more for minimum wage and still cannot afford the necessities to live healthy. Some parents cannot find a job due to lack of qualification. The government has provided resources for people who are disadvantaged; however, there are still problems that need to be addressed. Social welfare isn’t a discouragement, it is a helping hand. There is no reason why lives should be shortened because of the inability to access governmental assistance. Social welfare benefits America as a whole because it serves as a crutch for the financially handicapped and provides motivation to work harder for a better lifestyle.
Texas was built by hard working people to make it the greatest state in the nation. Push Texas to move welfare recipients off the welfare rolls and onto payrolls. It is time to recognize that the welfare system has been a failure, and from this massive investment the state received only more poverty. The welfare system is unfair to everyone: to taxpayers who must pick up the bill for failing programs; to society, whose mediating institutions of community, church and family are increasingly pushed aside; and most of all to the poor themselves, who are trapped in a system that destroys opportunity for themselves and hope for their children. It is time to implement a workfare approach proposal to fight poverty. It is a program based opportunity,
President Obama issued illegal waivers to welfare’s work requests and steamed line the program to allow easier access to it. But the true fact is that America never won the welfare fight after all. Out of the 80 different federal welfare plans, the ’96 welfare reform really only really fixed one. A third of the United States population received assistances from one or more of these 80 welfare programs in 2011. According to several different reports the Department of Agriculture said that one program alone, the food stamps program, gave benefits to a record breaking 47.7 million Americans in the last month of 2012, and these are we paid for (working class) benefits those millions didn’t have to work to receive.
A lot of people may agree with this and a lot do not. Some believe everyone should work for anything they receive; it should never just be given. Under this thought process, tax payer money should only go to a deserving poor versus a lazy poor who just live off the system. Defining both the deserving and undeserving is hard and varies by person, making welfare a very undefined and gray topic where policy cannot be easily be revised or renewed. A major issue alignes with SNAP benefits alone. While it is illegal to turn SNAP benefits into cash to buy other things, like drugs or alcohol, people have found a way to do this. It is a heavy misuse of the system and it really helps to support the thought process that people only misuse
My reaction to people who want to remain on welfare is, striving to look for a better future not for themselves but for their families too. They want to change their life and they don’t want to wait for the opportunity to come to their feet. They want to change however they can feel embarrass and ashamed that they have reached to that point however welfare gives them another opportunity within the community to stand on their own two feet. Its okay to receive welfare because there here to help those, who lack motivation in
For example, someone who works at a shipyard labors very hard but is not paid a lot. If one tries his hardest to support his family, but he only gets paid minimum wage, he should be able to receive welfare. This is very different than someone who spends her whole day on the couch not trying to get a job or make money. The person who works hard, is paid minimum wage, and has a family, should not have to worry about if his children will be able to eat that night. Children have no say in what environment they grow up in, and is not fair to make that child suffer because their father is not being paid enough for his hard work.