The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) is a United States federal law considered to be a fundamental shift in both the method and goal of federal cash assistance to the poor. The bill added a workforce development component to welfare legislation, encouraging employment among the poor. Bill Clinton signed PRWORA into law on August 22, 1996, fulfilling his 1992 campaign promise to "end welfare as we have come to know it."
The federal government runs over 70 different means-tested anti-poverty programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care, and social services to poor and low-income persons. These means-tested programs—including food stamps, public housing, low-income energy assistance, and Medicaid—pay the bills and meet the physical needs of tens of millions of low-income families. However, these programs do not help the recipients move from a position of dependence on the government to being able to provide for themselves.
Only one welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), promotes greater self-reliance. The reform that created TANF in the mid-1990s moved 2.8 million families off the welfare rolls and into jobs so that they were providing for themselves. Regrettably, while the TANF reform was successful, no other federal welfare programs have been reformed along similar lines. The TANF reform could serve as a partial model of reform for other programs for the poor.
TANF is the program Obama has attempted to destroy by executive order. But can a President overturn a law passed by congress and signed by another prior President? No. Once a law is passed it requires congress or for the Supreme Court to overturn it. A President has no such power to do what Obama has done.
Clearly Obama is running rouge and assuming he has powers not granted to his office by the Constitution.
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