Chairman LaHood, Ranking Member Davis, and members of the Subcommittee on Work and Welfare, thank you for holding this hearing on the 30th anniversary of the 1996 welfare reform law and for the opportunity to submit this written testimony.
In early 1995, the forerunner to this subcommittee began drafting legislation that would lead, 18 months later, to the enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). As a 23-year-old community organizer fresh out of college, I was convinced the law would prove disastrous. But by the time I entered graduate school four years later, that position was already difficult to maintain for anyone who looked at the data.
Today, I believe welfare reform benefited poor families enormously. It eliminated a program that, while well-intentioned, trapped people in circumstances that all but precluded upward mobility. It led to a remarkable decline in the number of families dependent on cash welfare. It connected millions to the world of work, turned the tide on several decades’ worth of deteriorating family stability, and reduced child poverty.
Welfare reform provided a model for the antipoverty policy reforms included in the recent One Big Beautiful Bill Act. But denial of its success remains strong, especially as the 20th century fades into history. The past decade has seen ever-louder calls for no-strings-attached cash benefits in the form of a child allowance or universal basic income. Such policies would bring back features of the pre-1990s safety net that impeded upward mobility. Thirty years on, welfare reform requires defending. Skeptics must be reminded of—or introduced to—the evidence of its success and the risks of rolling back its essential features.
Read full testimony here.
