the Food Stamp program the next year (Patterson 139). In 1996, a major welfare reform bill was passed that placed time limits on welfare assistance, required able participants to actively seek employment, and implemented additional services for the needy (Patterson 217). The effects of this latest reform are still being studied, but one thing is certain; it has dramatically decreased the number of poor people on the welfare rolls. But is this a good thing? Or does it simply mean that many more poor persons have been shut out of government aid? The government’s inability to answer these questions has lead to many criticisms of the current welfare system.As it is set up now, the welfare system is extremely complex and inefficient. Welfare programs operate at national, state, and even local levels. Each level has to coordinate the collection and allocation of resources with the other levels, with which it invariably overlaps. In other words, both federal and state welfare money will cover a certain state, but it is difficult to organize the even distribution of funds. In the county that contains San Francisco, the local government decided to return over $6 million in unused childcare assistance programs (Zoellner A1). This unequal distribution is characteristic of a multi-layered organizational structure. This complexity also leads to inefficiency, as some programs overlap service areas and other areas are without adequate service.The federal money earmarked for the Department of Health and Human Services comprises over $350 billion dollars, or more than 20% of the federal budget (Almanac 108,109). This makes it the third most costly item on the budget, exceeded only by the Social Security Administration (another form of welfare for the elderly and disabled) and payments on the public debt.. The very high cost of welfare, combined with the questionable degree of its success, causes many objections among opponents of the...
