About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


1 [1] (June 30, 2026)

handle is hein.crs/goveuqw0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional Research Service Informin~j th~ Ieg~Iativ~ debate s~nco 1914 June 30, 2026 The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 1ntroduction The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA, P.L. 104-193), also known as the 1996 welfare reform law, was enacted 30 years ago. Leading up to its passage, debates over welfare reform had spanned four decades, from the 1960s through the early 1990s. The debates focused primarily on the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, which had grown out of the Great Depression era and provided cash assistance to needy families with children, most of whom historically were headed by widowed mothers. Central issues in the long debate leading up to PRWORA were how AFDC benefits affected work and marriage. Families receiving these benefits increasingly were those where the father was alive but absent. Over the four decades of debate, other issues were raised, including the responsibilities of the absent father (child support enforcement) and the need for child care for young children if the single mother was expected to work. Endin e fare as Know It During the 1992 presidential campaign, then-candidate Bill Clinton called for ending welfare as we know it. The Clinton Administration sent a welfare reform proposal to Congress in late 1994 but it was not acted upon. Welfare reform legislation (H.R. 4) was introduced at the beginning of the 104th Congress (January 1995). President Clinton vetoed two bills (a budget reconciliation bill containing welfare reform proposals and H.R. 4). In 1996, a third bill was considered under budget reconciliation rules. President Clinton signed that bill, PRWORA, on August 22, 1996. A Wde-Ranging Law PRWORA ended AFDC and related programs, subsuming funding for cash assistance into the broad-purpose Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant. It ended the entitlement to assistance for needy families with children and established time limits and modified work requirements for families receiving assistance. PRWORA did more than end AFDC and create TANF. PRWORA also altered the nation's policies governing child support enforcement; reauthorized, restructured, and increased funding for child care programs; altered both the Food Stamp program (now the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [SNAP]) and child nutrition programs; and changed the eligibility rules that applied to disabled children in the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. It also established a framework restricting benefits to only citizens and certain groups of legally present noncitizens across federal public benefits and means-tested assistance programs. S1nce PRWORA PRWORA was enacted in the social and economic context of the early 1990s and the welfare reform debates that preceded it. That context has changed. The number of families with children receiving financial assistance declined from a high of 5.1 million in March 1994 through AFDC (before PRWORA's enactment) to less than 1 million through TANF in 2025. Some policies from PRWORA that remain in place today are substantially the same as when enacted in 1996. TANF has never been comprehensively reauthorized; some policy changes have been made over its 30-year history, but most of its policies date back to 1996. Most of today's child support enforcement policies are also the same as those that were in effect after PRWORA's changes were instituted. On the other hand, SNAP was retooled to ease benefit access for working families, and Medicaid and health insurance coverage were expanded. Child care funding, given incremental increases in PRWORA through FY2002, stagnated and lost value to inflation for more than a decade. Beginning in FY2018, funding for child care subsidies was increased. Refundable tax credits (the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit) were increased for families with children and earnings. Summary of PRWORA Table 1 provides a summary of the major provisions of PRWORA.