Cool USA Facts!

In 1996, Congress signed into law the deceptively titled Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which capitalized on a demonization of the poor as being lazy (in reality there was a lack of jobs, and low-wage work proved unable to sustain most families), in order to dismantle welfare benefits. Its aim was to force poor families receiving federal cash benefits (many of them single mothers with children) to go to work, by cutting off their benefits after two years, limiting lifetime benefits to five years, and allowing people without children to get food stamps for only three months in any three-year period. 1