Poverty In America: Defining The New Poor
Welfare reform in 1990s helped slash cash benefit rolls, and yet the use of food stamps is soaring today. About 15 percent of Americans use food stamps, and it has become what some call the new welfare.
A big reason why is because of a deal struck between President Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress in 1996. At that time, the number of Americans who received cash payments — what's often thought of as welfare — was at an all-time high.
The Clinton overhaul made it much harder to qualify for those payments, and today the welfare rolls are down 70 percent, but that's only if you define welfare in one way.
"We decided cash assistance is welfare and that's bad, but we decided food aid is nutritional assistance and that's good," says New York Times reporter Jason DeParle. "We made [the food stamp] program much easier to get on."
DeParle, who covers poverty for The Times, tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz that 18 million Americans have had to apply for food aid since the economic crisis began.
The program has become a political talking point for some critics of the program: Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich began referring to President Obama as the "food stamp president," and said "no president has put more people on food stamps than Obama."
It's not technically true, and in fact more people went on food stamps under President George W. Bush. What is true, DeParle says, is that more Americans depend on food assistance now than at any other time in modern history: 1-in-6 people or almost 50 million Americans. The question is whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/22/151166529/poverty-in-america-defining-the-new-poor?
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So Welfare Reform was because "most' of the recipients were on for more than 8 years... okay... And then the rate of single moms having jobs increased after the laws passed, so yay, it worked...right?
Let's remember the LANDSCAPE of those statistics...
FIRST - to have been on welfare 8 years in 1992, would have meant that Reagan-Bush's economies were at least partially of not wholly responsible.
Second - if 40% more single moms were working in the next 4 years or so...that would mean the Clinton Economy offered more opportunity.
NOW - we are looking at people who have been on cash aid for more than their 'allowed lifetime benefits' of FIVE years... gee, you think that GWB's Economy had anything to do with THAT trend? or that the current economy is NOT getting much better, so the ranks are growing where they can, because poverty is growing no matter what benefits are offered and people need whatever help they can get these days.
I hate to blame President Obama for things, but if I look at that 20year trend...i wonder when is the prosperity and opportunity coming back? 
then again, we all know we are at critical mass and that wall st and all the corps are the ones running things now, so how much can Obama really *do*anyway... it's going to get worse, and I wonder sometimes if it will ever get better... that's what really sucks about poverty these days...